Collaborate To Celebrate - Working Together To Achieve Success
Posted on March 16, 2008
Filed Under Business |
The word ‘Collaborate’ gets used frequently in today’s workplace but what does it really mean and how can your organization benefit from it.
By definition, collaboration simply means working together to achieve a common objective or goal. All facets of life, including work, involve some element of collaboration as soon as more than one person engages in any part of an activity. Simply talking with someone about a problem, challenge, idea, etc… is a very rudimentary example of collaboration.
Taking this a step further in the business world, collaboration usually extends to the routing of information (usually in document or email form), so all parties are ‘kept in the loop’.
However, today’s collaboration software and applications add rich features such as
- centralized document and information management
- process and document workflow
- project or team workspaces
- shared calendars
- discussion areas
- surveys
- blogging
- wiki
- etc…
Studies have shown that effective workplace collaboration on projects, tasks and day-to-day activities, can dramatically increase teamwork and efficiency while reducing stress, conflict and rework.
So why don’t we all just collaborate?
Well the answer to that lies in the fact that you need to define what your collaboration needs are and then how to achieve this. There is as much point in stating simply ‘we need to collaborate’ as there is in saying ‘we need to do something’ without working out what that something is.
You need to define your business process needs clearly and establish how the areas, departments and projects in your organization can benefit by being more cohesive and collaborative.
- Do you need people to work together on design documents?
- Do you need to efficiently assemble project status information?
- Do you need the ability to solicit feedback from your team without gathering them together in a meeting room?
- Do you need to log, assign and track issues, task or work requests?
These and more questions need to be asked before you rush out and implement any system.
So it’s really up to you to define ‘collaboration’ and what it means to you.
Once you do you will be in a position to design what you need and select the correct tool(s) for the job.
If you and your team engage the philosophy or working together and you use the systems available to you, it won’t be long before you are celebrating the success of your next venture as a collaborative effort.
Shea Heaver, PMP is the creator and owner of the Satisfaction @ Work website.
He has worked across a broad spectrum of diversified cultures, projects, organizations and business processes on a local, national and global scale.
Satisfaction @ Work is a concept we should all strive for and is the index that is at the core of the ‘An Even Better Place to Work’ program.
http://www.satisfactionatwork.com
Tags: business processes, collaborate, collaboration, collaborative, job satisfaction, productivity
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