Tip of the Week: How to Successfully Collaborate

Collaboration is, in many ways, one of the most important parts of running a business. The issue is that you need to ensure your entire team is prepared to participate and work towards the same goal. This week we want to emphasize the importance of collaboration, and to that end we have provided six simple steps to better collaboration.

Establish and Reinforce Roles

Collaborative habits assume that you know who is in charge of any specific project. Understanding the roles that everyone fulfills gives your organization more chances to make sure projects are performed correctly. Team meetings can be used to establish the roles that everyone will have. Be sure to have someone run the meeting, as well as someone taking notes that can be consulted later on.

Responsibilities, Too

Just like how roles need to be assigned, responsibilities need to be clear-cut, too. Tasks should be assigned to specific people, and they should have goals that must be accomplished during a specific timeframe. This makes sure that confusion is kept to a minimum, practically guaranteeing that progress is made toward the objective.

Identify Goals

Goals are one of the best ways to motivate people, and what better goal is there than one that could potentially avoid trouble for not just a group, but the entire organization. Furthermore, your goals should be straightforward from the beginning with limited room for interpretation. As the process continues, be sure to readdress the goals to ensure they remain realistic.

Embrace Conflict

Some people don’t like conflict, and it’s completely understandable why. However, the right amount of conflict can help you explore issues that need to be addressed, as well as spur on team members with a little healthy competition. Constructive conflict can, in this way, create a great team experience that will yield a better end result.

Establish (and Use) Collaboration Tools

Collaboration is made easier with the right tools, and your team can get so much more done through the use of cloud storage, mobile computing, and cooperative virtual workspaces. These can be utilized even if your team is scattered across different locations. Just make sure that if you take the time to implement the solution, you’re serious about getting your employees to use them. It would just be a waste of time and resources otherwise.

Be Open to Ideas, and Give Credit for Good Ones

Listening to your staff is one of the best things you can do. They are the ones who are doing the work and collaborating, so they can provide a unique perspective on any situation. Asking your employees for ideas can yield a considerable amount of success. It’s also critical that you give your employees credit when it’s due, as transparency regarding these ideas shows that you value employee feedback.

Computerware can equip your business with all sorts of solutions to augment collaboration. To learn more, reach out to us at (703) 821-8200.