Creating Collaboration Takes More Than Technology

Wikis, Web conferencing, and the like won't help people work together if the corporate culture is internally competitive and hierarchical, writes Evan Rosen

By Evan Rosen

Why should any organization adopt collaboration? There's only one reason—value creation. After all, if we're not creating value, what's the point? With a growing consciousness for collaboration, many companies are investing in collaboration tools and technologies. These range from enterprise instant messaging and unified communications, wikis, and enterprise social media to virtual worlds, Web conferencing, and telepresence.

In a typical scenario, the months fly by after the collaboration tools are implemented. As the seasons change, decision-makers anticipate reaping the benefits of collaboration. And perhaps they can even point to successes within particular business units or functions. Often, though, it's the same old story. The company remains for the most part internally competitive, hierarchical, and command-and-control driven. The tools alone have failed to make the company collaborative. Worse yet, the tools may have created no real value, and the decision-makers who had pinned such high hopes on these tools are surprised.

Are the tools the problem? More likely, the problem is the organization. When tools fail to create value, it's usually because decision-makers adopt tools before the company's culture and processes are collaboration-ready. Organizations even adopt tools for the wrong reasons, primarily the belief that tools will create collaboration. Tools merely offer the potential for collaboration. Unlocking the value of tools happens only when an organization fits tools into collaborative culture and processes. If the culture is hierarchical and internally competitive, it will take more than tools to shift the culture. Just because a competitor uses collaborative tools doesn't mean the time is right for your organization to do likewise. If the competitor is apparently deriving value from tools, maybe it's because the competitor's culture is more collaborative and the tools are extending and enhancing the culture.

Here are five ways to create value through collaborative tools and technologies:

• Focus on Culture Before Tools

To create value, tools must fit the culture. If your organization's culture is command and control, the culture must shift to let collaboration happen. The expectation that team members must go through channels or move requests for decisions "up the flagpole" runs contrary to collaboration. Introducing collaborative tools into this type of culture sends mixed messages and breeds confusion. Therefore, senior leaders must first focus on reducing formality throughout the organization, because formality poisons collaboration and diminishes value.

Formality manifests—and can be reduced—in everything from interaction among levels of leadership to the physical workplace environment. The most effective culture shift happens when senior leaders set the stage, so that people at all levels, functions, business units, and regions want to collaborate rather than internally compete. Part of the equation is changing the recognition and reward system to compensate people for collaborative rather than internally competitive behavior.

• Fit Tools into Business Processes

Too often, organizations use collaboration tools just for meetings or project status updates. Getting maximum value from tools requires integrating these technologies into the way the business operates, namely specific functional processes. These range from product design and quality assurance to benefits administration and purchasing. Competitors in the aerospace industry collaborate through a purchasing consortium called Exostar.

Exostar has integrated collaborative tools including shared, secure online workspaces into purchasing processes. The tools are key enablers, but collaboration among competitors is happening because of the collaborative purchasing processes, culture, and desire to reduce purchasing overhead and create value.

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