What We Can Do to Improve Collaboration

Studies suggest that collaboration is a top priority today for senior executives. Collaboration is experiencing a growth in impact and importance in the enterprise. Numerous driving forces are responsible, which include: trends in globalization and outsourcing, workforce demand for flexibility, critical need for rapid innovation, co-creating value with vendors and customers, technology and tools enabling a networked world, and behavior and expectations of Gen-Y.

In our recent study, Assessing the State of Collaboration: Return to Essentials, 45% respondents said that collaboration is Essential Across the Board for business success TODAY and 77% believe that collaboration will be Essential Across the Board in the FUTURE (Figure 1).

Figure 1. How would you rate the value of collaboration to the success of your business?

When collaboration is a key to creating value for business success, it must become a core capability – something you intentionally and deliberately nurture, develop and practice. It requires culture change aimed at flattening hierarchy, increasing transparency, allowing right talent to naturally flow to right endeavors without organizational barriers, establishing open communication, ensuring recognition commensurate with contributions, firing know-it-all’s and gate-keepers, and so on.

Our survey respondents rank-ordered organizational priorities (Figure 2) and priorities for collaboration teams (Figure 3) to make collaboration more effective.

Figure 2. What weighting points would you assign (must add to 10) to each of the following to improve effectiveness of collaboration in your organization?

Figure 3. What is the most important advice you would give to someone who is about to lead a major collaborative project? What is the 2^nd most important?

The results of our study emphasize that collaboration has become or is becoming an essential for how enterprises get their business done.  At the same time we must all be careful about the latest fads in tools and approaches, because our survey respondents point out the importance of time-tested meeting-management practices and well-travelled communications tools as the best way to make collaboration effective.

Update on 25 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• Effective Collaboration Is More than Deliverables
• Collaboration: Building and Sustaining Trust
• The ALL ONE (TAO) of Collaboration
• The Four Ps of Effective Collaboration
• The 4Ps of Effective Collaboration - Redux
• Collaboration Is More than Team Building and Management
• Get Teammates to Move "Towards" Rather than "Away"