Start to think about collaboration in business and people start to talk about the Internet, Intranets and mobile communications. These are of course vital elements of how to ensure work happens in a collaborative environment but Robert Whiteside, head of enterprise for Google in Benelux and the UK, has done some research with the Future Foundation that suggests it’s not just technical. He offers a number of tips.
1. Technology
By all means adopt collaborative technology. Allowing and encouraging people to work together on documents simultaneously will change the way in which they perform and should make them more productive. There are ways of making this sort of technology seem desirable.
2. Technology evangelists
The computer industry has been provoking giggles by claiming it has “evangelists” for longer than most people can remember, but it’s not a bad description. The original evangelists were people from within a community who believed they’d seen some sort of light, and wanted to spread the word. They were advocates of a particular creed; to get enthusiasm for new technology and methods it’s a good idea to find someone who’s on everyone else’s level and is keen, so the impetus doesn’t just work from the top down.
3. Consider ideas from all staff
This is one of those ideas that should sound archaic because nobody admits to having any sort of heirarchy in their workplace any more, particularly if they are the boss. But it’s still around. If you can empower (an overused word) the staff to pool their ideas then everyone gets creative and the benefits should be considerable. This doesn’t just mean directors – it means graduates, interns, receptionists – you might be employing a lot of talent you didn’t know about. This is a matter of cultural shift as well as just asking people to put ideas in.
4. Recognition of the individual
The team is vital but someone who has performed extraordinarily well deserves recognition too. One of the best corporate gigs I’ve ever been to – and as a journalist I get invited to plenty – was a gig with one of my favourite singers. The performance was great but one of the most memorable parts was finding out that among the guests was the host company’s warehouse manager – his own managers had heard him wishing he could go, and thought: why not? He will have become an extremely hard working and motivated man as a result.
5. Rewards processes
Not every business can afford a corporate sponsored rock gig, of course. But allowing people time to work on a favourite charity, building in time to pursue other projects, might enthuse some people. Pret a Manger a few years ago was reported as paying for one of its members of staff to attend teacher training college. She left to become a teacher as it was her real vocation but understandably, she became a massive advocate of Pret as an excellent employer.
6. Encourage staff networking
These days everybody is getting connected, whether through Twitter or LinkedIn or in person. Google research suggests that one in five employees thinks that innovation comes from companies working together rather than competing. If this bears fruit it means that encouraging people to move about within their field and find out what people from other businesses are thinking and doing will be better for every business, all around. It’s a paradigm shift from the way most companies have worked until now but it appears to work.
7. Tell everyone about your collaborative technology
This means externally as well as internally, the idea being to encourage competitors to invest in decent systems as well as you. This has to do with recruitment as well as showing off; Google’s figures suggest that 68% of people believe that in future the right technology and systems will be vital in persuading the brightest employees to come and work for a company.
8. Structures and processes
Do you have an open door policy so any member of staff can come and talk to you about an idea – and having made that clear do you think it’s enough? OK, so would you now be surprised to hear that only 15% of the staff Google surveyed thought their internal systems for sharing and disseminating ideas were good enough?
This is a tiny figure and it doesn’t get any easier as a business grows. When there are 20 of you, you might find a good per centage of them bump into you by the coffee machine and share their thoughts. This is less easy when there are 40 and by the time there are a couple of hundred you won’t know all their names. Getting a system in place, technological or otherwise, for sharing ideas right at the outset when there’s a handful of you is much easier than changing a whole company culture later.
9. Accept contributions from outside the organisation
Dell is the past master at getting input from its customers and acting on it with its IdeaStorm initiative, in which it asked customers what they wanted. It doesn’t have to be as formal as that. If your company is on Twitter or Facebook there’s a good chance your customers will want to engage. The Penderyn distillery in Wales, for example, makes the only Welsh single malt whisky and wanted to know what its customers would think if it spelled whisky the Welsh way on its bottles. The customers opted for the more familiar Scottish spelling (since you ask: whisky is Scots, whiskey is Irish and often American, and wysgi is the seldom-used Welsh). A small point perhaps but the customers felt involved.
10. Be prepared for structural change
If your existing collaborative structures aren’t delivering enough, you may find you need to get rid of them. The balance between personnel/HR and IT might change as the one becomes increasingly dependent on the other. It can be a substantial change and it will need managing, but it should, if handled well, yield substantial rewards.
My thanks to Google for the research and ideas that formed the basis of this article.
Guy Clapperton
