I find myself asking this question all the time when I talk with customers. Almost any executive or manager you could find will tell you they want their teams to collaborate more. However, how do you “make” it happen? I think a combination of the following factors needs to be in place:
1. Incentives – Bake some kind of MBO (management by objective) or goal into employee’s compensation plans for collaboration. The trick is to make it quantifiable. I’ve seen measures like number of new employees Q&A sessions hosted per quarter, number of questions answered in a collaboration tool like GroupSwim, number of knowledge objects (i.e. white papers, FAQs, etc.) contributed, and number of hours spent mentoring other employees. Measuring collaboration isn’t impossible but it isn’t easy and does require forethought and effort.
2. Tools – Provide the right tools for people to collaborate. If employees and teams can work together and share knowledge as they do their work, they will do it happily. Effectively collaborating can even be fun and intrinsicly rewarding. However, if the collaboration tool or process is too unwieldy or takes time out of their daily tasks, knowledge workers won’t do it.
3. Recognition – Recognize collaboration in a couple of ways. First, definitely highlight community members who excel. Giving these folks props not only makes them feel good and more inclined to do more, it shows other members of the community that they too can get recognized if they step up. Second, highlight how the groups’ collaboration efforts have benefited the group, company and/or customers. Tangible examples give people ideas on doing more and helps them understand that collaboration isn’t a waste of time.
Do you think there are other factors to consider? Have you seen collaboration mandated in the past, and if so, what worked and what didn’t? How do you force collaboration?
Tags: change-management, collaboration, incentives, MBO, Strategy
February 28, 2008 at 8:03 pm |
Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams Report (February 29, 2008)
The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams If you are planning a new collaboration strategy, Jason argues that you have to include email in your planning. “Email, whether we like or not, is the lowest common denominator other
June 13, 2008 at 12:18 pm |
[...] Don’t use artificial incentives. Schwag (boy it keeps coming up) and badges work well, but don’t rely on money to incent participation (I’m not sure I totally agree with this one for managers. I think you should link a portion of performance bonuses for managers to encourage them and their employees to participate. I blogged about if you can force collaboration here) [...]