Tapping into the power of collaboration
Collaboration has the ability to shape organizations and help achieve business objectives. Through indepth conversations with members of Melcrum's Strategic Communication Research Forum, we have found that internal communication has a great opportunity to involve itself in this process and unlock the potential of a multi-skilled workforce. Luke Dodd takes a look at the current status of Melcrum's research.
In discussions with our Strategic Communication Research Forum (SCRF) members, we've discovered that the notion of collaborating for better business outcomes is creating waves in the internal communication profession. We presented the global membership with three topics and asked them to select the one they wanted Melcrum to dive into in 2012, based on relevance and interest to their business.
Collaboration was the overwhelming first choice with 75 percent of our Forum members - arguably some of the world's leading internal communication practitioners - eager to find out more.
They told us their CEOs are talking about it, their IT folk are talking about it, their employees are already doing it, and so smart internal communicators are wanting to be part of, if not lead, a bigger conversation around how to drive collaboration in their organizations.
But where to start on such a broad and cumbersome topic? An initial obstacle that we faced was to simply define what is meant by the term "enterprise collaboration" today. Firstly it's important to realize that collaboration is not a business outcome itself, but a way of working that will ultimately lead to key business outcomes. Melcrum differentiates between collaboration as an activity and as a mindset.
- Collaboration (Noun) The act of working with others to share knowledge and ideas that results in something new being produced. Most effective when a group is diverse and a facilitator is appointed.
- Collaborative (Adjective) A state of being, or a mindset, which is conducive to collaboration occurring (in an organization) i.e. "Collaborative culture" or "Collaborative leadership style".
Where the act of collaboration requires a degree of facilitation and a clear end goal, getting employees to be collaborative in their mindset requires a broader perspective and ongoing culture change.
We can also look at collaboration as either facilitated (formal) or unfacilitated (informal).
An example of unfacilitated or informal collaboration can be seen increasingly in organizations today through online social tools that allow employees to "crowdsource" their problems i.e. putting a question or an idea to a large network of people, often bound together by a common interest or expertise.
When members of that network begin to engagein dialogue that is later distilled into a new process or idea, or an improvement upon an existing process or idea, it turns into an act of unfacilitated collaboration.
But the fact is that in many organizations, this kind of informal collaboration is only occurring amongst a handful of employees.
Namely, early adopters of technology - those who possess a natural disposition to share their ideas among those unknown to them - and/or those who feel confident enough to ask questions in a public space and so inadvertently admit to not having all the answers, despite working in a climate whereknowledge can be interpreted as power.
Members can read the full article here.
This article was originally published in Strategic Communication Management.
Have your say
How are you collaborating across your organization? What tools have been implemented to ease collaboration initiatives? Share your stories below...
Recommended resources:
- Taking collaboration to new levels with SharePoint at Siemens
- PODCAST: How Cisco encourages collaboration across functions
- Building global collaboration with a new social network at Ericsson
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