At Collaboration Consulting we believe that how organizations collaborate is going to be a significant influence on business in the next decade and beyond. Organizations that understand how to work with each other more effectively and share the right information at the right time are going to be better positioned to their objectives and deliver on their strategy. As a part of living this vision we have included a blog and discussion board on our website and encourage you to participate in collaborating with us. We are committed to offering our clients the very best customer service we can, taking the time to confirm a clear and measured understanding of the challenges involved, and holding all efforts accountable.
Emails have evolved from an informally planned modern replacement for the memo to a way to quickly share both the simple and extremely complex message. Minutes are being written to capture the process and outcomes of a meeting only to be devoid of the context, sitting like islands within an ocean of data. Organizations have grown to exist in numerous physical locations without considering the impact of fewer hallway conversations. Extreme demands on processes and projects lead to coordination of knowledge being a forgotten priority, which in turn leads to frustration at being the last to know. And ultimately, a chronic gap in sharing knowledge across organizations leads to duplication of effort. And as these challenges continue to sprawl unchecked the modern business environment is seeing a move towards the leveraging of distinctive and core competencies internally, while working with business partners through off/near-shoring, outsourcing, and consultants.
Unless a holistic approach is taken to understand the how of collaboration today, at best tomorrow will continue to look much like today, and at worst come with a significant investment in a collaboration or content management tool that only serves to waste money and deliver confusion.
Collaboration Consulting Inc ensures that your collaboration strategy supports the purpose behind collaboration within a business while ensuring:
A collaboration strategy must have the ultimate goal of providing a convenient and personalized way for the entire organization to find the information and tools each individual needs to be more productive. The fundamental challenge for any collaboration strategy - collaborative behaviour cannot guarantee usage in the same way that a new dedicated system might (such as an expense, payroll or invoicing system might). When it comes to collaboration individuals will usually have other options available to them. For example, just because a document library is established does not guarantee that employees will stop including those files as attachments in emails.
An effective strategy for collaboration will ensure that the right people are involved. The critical business objectives and needs will be determined. Knowing what keeps executives awake at night and addressing these nightmares with an effective collaboration strategy is essential. Key business goals will not only be identified and exceeded by the strategy, but there will be significant impacts on business objectives with teams now able to do things they could never do before. On the flip side the strategy must also ensure that the right governance processes are in place. Those being asked to collaborate must be aware of, and accept, their roles and responsibilities. Information, documents and knowledge will be accurate, relevant and usable, and the plan will include provisions to ensure that it remains relevant over time. And ultimately, accountability must be established along with a meaningful control plan.