Challenge 4: Are you and other executives encourage collaboration?

Diagnosis

With fast pace of market developments complexity of challenges and speed with which companies need to adjust to changes in customer behaviours and preferences and market changes accelerated. It requires from professionals and organisations collaboration to provide solutions accounting for different aspects of every problem. The speed with which you are able to adjust to market will impact your chance for effectively serving customers and surviving in the long term. That requires that you build a culture in your company in which people with different jobs, knowledge skills work together to exchange points of view, contribute different skills, knowledge and ideas. Only by working together your employees will be able to understand how they can use different resources in your company to achieve its objectives.

Positive aspects	Negative aspects
Are people in your organisation interact with people from other departments/functions?	People from different departments/functions rarely interact or collaborate on projects.
Are people in your organisation exchange information regarding processes, challenges or ideas with colleagues with other departments or functions?	People from different departments or teams have distinct goals that don't align with the broader organizational objectives.
Do managers and/or trainings offered by your company underline importance of collaborating of employees from different functions?	Information and knowledge is not shared between departments, leading to duplication of efforts or missed opportunities.
Do you have projects or activities in your company that allow your employees to exchange points of view, knowledge, ideas and challenges with colleagues from different departments/functions?	Departments compete for resources rather than collaborate.
Are your employees encouraged/have opportunity to participate in events where they can exchange knowledge and build connection with other professionals in their industry?	There's a lack of clear communication channels or platforms for sharing information across teams.
Do your employees have authority to initiate discussions with external partners about collaboration opportunities?	When things go wrong, blame is assigned to the most active person/team rather than focusing on collective problem-solving.
Is collaboration underlined in your strategy as a significant path to reach your company objectives?	Employees are resistant to engage in projects requiring cross-departmental cooperation.
Does your company has a reward strategy that encourages collaboration between teams/functions?	Employees aren't encouraged or given opportunities to learn about other departments or roles.
Does your company has a reward strategy that encourages collaboration with external partners (e.g. other companies, public sector, universities, research organisations, customers)	Projects are managed by single departments/functions and there are no projects involving members across departments.
	Collaboration efforts are not recognized or rewarded, reducing the incentive to work together.
	There is a lack of tools, activities or platforms for sharing documents, updates, and ideas

1. Fill in the table with your initial assessment regarding those aspects in your company.
2. Afterwards, list points that your company is not performing well (missing positive aspects and present negative aspects).
3. Discuss the list with management and employees to identify reasons for it, and verify if their perception of those areas aligns with yours.
4. After you are satisfied that you identified the main weaknesses of your culture in the area of collaboration and their sources, invite your employees for discussion regarding importance of collaboration for the overall company and for defining new practices that will improve collaboration across teams/functions/departments and hierarchical levels.

Actions for implementation

It is critical for creating innovation culture to embed collaboration orientation into DNA of your company. Time and multiple activities will be required to change people’s orientation from competitive to a collaborative one, if this is the case. Start from simple activities that will aim at two objectives highlighting the new focus and benefits of collaboration and showing simple and natural ways to work together on specific issues.

1. Organise workshops focused on collaboration. If your company struggles with lack of collaborative culture, try to organise it as a part of casual event for team building, i.e. company picnic or team-building day. Don’t overcomplicate. The event can take as simple form as breaking eyes over a take-away pizza before you move to the methodological part.
2. Start from clearly communicating high relevance of collaboration with different groups within the company for future of your organisation. Present your vision for collaborative culture you wish to achieve in your SME.
3. Ask each team to identify a problem in their line of work.
4. Mix people from different teams and ask them to work on solutions to one of the identified problems.
5. Then ask each team to present possible solution or if the problem is too complex a proposal what they would need (action plan and required resources – human, knowledge, time etc.) to effectively solve the problem.
6. Involve all participants in providing additional inputs and suggestions.
7. Ask participants to provide feedback regarding how such collaboration above traditional barriers could be beneficial for their work.