Making an organization more collaborative shouldn't involve more meetings or a new open floor plan. It should involve new alliances, the right incentives and an eagerness to talk about mistakes.
Lisa Bodell, founder and CEO of futurethink, an innovation research and training firm, identified 11 guidelines that can help senior leaders create more collaborative organizations in a post for strategy+business, the company blog for Strategy&.
1. Find employees with new perspectives and ensure they're included. Employees who aren't the "usual suspects" to problem-solving can contribute sweeping ideas when included in the process. Southwest Airlines is one example of this. The airline gathered workers from all operations for a cross-discipline brainstorming session. Over six months, those employees met for 10 hours each week to identify the most influential changes that could be made to operations. Of the 100 ideas generated, three led to broad, operational changes.
2. Find a way to bridge gaps in geography or department. When BMW begins development for a new car, team members engineering, marketing and sales meet at the company's central research and innovation hub. Close proximity prompts more face-to-face communication and can stimulate impromptu brainstorming sessions.
3. Designate a "connector." Name someone in the organization as the official connector. This person will actively monitor innovation activities across departments and connect people whose experience matches a project need.
4. Devote budgets to collaborative projects. When employees see senior management assign funds for innovative work, they will know collaboration is a serious priority.
5. Implement a user-friendly collaboration platform. Remove one roadblock to innovation by giving employees the tools to securely communicate, share files and track their progress across departments and locations.
6. Create peer mentorship programs. These mentors should act as one another's go-to people for idea generation, advice and resources. Employees in these pairs can work in different parts of the organization and hold different titles. Intel matches people based on their specific skills instead of their titles or years of service, for instance, so it's not uncommon to find a veteran executive assistant mentoring a newly promoted manager.
7. Reward people for not doing things. The goal here is to work smarter, not harder. Reward employees for reducing unnecessary processes, reports or paperwork. One bank implemented an organization-wide "Kill a Stupid Rule" policy, through which employees could earn $50 gift cards for identifying superfluous rules and proposing more customer-friendly solutions.
8. Create quarterly "learning lists." Make a list of evident mistakes and lessons learned after every project, then share that list across the organization each quarter to ensure those errors aren't made again.
9. Communicate breakthroughs. Highlight collaborative projects through the intranet, newsletters and various other internal channels to motivate employees.
10. Create a physical area for people to gather. A common space in the office can encourage employees from various roles and functions to interact.
11. Hire people with proven ability to collaborate. Do you need more employees with interpersonal skills? More negotiators? Make a list of skills and qualities needed in the organization, then pursue and hire people who demonstrate them. Related to this, certain interview questions can also help identify candidates who are innovators.