What makes collaborating teams tick?
On the surface everyone is a collaborator, and every team is a collaborating team. That is the ‘sell’ in contemporary workplaces. Businesses invest in collaboration as a part of their business strategy for a variety of reasons; improving organisational culture, trust, productivity, competitiveness or even, more imaginatively, to […]
De-risking collaboration
While collaboration has often been praised and promoted as a cure all, endorsing it in this way borders on irresponsible. In business there are no easy, fail-safe ways of finding good business solutions to complex problems, designing winning strategies or delivering results that meet everyone’s expectations. The appeal […]
Reclaiming collaboration
It’s time to wrest the subtle art of collaboration from the jaws of everyday spin. The famous co-founder of once widely popular start-up WeWork claimed that the majority (70%) of those who paid to use the WeWork shared space collaborated. This always seemed like a possibility given that […]
Collaboration: newspeak, a euphemism or a real deal
We’re nearly at the 2-year mark since COVID 19 disrupted our universe. Businesses have learnt many lessons, and many have embraced new strategies such as collaboration, even with competitors. In fact, competitors tend to embrace collaboration with each other more often than is recognised. This is not surprising […]
Joining forces with your fiercest competitor
While not a new idea, competitor collaboration has become one of the central tenets of business strategy. The thinking behind this is twofold; businesses must consider expanding their circle of potential collaborating partners by joining forces with their biggest competitors, and, even if a business remains committed to […]
What to Do When Your Collaboration Textbook Doesn’t Have All the Answers
There is an abundance of excellent advice about the way collaboration can work, both internally and externally, and which can genuinely make a noticeable difference to any enterprise that appreciates the positive impact of collaboration. For the past couple of decades, collaboration has been researched and applied with […]
Why ‘talent walks’ and how workplace collaboration can change that
Unhappy staff leave their employers. The more talented your employee is, the more likely they will migrate to your competition if they are not fully engaged at work. Talent loss is a serious risk to business. Now, there are many strategies that can mitigate that risk. Sometimes they […]
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Start any conversation on business collaboration and pretty soon it will generate a common question; can competitors collaborate. My own consultancy is based on a firm conviction rooted in firsthand experience that the answer is affirmative. Going a step further, competitors soon realise their competitive edge gets blunt […]
Collaboration in the ‘century of complexity’
Listen to this article (5 mins) “I think the next century will be the century of complexity.” That was the response Stephen Hawking gave to a journalist at the dawn of this century in January 2000. One fifth of the century in and we have seen plenty of […]
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COVID 19 has disrupted everything. And, interestingly, one specific thing that has been disturbed is the corrosive cynicism of collaboration as a valuable business strategy. The crisis brought by the global pandemic has led us to rethink the capacity of collaboration as a response to the pervasive nature […]
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One of the biggest clichés in business is that ‘collaboration is a buzzword’. What lies behind this almost mantra-like statement is an uncomfortable truth about collaboration: it is not something that comes with a simple set of rules and it can fail miserably when done half-heartedly. However, we […]
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The notion of collaboration as a competitive business strategy has been around for some time. In some sectors it works better than others, but the overall impact on high performing enterprises that look for every bit of advantage they can add to their competitiveness has been demonstrated many […]
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2018 saw collaboration as a business strategy march towards mainstream practice. The proliferation of new research and material on the subject of collaboration is a clear indication that the value of good collaboration is a major ingredient of a sustainable and resilient business. This latest selection of recommended […]
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The growing need for collaboration is expanding the attitude of smart businesses which recognise one simple fact: collaboration is a strategy that can be crafted to work well. Good business solves problems. Complex problems call for collaboration, which invariably adds value to sustainable business. Undertaking collaboration successfully requires […]
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A few things make a business as competitive as its capacity to remain relevant. That is easy to disregard as many business managers tend to ignore disruptive factors. Relevance in the marketplace can be achieved by many means. Collaboration has emerged as an indispensable strategy to maintaining relevance […]
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There’s no doubt that business savvy managers are increasingly turning to collaboration as an untapped resource. Some start focusing on cost reduction; others go straight to growth. As is the case with most disciplines, so is collaboration coming into the fore in its own right. The mounting evidence […]
Balancing competition and collaboration: one needs the other
In a culture of ‘winner takes all’, collaboration may be for wimps; until competition becomes the dominant practice, that is. However with dominance also comes rot, which manifests in many areas of an enterprise. Of course, this is not case with all organisations, but history tells us it is […]
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One of the staples of the collaboration discipline is its capacity to provide a platform for solving major, large scale and wicked problems. In fact, it’s fair to say that it is precisely these kinds of challenges that originally led global thinkers, business leaders and political decision makers […]
Collaboration makes your brand smarter
I know of organisations which regularly get a bad rap in the marketplace for being poor at collaboration. Actually, I can name a few who actually know they have that standing but are not sure about how to change and improve their track record in collaboration. Being good […]
Collaborating as if it matters
Collaboration is not a discretionary strategy: it is primarily an emergent business sustainability driver. A common habit of many managers is to aim for ‘low hanging fruit’ rather than taking a long term view. Meeting monthly sales budgets is a prerogative that leaves little room for risky and […]
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