FountainBlue’s May 7 Front Line Managers’ Online meeting was on the topic of ‘Collaboration Best Practices’. Please join me in thanking our panelists for their participation.
Our dynamic and experienced panel of leaders spoke eloquently and provocatively on how collaboration impacts the way we innovate, the way we solve problems, the way we lead and inspire.Collaboration is integral to the idea generation process, and is a vital part of creating customized solutions for clients. Indeed, having a diverse ecosystem of internal and external stakeholders increases the likelihood of success. Below is a compilation of best practices around collaboration.
- Err on the side of over-communicating, especially when you are working with stakeholders from all sides. Communicating transparently and regularly to help ensure that everyone is on the same page, working toward the same goal.
- Invite participation from a wide range of stakeholders to ensure diverse input and feedback as you ideate, create, produce, distribute, customize, and scale solutions.
- Embrace processes to ensure wide participation, thorough vetting, increased input, but don’t be so process oriented that you’re inefficient, especially when problems are urgent and decisions must be made efficiently.
- Prioritize the problems to be solved, the decisions to be made, and create collaborative models for maximizing input/feedback and efficient operation.
- Embrace the available data, but make sure that you’re using the right data set to inform each collaborative decision.
- Be open-minded and inclusive to help ensure engagement from a larger range of people.
- Always ask yourself ‘who else can we pull into the conversation’?
- How can I empower those who don’t think like me to actively participate?
- Assign roles for each group to invite input.
- Create and perpetuate a culture where all are rewarded for their input and ideas, where it’s safe to make mistakes and learn.
It makes sense to use data and benchmarks to guide decisions which have been made before, but when you’re breaking new ground and entering areas with no precedent, try doing the following:
- nimbly move forward with small decisions and actions, monitoring results and adjusting regularly based on results;
- create a large assortment of options and think backwards about the consequences of each option to help decide the best direction, based on risks;
- gather input and feedback from a wide range of stakeholders about options and implications so that you can see the options and problems with different lenses;
- follow corporate/government/team and other policy guidelines
When done well, the Collaboration Edge makes teams and organizations more innovative, more productive, more customer-centric, more agile, more inclusive.
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