Most organizations want to be innovative.
Innovation, after all, is how you thrive, setting yourself apart from competitors and setting yourself up for growth.
Most also know the link between innovation and collaboration — that collaborative workplaces tend to not only be more productive, but also come up with better ideas.
The problem is that they don’t quite know how to promote collaboration.
Managers schedule uncomfortable team-building exercises that only further alienate employees. Leadership fails to lead by example. Employees struggle to remain productive and engaged.
All the while, performance and innovation both suffer. Today, we’re going to talk about how you can pull your organization out of this rut. We’ll show you how to build a collaborative workplace culture and embrace innovation both now and in the future.
Start with Defining Your Messaging and the “Why”
At the outset, there are three questions you need to answer.
- What are your organizational priorities, and how will collaboration help you achieve them?
- What are your organization’s values, and how does collaboration fit with them?
- What is the goal of each business unit, and how can collaboration help accomplish them?
Work with leadership and use the answer to each question to develop the messaging around your collaboration initiative.
A cultural shift, especially in an organization with a well-established way of doing things, is a huge undertaking. You must convey to employees and management that it’s worth the effort.
Consider developing a tailored message for each department, something you know will resonate with them based on their challenges and needs. For example, you might explain to your sales team how closer collaboration with marketing will give them a deeper understanding of your customers.
Build a Roadmap
Change doesn’t happen overnight. According to Deloitte, building a strong company culture can take three to five years.
Create an implementation plan covering that timeframe, establishing monthly and annual goals and milestones. You should also define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you’ll use to measure progress.
Common choices include:
- Success rate or completion rate for cross-functional or joint projects.
- Meeting attendance rates.
- Employee Net Promoter Score
- Trust in leadership
- Project completion rate
What should each year look like?
You can review our framework below, loosely based on one developed by Betsy Allen-Manning, Owner & CEO at Destination Workplace. Measure progress throughout the transition, with occasional sanity checks to ensure everything is still on track.
Year One: The Foundation
The first year is all about laying the groundwork. Ensure your employees understand your business’s values and objectives and the reason behind the shift. Take this as an opportunity to collect feedback on employee needs and expectations.
You’ll also want to start researching potential collaboration solutions and assessing your existing software and hardware infrastructure. Identify tools you can retire or consolidate and evaluate your current data governance processes — specifically, what will need to change to establish a single source of truth for business data? As the year progresses, you’ll also begin implementing some of these tools in a limited capacity.
Start planning employee-focused initiatives, as well.
What sort of professional development opportunities do your people want? Are there any team-building exercises that resonate with them? What about potential cross-functional projects?
Finally, work to promote a sense of belonging for your employees through measures such as:
- Encouraging open communication.
- Actively promoting inclusive attitudes.
- Allowing employees to shadow people in other departments for a potential lateral move.
- Ensuring everyone at the top of the org chart operates with integrity and authenticity.
- Making it a point to acknowledge both personal accomplishments and team-based achievements.
- Reviewing your onboarding process so it’s as painless and welcoming as possible.
- Empowering people with greater autonomy over their work.
Year Two: Embedding Your Culture
At the start of your second year, refer to the messaging you developed at the outset of your transition. Use that messaging to develop a strong brand for your company. A personality that resonates with your employees and that you’ll later use to attract talent.
Provided you aren’t still consolidating your existing tools, this is also the point where you can start exploring more sophisticated and feature-rich collaboration tools. As you do, examine any relevant policies and processes to ensure they still accomplish what you need them to accomplish.
Beyond that, simply continue with the initiatives you kicked off during year one, adjusting and expanding as required.
Year Three: Maintain Alignment
By the third year, your organization’s culture should be well-established and mostly integrated with general business operations. This is the point where you’ll want to look at breaking down any communication silos that survived the first two years. You should also look at improving feedback mechanisms so that your employees are better able to share thoughts, ideas, or concerns with leadership.
Speaking of leadership, make sure they’re still leading by example, acting with both transparency and integrity in all their dealings. This is also the point where you’ll start getting into the weeds in terms of updating your HR processes and policies, up to and including performance evaluations.
Year Four: Celebrate Success
Once year four rolls around, it’s time to focus your attention on employee engagement. Develop employee recognition programs that reward people and team members for their successes or contributions. If you’ve not done so already, this is also a great time to consider incorporating artificial intelligence into your workflows and using the technology to empower your people.
You might also consider exploring collaborative sustainability initiatives, as they have the potential to not only promote better teamwork between your people but are also an opportunity to do some good.
Year Five: Look Forward
By the fifth year, everything should be fully in place, including mechanisms that allow you to continuously evaluate and optimize your collaborative practices, processes, and tools. Keep looking for new opportunities to perfect business operations. Explore and evaluate new and emerging technologies as you guide your business’s growth.
Learn More About the Foundation of a Collaborative Culture
Collaboration is the lifeblood of a successful business.
A workplace culture that encourages people to collaborate and innovate represents an immense competitive advantage. And now you’ve got everything you need to build your own roadmap.
Looking to build a strong culture of collaboration? Then you’ll want to look at How to Break Down Communication Silos Through Collaboration.
Need help choosing the right tools to support a culture of collaboration? Get in touch today and we’ll walk you through your options.
