10 Lessons on Collaboration to Expedite Your Business Success

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10 Lessons on Collaboration to Expedite Your Business Success 

By Martin Zwilling | Inc Magazine | June 17, 2024

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Any business founder with a vision can postulate a new business, but it takes the collaboration of many people to make it a success. Today the complexity of forces required for success include multidisciplinary skills, competencies, and experiences in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Business owners who embrace the lone-genius approach usually live to regret it.

While borrowing from the classic book The Collaboration Imperative, by Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese, which makes the case very well for why collaboration matters in every business, as well as startups, every business owner should heed the following lessons on collaboration:

1. Consensus is the enemy of collaboration. Collaboration leaves everyone with a feeling of “win-win,” while consensus is “win-lose” or even “lose-lose.” Collaboration opens more possibilities, while consensus narrows them to a compromise.
2. Collaboration has to start at the top. Company culture is not set by words but by the actions of the founder. That means treating everyone with respect and providing regular constructive feedback. Trust is required for every successful collaboration.
3. The biggest barriers to collaboration are not technical. They are cultural and organizational in nature. Business executives need to first build a culture and processes with communication and shared goals, rather than internal competition and bureaucracy.
4. Collaboration cannot be deployed — it must be embraced. Executives and managers must be willing participants, modeling collaborative behavior and embracing the technology tools, not just taskmasters. All team members must be committed. 
5. Good ideas come from anywhere, so the more voices the better. These are critical in arriving at a clear idea of what is important, exploring what is possible based on constraints, and coordinating effective actions to produce successful outcomes. 
6. Collaboration enhances personal communication skills. As team members interact and play to their strengths, they learn to be authentic and genuine, which increases their effectiveness as well as their skills. They reach agreement faster and communicate more.
7. You get out of collaboration what you put in. According to a global study of business conducted by Frost & Sullivan, the return on a collaboration investment progressively improves as better tools are deployed and a collaborative culture takes shape.
8. Collaboration success means changing both roles and rewards. This means creating processes that allow more perspectives, but make it clear who has decision-making rights. It’s essential to provide incentives to change ingrained behavior.
9. More interaction opens opportunities to create more value. Within any given new business environment (market, industry structure, competitors, product/service mix, etc.), opportunities exist that are often missed unless everyone is listening and communicating. 
10. The average return on collaboration is four times the initial investment. From the study referenced, measured gains ranged from three to six times. This ROI comes from cost avoidance, cost reductions, business optimization, and faster business decisions.

2 key takeaways from the article

1. Any business founder with a vision can postulate a new business, but it takes the collaboration of many people to make it a success. Today the complexity of forces required for success include multidisciplinary skills, competencies, and experiences in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Business owners who embrace the lone-genius approach usually live to regret it.
2. The classic book The Collaboration Imperative, by Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese, makes the case very well for why collaboration matters in every business, as well as startups:  consensus is the enemy of collaboration, collaboration has to start at the top, the biggest barriers to collaboration are cultural and organizational, good ideas come from anywhere, so the more voices the better, collaboration enhances personal communication skills, you get out of collaboration what you put in, collaboration success means changing both roles and rewards, more interaction opens opportunities to create more value, and the average return on collaboration is four times the initial investment.

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Topics:  Entrepreneurship, Startups, Collaboration, Culture, Innovation, Skills