Collaboration is the root of success in many industries. Google began when Larry Page and Sergey Brin collaborated on a search engine that then gave birth to the technology giant that it is today. Facebook was built into an empire almost overnight by collaboration among a group of students, as they set the social media site up from their own dorm rooms before it exploded into today’s foremost social media power.
Governments are born out of collaboration, and countries are run through collaboration. The rise or fall of empires is determined by the effectiveness (or not) of collaboration among its leaders and citizens. It is a no-brainer, therefore, why collaboration should be ingrained in company culture, as a staple for business process and project management strategies.
On this note, what are the perceived benefits of a collaborative company culture?
#1. Increased clarity
Increased collaboration means opening up and increasing communication lines between leaders, teams, front-liners, back-end supporters, and all the other members within the organization. This increased communication spawns increased clarity as to the direction the organization – and to that effect, the projects and the teams – are going. It gives members a guide, a vision of the path they are taking and what repercussions their decisions, tasks, and projects will have to the team’s overall goal, as well as their relevance to the organization.
Clarity development and improved flexibility allow members and project managers to improvise and try various ways to complete a task or enhance the speed with which a project can be completed. Teams can adjust to changes in task completion schedules, member availability, or goal hierarchy, and still manage to stay within the framework of the organization’s overall direction.
#2. Increased motivation for team members
With increased communication, members feel included when it comes to making key decisions. This, in turn, drives members to be more responsible in formulating ways to improve their performance. Creativity is spurred and members are inspired to find more ways to contribute to the goal – the goal that they understand clearly and feel more a part of.
With increased and transparent collaboration, the motivation with which leaders and members carry out a task becomes infectious. As they complete more tasks and become doubly excited to carry out more goals that are beneficial to the company, other members are led on to follow the pack as well.
#3. Increased productivity
As is any company’s ultimate goal, increased productivity begets increased profits. As employee motivation is given a boost, the speed with which a team completes a project and responds to consumer demands is enhanced.
Team collaboration develops the culture of helping each other, as opposed to the backfiring culture of unhealthy competition. In the long run, some team members, in light of injurious competition and inequality, might end up sabotaging the speed with which projects can be completed instead of contributing to help team members. That being the case, as opposed to encouraging harmful rivalry among team members, increasing the incentive for collaboration is a far better strategy.
Conclusion
Leaders, from upper management all the way to the task-specific team heads, must ensure that a collaborative company culture is ingrained and incentivized. And with the proper collaboration tools and technology to track and make the process systematic and transparent, collaboration becomes a whole lot easier to integrate with regular business processes, instead of an additional burden to management.
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