4 Tips For Building A ‘Culture Of Collaboration’ Within Your Business
True teamwork begins to take shape with a recognizable culture of collaboration within your … [+] business.
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While there are many factors that can play a role in creating the ideal office culture, few things can prove more important than building a culture of collaboration. In fact, research from Stanford reveals that working in a collaborative setting makes employees 50% more effective at task completion, while also boosting their engagement and motivation.
It may sound cliche, but it’s true: your team is the lifeblood of your business. No matter what your industry, building a healthy office culture driven by collaboration is key to driving outcomes for your company. Positive work cultures have been found to boost productivity, engagement, retention and other vital statistics.
Building a collaborative culture within your business is well worth the effort — and with the right practices, you can quickly strengthen this aspect of your work.
1. Establish a Foundation of Trust and Communication
As a leader, you set the tone for how collaboration can be carried out within your organization. Similar to establishing strong partnerships with other businesses, an internal collaborative culture needs a solid foundation of consistent communication and transparency.
This doesn’t mean that every employee needs to know the specific details of your company’s financials. But it does mean that you share the information everyone needs to do their jobs well, rather than trying to unnecessarily limit access to information. A transparency commitment matrix can help your team determine what needs to be shared, and with whom.
Establishing a consistent cadence for sharing information can also be helpful. Even something as simple as weekly email updates or check-in meetings with the whole team can keep everyone on the same page and offer more chances to collaborate.
2. Create Opportunities for a Culture of Collaboration
Collaboration doesn’t happen by accident — especially if you are still in the middle of transitioning away from a system where employees primarily work on independent projects.
As a leader, you can foster collaboration by intentionally designing projects that require a team of employees. This can be especially helpful when you create cross-functional task forces, which require members of different departments to work together on a shared goal or initiative. Even something as simple as assigning a few team members to work together on a project can be of use.
As the saying goes, “Experience is the best teacher.”
These early collaborative experiences that you create for your team may require additional guidance, but they will serve as the best testing ground for learning to work together. As your team becomes more comfortable with this process, they will be better equipped for cross-functional tasks, and will be more willing to collaborate in smaller ways on their individual tasks.
3. Use Technology to Make Collaboration Seamless
You’re hardly alone in your quest to create a culture of collaboration. For example, a wide range of technology tools such as Slack, Asana and Mural are now available to streamline and simplify the collaborative process, regardless of whether you all share the same office space or work remotely. One trend many companies are turning to is the use of “no-code” and “low-code” business process management platforms that can be uniquely tailored for individual teams.
Jason Drinen, practice lead at ExpressAbility, explains how custom business applications can go a long way in driving more meaningful collaboration. “Processes and productivity suffer when teams don’t have a way to collaboratively operate, have visibility to processes or a way to easily make their individual contributions. To avoid that, business tools must be tailored to fit the team so collaboration can be truly seamless. When businesses leverage low-code BPM platforms, they can achieve rapid development of software that fits tasks to people, rather than the other way around. This leaves businesses better able to respond to a dynamic marketplace with collaboration that truly boosts their productivity.”
4. Assess and Revise
As with any other change or initiative your business undertakes, you should regularly assess your processes for building a culture of collaboration. Before, during and after you begin emphasizing collaboration, you should evaluate your business processes to identify areas that are too individual-oriented, as well as areas where your current systems or processes make collaboration difficult.
The feedback of your employees will be crucial in this effort. Collecting feedback from your team can help you identify shortcomings in your effort to build a collaborative culture, as well as opportunities for greater collaboration. Better yet, the process of collecting feedback in itself will improve collaboration by helping your team grow more comfortable about communicating and coming up with solutions together.
Naturally, once you’ve conducted your own assessments and gathered feedback from this team, the next step is to revise your processes so you can make it easier to collaborate. Make sure that the “revision” process is collaborative in and of itself, gathering insights and recommendations from all stakeholders to ensure your new solutions are truly effective for everyone.
Achieve More With a Culture of Collaboration
Building a culture of collaboration within your business may require a fair amount of effort, especially if your organization has previously focused on individual-oriented tasks.
But as you actively strive to create a more collaborative culture, your team will be able to thrive like never before. From unlocking creativity to simply improving satisfaction and engagement at work, a collaborative culture will help you get better results from your team — and yourself.
