{"id":9725,"date":"2014-11-02T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/creator\/?p=9725"},"modified":"2020-03-30T18:59:35","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T22:59:35","slug":"4-habits-team-adopt-collaborative-workspace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/professional-development\/4-habits-team-adopt-collaborative-workspace","title":{"rendered":"Four habits your team should adopt to build a collaborative workspace"},"content":{"rendered":"

These days, collaboration is everywhere and anywhere. And that\u2019s a great thing. Especially when you know that companies could gain $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in annual value if they improved their communication and collaboration skills (according to a McKinsey study).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to want a collaborative environment, but it\u2019s harder to actually make it work in the long term. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve put together four easy steps you could take today to start walking in the right direction. Here they are:<\/p>\n

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1. Create the right opportunities for conversations and collaboration in your team<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

Collaboration is nothing more than conversations between people to reach a common goal. This means that if you want people to collaborate more in your company, you need to create opportunities for them to meet and exchange, in both a formal and informal manner.<\/p>\n

Setting a time and place for people to talk and share ideas, like team lunches or casual events, is a good way to make sure that your employees are actually communicating with each other. The end goal here is for people to learn from each other and feel comfortable reaching out to anyone around them with ideas, questions, and comments.<\/p>\n

During these conversations, people from different teams might realize that they could help each other out in ways they wouldn\u2019t have thought otherwise, improving productivity, creativity, and motivation throughout your teams.<\/p>\n

The team at\u00a0Evernote<\/a>\u00a0actually pushed this concept even further. They have their entire top management team take turns at the office\u2019s coffee shop making drinks for everyone. The weekly schedule is shared so that everyone can have a chance of catching up with any top management over a drink.<\/p>\n

\n

2. Make information available to everyone, everywhere<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

According to a study by Socialtext<\/a>, employees spend up to 25 percent of their day looking for information. This means that you\u2019re probably wasting 25 percent of your staff cost just because you\u2019re not making it easy enough for your teams to find what they\u2019re looking for, when they\u2019re looking for it.<\/p>\n

Making information available to anyone is all about using the right tools or the right processes. Companies like Buffer<\/a> and Stripe<\/a>, for example, resort to fully transparent emails to make sure that everyone in their teams has the ability to stay in the loop if they want to. And all information is just a search away. Here at Front<\/a>, our own app obviously lets us track down information and share it while working together in the same inbox.<\/p>\n

Other apps like\u00a0Trello<\/a>,\u00a0Asana<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Slack<\/a>\u00a0(amongst others) are great ways to relay important messages, give visibility to your team on different subjects, and get different streams of information available to anyone without cluttering their inboxes.<\/p>\n

\n

3. Push your employees to work outside of their job description<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

Just like having lunch and coffee together can push people to exchange on the things they\u2019re working on in an informal manner, actually encouraging people from different teams to work together outside of their job descriptions can be really beneficial to them, the team, and your company.<\/p>\n

This means getting people from your customer support team to sit down on product meetings to give new insights. Or have your sales team give feedback on the new design you\u2019re releasing. Or maybe even ask your engineers sit down with your marketing team to see if they couldn\u2019t work on an interesting plug-in for acquisition.<\/p>\n

Bringing different people outside of their usual context to work on projects that aren\u2019t usually in their reach will definitely spark creativity and push innovation and collaboration forward.<\/p>\n

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4. Don\u2019t go too fast, too strong<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

Collaboration is a tricky matter. In most cases, you need to have your entire team on board with you to make it work. And it means that you need to convince each and every one of your team members to adopt whatever new habit you\u2019re trying to implement by showing them what\u2019s in it for them. If you try to make too many changes to your normal workflow too quickly, there\u2019s a big risk people won\u2019t be able to follow.<\/p>\n

To do this, it might be a good idea to sit down with your team and work out together the best ways to integrate collaboration habits in your workflow, what kind of information they feel like they\u2019re missing, and what\u2019s the best way to give them access to new tools or new processes.<\/p>\n

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Wrapping up<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

In the end, adopting collaboration habits in your daily workflow is more than just about saving money. It\u2019s about improving productivity, innovation, and motivation<\/b>\u00a0in your team. It\u2019s about getting work done. And it\u2019s about getting it done in the best possible way.<\/p>\n

Like Henry Ford used to say, \u201ccoming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and\u00a0working together is success.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are the steps you\u2019re taking towards a more collaborative workplace? Let us know in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These days, collaboration is everywhere and anywhere. And that\u2019s a great thing. Especially when you know that companies could gain $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in annual value if they improved their communication and collaboration skills (according to a McKinsey study). 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