U is for Users
Posted on 03. Jun, 2010 by Laurika in A-Z Collaboration
Collaboration cannot happen without users. That’s pretty obvious right? People need to get together to collaborate, either online or in person. More than that, people need to have a similar goal in mind for the whole thing to work.
Users are finicky creatures. We’ve all heard about the statistic that says only about 1% of people visiting a site or a blog leave a comment. Now, how do you get people involved? How do you get them to collaborate if they can’t even be bothered to comment?
Rewards
In business everything comes down to reward. No not loyalty Mr or Ms Manager. It’s reward. Be it monetary or in the form of praise. It is the rare person today that does something for nothing.
So for your company to have a successful collaboration strategy it has to involve rewards. These don’t have to be huge or even time consuming things. It can be something small such as a mention in the next staff meeting that Jonathan really did a great job getting everyone involved in a specific project.
Follow the leader
Collaboration can only work if the people at the top lead by example. A manger that doesn’t collaborate really can’t expect it from team members. Collaboration is also more likely to succeed when an organization moulds it to fit its culture. It is not useful to expect employees to change their way of working overnight. Culture change takes time and patience.
Collaboration for me can be summed up in the following quote by William Golding from Lord of the Flies:
“Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure…”
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