Unleashing Collaborative Power

The best kept secret in every organization is the latent power of collaboration. It is aching to come out. But somehow our historical approach running our organizations has kept this power in check. It is a real blind-spot. Generating greater productivity in the face of less human, material, or financial resources may be daunting. But the solution is simple. The key leverage point is unleashing this power of collaboration. This latent power is already available within people and has been used from time to time. People remember those more collaborative times fondly because they are so rare. No one can really say why they happen or how to replicate them. They only say that they should happen and then hope they do. But this is a reality that is easy to change with the right tools for developing collaborative skills.

Collaboration starts with each individual and then expands to the team level quite rapidly once it is unleashed. Overtime with a critical mass of this power unleashed, qn entire organization can make a quantum leap in performance. In a collaborative environment people get stronger. They feel safe to expose the full value of what they were originally hired to bring. They work together to turn problems into projects. There is camaraderie. People have each others back. There is creativity. People are willing to think “outside the box” of the historical ways of doing things. There is compassion. People are more understanding of each others situation but also intolerant of their bringing anything less that their best. There is also a real sense of contribution. People compete for advancement and opportunities to make a bigger difference but they do it in a way that ensures that the best person for the job gets their shot.

If this sounds too good to be true is is not. If it sounds impossible, it is not. It only requires a simple paradigm shift in how people communicate with each other.

When the power of collaboration has been unleashed, significant changes can occur at all levels of an organization. But first let’s look at how challenging this can be: