Organizational structure and digital tools for collaborative success

Collaboration is a mighty buzzword in the business world right now. Have you seen it on resumes lately? Heard it from vendors or customers? Do investors talk about creating a collaborative relationship?

That’s because success follows in the footsteps of good collaboration. When your teams and partners have the same ideas and commit their resources towards a common goal, business works better. Here are two ways we think you can improve collaboration within your business through the design of your organization, and through the use of technology.

1-- Design your organization to collaborate well.

Have you heard of the Silo Effect? This is the opposite of what you want for your business, and yet we constantly see organizational structures that create and reinforce imaginary walls, which leads to this problem. Departmental 'silos' crush attempts at collaboration. Start by creating an executive vision that is unified. Are the people at the top of your organization all acting with the same vision? Does this unified vision trickle down? Execute and implement your common goal through motivation and incentives.

For example, one company that has made this part of the culture is Facebook. They have a hierarchy-free orientation, frequently rotate jobs, and set up “hackathons” to foster cooperation among project groups. What works best for your company will depend on what motivates your employees.

2-- Use technology to foster collaboration.

Collaboration is fundamentally a human-centric activity, but you can find the right technology to help aid this process by implementing digital collaboration tools. Tech tools can help by supporting the following initiatives:

• Improve transparency by sharing information with everyone by default

• Create a successful collaborative culture with leadership at the head

• Provide features that enable teamwork between people and projects such as activity streams, rich user profiles, and improved searching

• Allow anyone in the business to participate

• Give the creators of the content the credit deserved for their knowledge and work

Companies are still taking the time to understand and appreciate enterprise social networks. When staff is supported with a solid organization structure to encourage collaboration, you can make this buzzword a successful implementation at your place of business.

If you need the tech support to make this happen, please don't hesitate to get in touch!