Collaboration with Control
By Alice LaPlante
No organization is an island. To be sufficiently agile and survive in today's fiercely competitive markets, you must work closely with partners, suppliers and customers. Not only will collaboration result in significant cost savings and process efficiencies; it will allow you to boost customer service and create a significant competitive edge.
"Effectively running a business today involves working with multiple organizations and with multiple departments within those organizations," says Nari Viswanathan, research director, supply chain and logistics, at the Aberdeen Group, in Boston, Mass. "That can only happen if traditional silos are broken down."
Yet wholesale collaboration can be too much of a good thing. Without proper organizational, you risk losing focus or slowing progress on strategic objectives in an attempt to satisfy too many demands. Without proper technological controls, you're in danger of giving away proprietary information.
How can you maintain a happy medium when collaborating? Here are four best practices that enable you to work closely with others without losing sight of your own goals:
Get buy-in from the very top of all relevant organizations Directives to work with others must be mandated by leaders at all organizational levels or effective collaboration simply won't happen. This doesn't just mean executives in the C-suites of all separate businesses involved, but the senior managers within each functional department of each business. At the same time, guidelines and rules for keeping out the "noise" of requests or suggestions from partners and customers must be set and communicated throughout the enterprise to avoid employees being distracted by conflicting demands. (article continues)
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