To thrive in today’s accelerated business environment, leaders must realize that collaborative settings are vital for success. It is important to build workplaces where everyone gets the opportunity to chime in and play an equal role in discussions that benefit the business.
When people with diverse skills and abilities come together to achieve mutual and individual goals, good things happen. This is made evident by organizations that report a 30% rise in productivity after encouraging collaboration in the workplace. Additionally, as many as 70% of employees believe it is a significant determinant of their work experience.
Given the precarious economic situation of many industries, now would be a great time for businesses to optimize their work environment to reap the benefits of improved innovation and collaboration.
Here are a few reasons why it is imperative to promote collaboration for modern organizations:
Increases Motivation
Having cross-functional, collaborative meetings can speed up the brainstorming process and inject creativity, fun, and energy into the decision-making process. Working and collaborating on the same idea can keep employees motivated and lead to a more dynamic interaction between colleagues. It can help them learn, develop and grow together as a team.
Increases Transparency
Collaboration makes it easy for teams and employees to discuss company goals and challenges that can help drive better decisions. Keeping the staff in-loop for major decisions helps them feel valued and inspires loyalty and productivity.
Various collaboration tools can bring people together even if some of them are in attendance from their homes or remote sites. A digital whiteboard is one popular tool used by small and large businesses alike, that provide transparent and engaging collaborative experience for employees, whether in the office or remotely.
Collaboration Improves Individual Learning
Cross-departmental or cross-team collaborations can be eye-openers. They help everyone understand what the other brings to the table and how collective strategies can achieve unified business goals.
Collaboration involves everyone in the team coming together to share their ideas. This does not just benefit the entire team but also improves individual learning.
Sure, it’s possible to search for solutions on the internet instead of bringing in new ideas from within an organization. But those internet ideas may not be tailored to the organization’s exacting needs. Getting insights from within an organization is a surefire way to ensure that most of the suggestions will be made, keeping the business restraints and resources in mind.
It Helps You Get Out Of Your Thinking Loop
When working on an idea for a long time, it is natural to get stuck in a rut and experience a creative block. Take a new approach to the problem by getting input from others with a unique outlook.
In fact, it is advisable to collaborate with people with different skills. Their feedback and opinions can bring in refreshing new perspectives that add an extra layer of diversity and creativity to the brainstorming sessions.
For example, collaborating with someone with an engineering background offers innovative ideas about implementing software. On the other hand, collaborating with someone from the business world can provide valuable insights into organizational management.
Valuing unique opinions along with existing ideas is key to innovation.
Speeds Up Necessary Iterations
When working on a project alone, an employee might have many disjointed concepts with absolutely no idea how to bring them all together. However, collaboration allows them to share all these concepts with others so everyone can play a role in piecing them together, resulting in high innovation.
Additionally, having people with similar mindsets can validate opinions and remove all doubts a senior may have about a particular technique or process. These like-minded people can align their ideas with each other, resulting in quick decision-making and time-saving.
To Conclude
Establishing a collaborative culture where all employees are encouraged to share and discuss their ideas is likely to set apart successful businesses. It’s only natural for people to have those lightbulb moments; a collaborative environment ensures that they have somewhere to share those great ideas.
Organizations must lend an ear to their brightest, but often the quietest, employees by encouraging everyone to take their turn to speak.
Just like innovation is the key to creativity, convergent thinking is the obstacle blocking creative ideas. An innovative environment can enhance creativity and help explore new avenues for businesses, and tools like Miro certainly play an important role.