Collaboration is not Communication

Organizations that limit their ambition to employee communication miss the transformative nature of new collaboration patterns. An enterprise collaboration solution offers the opportunity for new two-way conversations with employees. Moving an organization from broadcast communication to two-way conversations with employees is an important change in the way employee communications occur. Don’t stop there.

Collaboration in your organization is about creating new ways of working together. In a complex and rapidly changing world, more work than ever is knowledge work and more work depends on the inputs and participation of others.  The priority is on learning together in many organizations. Collaboration is more than

Collaboration is more than a communication layer over the existing patterns of work. As shared work, collaboration is different to chats and to conversations. Collaboration involves people coming together to connect, to share, to solve and to innovate in new ways and to more effectively fulfill the organization’s purpose and employee’s personal purposes. Remember your organization creates no value talking internally. The value creation occurs when you come together to work to create value for your customers and other stakeholders outside.

Organizations need to investment in community management to help realize the strategic value of these new ways of working. Community management, whether by community managers, champions or leaders, is not just about facilitating a neat two-way conversation.  Community managers must play the roles of shaping the work, building community around key strategic priorities and creating the freedom to experiment, to change and to learn. Community management enables the transformational nature of collaboration platforms.

The demands on a modern organization mean that all organizations are looking for better effectiveness, improved customer experiences, more innovation and greater responsiveness. Two-way conversations with employees are important in this journey but more critical is enabling employees to lead change in the way they work every day. Collaboration enables the most effective, the fastest and the most innovative to lead change from every employee supported by the full capabilities of the organization.