Mike McRitchie helps achievers who are feeling stuck uncover and share their accomplishments. He’s there to help with things like recrafting your resume or LinkedIn profile, a job search, or just finding the secret sauce in your business or career to move it to the next level. Here, he brings you some ideas about why collaboration is necessary for business (like you collaborating with Mike) to maximize everyone’s potential.
Many of today’s businesses have workers dispersed across the country and, in some cases, across the globe. And yet, everyone is more interconnected than ever before. Collaboration on both short-and long-term projects presents different challenges and opportunities but is always critical to a smooth, productive, and effective business project’s outcome.
A study by Stanford University showed that when people collaborated on any given project, they were 64% more effective than if they’d worked individually. It also found that collaboration increased motivation, too.
The Collaborative Toolbox
Some common tools necessary for any kind of business collaboration are:
- Zoom and Slack for communication.
- Dropbox and Google Drive for Cloud Storage,
- Google or Microsoft Calendar for shared calendars
- Wrike and Trello for project management.
- Google Translate for instant translation
The success or failure of a team’s collaborative efforts begins with management. It means an executive-level commitment to having a group that can collaborate sometimes over long distances~members with varied backgrounds and skills~and using that synergy to bring a project together successfully is dependent on the executives at the top. Management that is committed to fostering a culture of team effort.
Building Collaboration
There are five pieces that should make up any team-building exercise. For groups that are all in the same location, it’s easier to set those up. For long distances, a little more creativity will be needed, but think of variations on the local ideas.
- Communication and Problem Solving should be key elements of any team-building exercise. Think Escape Room or other puzzle-solving games.
- Motivation is an important part of a collaboration and nothing sparks motivation more than the chance to win at something. Competitive team sports, like softball or soccer, get everyone outside and out of business attire. It’s also a chance for family members to get to know each other and to cheer them on.
- Creativity is another element to working together successfully. An art class can be a wonderful way for everyone to create their own version of a common theme.
- Trust can be forged in something fun, like paintball or laser tag. You have to know that people on your team will have your back as you go about trying to find or evade the other team.
No matter the activity, having photos to share will mean a lot to everyone involved. You’ll want to post them on multiple platforms, each with its own size requirements. You can resize image online using a template based on the site you’re using. Then simply upload, and voila! You’ve got everyone sharing the fun on their social media sites.
Having the right tools, ensuring everyone understands the essence of the business culture and goals and allowing everyone the freedom to use their own set of skills to contribute to the success of the project means you’ll have not only a successful collaboration but a successful outcome as well.
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