It has become increasingly difficult to overcome many collaboration problems that companies face both in vertical and horizontal structure within their hierarchy. This is due to the changing times and work structures of the world today, technology and overall capacities of working individuals who need to be more and more multi-faceted and prone to adopting new skills quickly and effortlessly.
Collaboration problems, or collaboration to say, stands at the very operational base and is essential for success. Once these issues are resolved, the result can lead to achieving much more and in less time and resources than expected. The bottom line is that the company can focus more on its development and its employees are less stressed, becoming more productive, positive and more motivated. This is why collaboration problems are usually a neglected core of burnout issues, delays, mistakes and an overall non-productive working environment.
Teamwork at the base of collaboration within a company
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie
It is said that the results in anything we do can only be achieved if everyone is looking in the same direction. But there are certainly some obstacles that can hinder the capacity of each individual team member, as well as teams in correlation to management, to actually even be aware which direction that is or what his or her role is this in the global company or project scheme of activities.
Here are the 3 major collaboration problems that prevent companies to achieve maximum results.
1. Setting up a perfect company collaboration team
The main formula for team management is called PAEI. It is the element of The Adizes Methodology – a set of practices and procedures for optimizing organizational function. According to this system, effectiveness is defined as “obtaining results which somebody needs”, and efficiency is defined as “conducting activities with minimal waste”. Companies can sometimes obtain quick results, but at a great cost, and by exhausting collaboration capacities of your team to the maximum, leaving them exhausted in the long term. Companies should conserve resources and work efficiently. Adizes describes four main collaborative roles: Producing, Administrating, Entrepreneuring and Integrating. No team member is extremely talented in all four styles at once. Most people will have a dominant style, a second strong style, a third competent style and a final weak style. We can attain ‘foursquare’ excellence only by teaming up with other people whose talents and preferences are different from ours. This creates synergy.
It is essential for companies to understand their team and the requirements of the project at hand. Assigning roles and specific tasks cuts down both time needed for completion of the project as well as frustration level of individual and entire teams.
2. Technology issues and lack of resources
Nothing can slow down production and effectiveness like the lack of adequate technology and resources needed to complete projects quickly and stress-free. Bugs, break-downs, missing material, wrong input, and the time required for research, or put into analysis instead of production makes any collaboration task simply impossible.
Small issues such as forgetting to hit reply all, rename a campaign, submit or attach a file, check spam, spell-check, proofread all and more can become a stress point which creates a negative and non-productive working environment.
This is exactly why companies turn to collaboration tools more and more, and make sure the workflow is easy to follow and information, vital or small never get misplaced or forgotten.
3. Creating a constructive and collaborative working environment
A key difference between companies today and the structures that used to function before is the huge shift of the very definition of the team structure today. Within a modern company today, there are not only full-time or part-time employees, but more and more those engaged with teams and collaborating as freelancers, on a contract or interim basis.
“People move around jobs far more frequently than in the past, and teams are created and disbanded for individual projects and shorter periods of time.”
This is why collaboration methods need to be clear, concise, and standards introduced and executed in every aspect and at all times. Maybe team members jump in and out of a project. Maybe all team members don’t even get to meet each other, but they need to be able to see and follow each others’ work process and results and act accordingly at all times.
If you’re looking for an online tool for collaboration, you can try CollaboraZon and get a free trial period. It is a single solution to help teams collaborate and be productive, thanks to simple and easy-to-use interface with powerful features like sharing files, giving feedback, exchanging messages, creating events and more.