Another client, same story! “We have provided the employees with the best collaborative tools, accessible even from mobile, but not much uptake. Those people, who were collaborating previously, have migrated to new platform, but not many new collaborators have emerged. Do you think we should advertise more or conduct another training session on the tools and its functionality?” NO. RIP your way into collaboration.
Provide REASONS for employees to collaborate: Broadly, reasons have to include Work-related reasons and Self-related reasons. Which aspect of employees work gains most from collaboration? Is it in managing customer care, designing new products, or solving delivery problems? What adds value; Expertise advice in solving problems, access to reusable assets to expedite work or tacit knowledge sharing by stakeholders for developing more practical cross-functional solutions? Unless there is sustained reason for employee to engage in collaboration for performing his/her work more effectively, collaboration is unlikely to become habit.
Self related reasons provide answer to the essential “Whats in it for me?”. Is being collaborative, essentially being open and helpful, rewarding to me in some-way? What do I gain from providing expertise advice, or sharing my work-products so that someone else is able to do work better and faster? Designing right motivation strategy is the key. Do you leverage financial incentives or social recognition or both? Complexity of solution, level of effort, business benefits from collaborative behavior, are some of the parameters to be looked into.
Provide INSTRUMENTS to Collaborate: While your collaboration goals may be small in the short run, it pays to have collaboration infrastructure architecture designed to handle advanced features of collaboration. It’s the rolling out strategy that needs to be calibrated to the overall collaboration road-map. If the collaborative instruments are intuitive enough, early adopters shall be your best sales-force to get others learn how to use them.
Provide PERMISSIONS for employees to collaborate: Formal permission is easy and mainly comes from having well defined social medial policy and usage guidelines. It’s the informal permission which comes from leadership behavior and overall culture that often needs attention. Are leaders ok to respect the outcome of the community deliberations and happy to experiment or acknowledge? To what extent, project leader is ok for team member to seek help from open community in solving problem, instead of reaching out to him for advice or permission to ask? To what extent employees feel it safe to ask questions or share comments without their bosses sitting on judgment about their competence or attitude?
Providing Instrument for collaboration is often resource intensive decision and hence often takes lot of discussion time, whereas returns on the investments depend upon other two factors that need careful consideration.
Reflect!!!
Provide REASONS for employees to collaborate: Broadly, reasons have to include Work-related reasons and Self-related reasons. Which aspect of employees work gains most from collaboration? Is it in managing customer care, designing new products, or solving delivery problems? What adds value; Expertise advice in solving problems, access to reusable assets to expedite work or tacit knowledge sharing by stakeholders for developing more practical cross-functional solutions? Unless there is sustained reason for employee to engage in collaboration for performing his/her work more effectively, collaboration is unlikely to become habit.
Self related reasons provide answer to the essential “Whats in it for me?”. Is being collaborative, essentially being open and helpful, rewarding to me in some-way? What do I gain from providing expertise advice, or sharing my work-products so that someone else is able to do work better and faster? Designing right motivation strategy is the key. Do you leverage financial incentives or social recognition or both? Complexity of solution, level of effort, business benefits from collaborative behavior, are some of the parameters to be looked into.
Provide INSTRUMENTS to Collaborate: While your collaboration goals may be small in the short run, it pays to have collaboration infrastructure architecture designed to handle advanced features of collaboration. It’s the rolling out strategy that needs to be calibrated to the overall collaboration road-map. If the collaborative instruments are intuitive enough, early adopters shall be your best sales-force to get others learn how to use them.
Provide PERMISSIONS for employees to collaborate: Formal permission is easy and mainly comes from having well defined social medial policy and usage guidelines. It’s the informal permission which comes from leadership behavior and overall culture that often needs attention. Are leaders ok to respect the outcome of the community deliberations and happy to experiment or acknowledge? To what extent, project leader is ok for team member to seek help from open community in solving problem, instead of reaching out to him for advice or permission to ask? To what extent employees feel it safe to ask questions or share comments without their bosses sitting on judgment about their competence or attitude?
Providing Instrument for collaboration is often resource intensive decision and hence often takes lot of discussion time, whereas returns on the investments depend upon other two factors that need careful consideration.
Reflect!!!
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Pretty usefull article. I think if a business desires organizational agility, towards effective and timely decision making in a decentralized environment, it needs to minimize and optimize the need for managers to collaborate - unless, the potential for real collaborative advantage is absolutely apparent.
ReplyDeleteYes, well said.
ReplyDeleteBut there is another dimension of collaboration - around productive collaboration.
We need to cut the noise in the collaboration network and link it to producitivity, somehow.
Any thoughts ?