Collaboration is the secret sauce that drives business productivity, growth and profitability. People collaborate when they work together and pool their intelligence to solve complex problems. In these situations, solutions emerge from the process of collaboration. The better the quality of the process and the higher the engagement of the participants and in most cases, the better the solution.

The trick is how to make collaboration work effectively. That’s where we believe that our color coded universal common language for collaboration and the 4D-i and Smarter Meetings tools come in as enablers for people who think differently to work together better.

First, here are two useful pieces on collaboration:

Meetings Around the World: The Impact of Collaboration on Business Performance is a white paper that was written based on a survey of 946 decision-makers from 3 global regions, for Microsoft and Verizon by Frost and Sullivan, a global consulting firm with offices around the world. The Collaboration Index they developed is a useful template for organizations seeking to increase their degree of collaboration. You can find a copy of this paper by Googling – ‘meetings around the world’ -  go to the Verizon website and look for the White Paper by the same name.

Here are some selected highlights and quotes from the report on the impact of collaboration in business:

“Our results show a clear impact of collaboration on business performance. On quantitative measures, such as profitability and sales growth, collaboration is a key driver of success.”

CORPORATE PERFORMANCE: “Overall 36% of a company’s performance was due to its collaboration index. This was more than twice the impact of a company’s strategic orientation (16%) and more than 5 times the impact of market and technological turbulence influences (7%)…empirically demonstrates increased high quality collaboration can improve business performance.”

GROWTH: “ In our study, collaboration significantly impacts profitability (29%), profit growth (26%) and ales growth (27%)…Collaboration can thus be an essential component of an effective growth strategy.”

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: “ The most significant impact of collaboration on a single measure of performance is in the attainment of customer satisfaction, where of the three accounting for 41% of the forces driving customer satisfaction.”

LABOR PRODUCTIVITY:” Labor productivity is also positively influenced (36%) by collaboration.”

QUALITY AND INNOVATION: “ Product quality (34%) and product development (30%) are positively influenced by collaboration, as is innovation (30%).

MEETINGS: “Certainly travelling to meet others is valuable, nonetheless executives are seeking ways to control costs associated with meetings.”

“ Whether it is done via cutting costs or generating greater revenues, any collaboration solution will need to show it can produce a positive return on investment (ROI).”

The Canadian Society for Training and Development’s Investing in People project showed how WestJet achieved a 558% ROI, saving time in meetings by using smarter Meetings –www.smartermeetings.com 

In the fall 2010 edition of the Canadian Learning Journal, Sheryl Herle states:

 “ Move over content: collaboration is poised to be the new king of learning…”

In her article, The Real Meaning of Learning Technology, she describes the opportunity:

“ The perfect storm is emerging from various business imperatives:

·       A need to continually motivate and engage employees to keep productivity high and turnover low

·       A need to innovate faster than the competition

·       A need to source talent more globally and build virtual teams in order to counteract the inevitable shortages all industries anticipate facing

·       A constant focus on driving down costs

·       A growing necessity to work in more of a ‘green’ manner

“ Equipping a workforce with the knowledge and skills to use technology to collaborate more effectively, quickly, cost effectively… could very well move the needle on each of these issues.”

WHY COLLABORATION IN TEAMS IS TOUGH

If collaboration is the X factor, why is it so tough to achieve. Given the speed and complexity of organizational life, collaboration is tough for many reasons. Here are 5 key ones:

1.    Diversity of thinking styles: People think in different ways making it difficult to get on the same page together

2.    Lack of a common language: there is no accepted universal language for collaboration

3.    Lack of agreed upon collaborative thinking processes: teams lack processes that can get different people to do the same type of thinking at the same time

4.    Lack of rules of engagement: teams do not have transferable rules of the pool to keep people on track together

5.    Negative spirals: individuals often default to using negative language that undermines team performance

Getting together to figure things out is a key business reality. How we can learn to do that with different people, quickly and effectively, is a critical business challenge for this decade.