Culture Of Collaboration

Build a Culture of Collaboration and Innovation will Follow

SMEs can gain a competitive edge by working their employees smarter, not harder, focusing on innovation as well as productivity.

Jasper Westaway, CEO of oneDrum explains how real-time collaboration tools can help foster a more open and flexible approach to work that can make this a reality.

It's a common belief that productivity stems from streamlined processes. I don't disagree. However, productivity without innovation is futile and the best way to drive innovation is to loosen hierarchy and foster conversation across organisations. This year, and for many more to come, collaboration will...

...be the key to gaining that all important competitive advantage; especially in deciding which businesses emerge as winners in these testing economic times.

In the industrial model typified by the bankrupt General Motors, collaboration is broken: both from a cultural point of view and a technical point of view.

Enterprise culture is closed to conversations and working practices that could truly drive innovation. Perhaps understandably, companies would rather not do something that might make them 15% more productive if there is a danger that it might make them 5% less productive. However, when we are default closed, we are closed to success. If you want your business to thrive, become default open: open to failure and to success; if you don't you will fail anyway (like GM, or Lehmans) - it will just take a different form.

At an enterprise level the closed mindset will take time to break. But for SMBs, which are typically more agile, there's an opportunity to adopt an open approach more quickly.

Of course, there are scenarios where we need to manage or control information and conversations. But, typically, these are few and far between: our secrets are worth less than we think. In terms... continued on page two >

 

 

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