Why Collaboration Is the Answer and Three Steps To Protect It

Collaboration comes down to this: people working together to achieve a common goal. Angela Earl, Vice President of Global Marketing at RFPIO, shares three ways to keep collaboration alive and well in this unsettled time.

Today’s sales and marketing teams have more questions than answers. Though cliché, the business environment we are living in is without equal. The answer to many of the questions being asked may seem elusive but in fact is quite simple: collaborate.

According to global market research firm IDC, IT spending globally is projected to decline by 2.7% as a result of the COVID-19 Opens a new window pandemic, with one exception — companies are increasing spend in ways that improve collaboration.

Collaboration Opens a new window may seem like a simplistic answer, even naive. But a closer look at its meaning reveals the very essence of why it’s so important. According to Oxford, collaboration is, “The action of working with someone to produce or create something.”

Creating together is fundamental to our nature, yet we spend our days alone. I’m not referring to being remote, or spending all day together in meetings. Silos have far less to do with your physical presence; they are a result of a communication breakdown.

Keep these three steps at the forefront of your actions and you can help your team step into tomorrow with confidence, together.

Learn More: Remote Work Is Here to Stay: 3 Ways IT Teams Will Be ImpactedOpens a new window

Find The Right Words

Words matter. In today’s modern business environment, almost anything can be deleted and taken back. The same is not true of words. But choosing the right words can be powerful.

DemandGen’s Kevin Cunningham believes the word alignment is at the core of why sales and marketing teams are still striving and not achieving co-creation.

“While alignment may look great on paper, the reality is that it’s impossible to achieve if sales and marketing operate as two different organizations that exist to plan, orchestrate and optimize two separate processes,” Cunningham says. “Collaboration reinforces the narrative that sales and marketing are profoundly interdependent. In other words, both functions must recognize that they need each other and that a coordinated approach to revenue generation is essential for success.”

Choosing the right words means more than just a shift in how we think about working together. How we work together is also revealed in the words we use.

The word “handoff” is often used to describe the next step in a project. This type of harsh transition prevents those involved from feeling committed to an outcome beyond “their part” in the project. Collaboration, in contrast, describes working Opens a new window together to achieve a common goal, the end result. Team members may own one part, but are constantly seeking input from others to produce the best result.

From setting the mindset to guiding how teams work together, words can make all the difference.

Learn More: The Global Pandemic Is the Litmus Test for an Agile TeamOpens a new window

Bring Everyone Together

Time is finite. We all get the same amount of hours in a day, but how we use that time influences how we feel about the time spent. Productive time together can unite your team and strengthen collaboration.

As recent events have highlighted, technology can bring us together, albeit virtually. This connectedness goes far beyond the Zoom Opens a new window happy hours many of us are using to maintain relationships. Life is happening over video conferencing beyond our work calendars.

But technology can wear us out and the feeling of being “always-on” is leaving many with meeting fatigue like never before.

“Virtual interactions can be extremely hard on the brain.” says Andrew Franklin, an assistant professor at Virginia’s Norfolk State University¹ who thinks people may be surprised at how difficult they’re finding video calls given that the medium seems neatly confined to a small screen and presents few obvious distractions.

For anyone scheduling time with others, this risk of fatigue increases the need to ensure time is used effectively. Even if it’s incremental, if progress is being made, the team will feel good about the time together.

Group video chats can be less collaborative than in-person time, making participants feel drained, while having accomplished little to nothing. Because the change to our communication channels have been so sudden, our brains are easily overwhelmed by the new stimuli and the search for non-verbal cues that it often can’t find.

Giving time together a purpose is critical to maintaining collaboration. Outside of the movie iRobot, technology does not have a purpose of its own. The people involved must set meeting agendas and drive conversations to ensure decisions get made.

Learn More: Top 10 Collaboration Software Tools for Teams in 2020Opens a new window

Lean On Technology

Clarity enables success. Common goals and clear priorities are crucial for collaboration and, ultimately, team success. Without these elements, teams will struggle to make decisions. Progress will stall and deadlines will get missed.

Amid the turbulent business climate, video conferencingOpens a new window companies like ZoomOpens a new window and WebEx are seeing obvious growth. But other companies that improve cloud-based collaboration and project management are also seeing an increase in demand.

RFPIO, for example, which has processed more than $20 billion in RFP transactions through its Request For Proposal (RFP) platform, has seen an 27% increase in user adoption over the last three months.

Due to an increased number of users on its platform, the company believes early indications show that companies have an increasing need to collaborate around RFP response. The company’s Chief Information Officer, AJ Sunder shared, “When the pandemic first hit, there was a brief slowdown. But soon the usage surged as the mindset shifted. Very quickly we hit several new milestones in usage, including a record number of users in a single day as teams realized that tools for collaboration are key to success.”

Software that better equips remote teams is being rapidly adopted. As a consequence of the pandemic, purchasing usually slowed down by bureaucracy is being accelerated to help solve systemic problems and digitize antiquated and cumbersome processes.

As Michael Jordan so eloquently put it, “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” When used properly, technology can provide your team structure and clarity that manual processes can’t match. As priorities coalesce around a common purpose, time gets focused, and results start rolling in.

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¹https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-zoom-fatigue-is-taxing-the-brain-here-is-why-that-happens/