Written by: Dr. Douglas Kong, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
To be successful in the marketplace, a small business must offer outstanding value to its customers. To do this, you need the full cooperation of your workforce. They are your agents in the interface between your business and customers.
This is the basis for engaging your own people. Engaging them, creating a positive working environment, and listening to their feedback to achieve productivity goals are your best bets for increasing the profitability of your business.
The framework for collaboration
Indeed, if you take steps to foster a work culture of collaboration, you can achieve all the above and more. A collaborative culture involves communication, trust, respect, and a willingness to work together.
Such an environment fosters individuals and teams coming together to achieve common goals, share ideas, build on each other's strengths, and solve complex problems.
As a business owner, you can initiate and promote such a culture by embodying values that encourage such a culture. In the process, you can align your management team and all other team leaders to facilitate this.
The result will be that collaboration becomes part and parcel of the work processes being done daily by your employees, who will approach their work with similar attitudes as well.
Tools for collaboration
Modern technology has been great at facilitating collaboration and teamwork. All of us have experienced the use of apps to facilitate communication, accessibility, employee engagement, and cooperative work. These technologies alone can help businesses to negotiate and shape objectives, provide feedback and institute instant changes wherever there is a need to.
Nowadays, AI technology can do even more. From note-taking, transcribing minutes, keeping track of schedules, and datelines, giving reminders, updates, and so on to more powerful functions. AI technology can take collaboration further with its computational power and data analysis. With all these tools, not to collaborate is doing yourself a disservice.
The changes you can see most in having a culture of collaboration are best seen in relationships that matter most to your business. Your employees interface with customers of your business.
Your employees, engaged as they are by you and your management team genuinely, have a sense of pride and loyalty to your business that values them and their contribution. They proudly represent the company as they interact with the customers presenting the best of their company and giving the customers an experience of your products/service that makes the customers loyal customers as well. This fabulous customer experience was reported on your website and social media and attracted rave reviews, recommendations, and endorsements.
Besides creating great customer experiences, your engaged employees also take initiative in suggesting modifications and improvements to your products/services and together with customers' feedback may even come up with totally new products/services that will wow customers more because that is what customers wanted.
Effect of collaboration on supply chains
With vendors/vendors in the supply chains, coupled with clear objectives and goals and aided by tools and technology such as digitalization and AI, the collaborative attitudes of your employees shine through in greater efficiency and productivity. The collaborative attitudes of your people help your business to have good relationships and strong ties with your supply chain. This greater collaboration leads to reduced inventory cost, and flexible and responsive supplies to the ebb and flow of business needs which translate to lower overall cost as goals and objectives are frequently on target. Just-in-Time(JIT) delivery and other supply chain innovation becomes possible and reduce your cost even more.
With your management and work team leaders engaging your people to encourage a culture of collaboration, your business becomes employee-centered and by extension, customer-centric as well. In communication with both employees and customers, team leaders seek the feedback of employees who in turn seek the feedback of customers, and in collaboration with them seek to improve products/ services so that employees work with you and each other to cooperatively solve problems, bottlenecks, and dissatisfaction. Continuous feedback will lead to improvement in products/services and lead to suggestions for variations as well as new innovative directions.
Facilitating collaborative conversations
Furthermore, the conversations your leaders have with employees will not be an authoritarian one where leaders are assumed to know everything and are there to give direction, instruction, and knowledge about how things are and should be done. This top-down communication style is replaced by a more democratic communication pattern.
Leaders in your organization will be trained to ask employees questions so that they are encouraged and guided to think independently for themselves to come up with ideas and solutions.
Given this kind of mindset in your organization, the quality of your product/service will truly stand out from the competition, and given such a collaborative attitude all around, your productivity and profitability will certainly reach new heights.
Is there a better alternative to collaboration?
In a survey of the workplace in 2023 and reported by Gallup, ¹ it was found that only 23% of the world’s workforce were engaged and thriving at work. These engaged employees thrive at work, find their work meaningful and rewarding, and “feel connected to the team and their organization. They feel proud of the work they do and take ownership of their performance, going the extra mile for teammates and customers.”
In contrast, the 77% of the workforce that doesn't feel engaged costs the global economy US$8.8 trillion in lost productivity. This sum accounts for 9% of global GDP.
It is obvious that engaging your employees is the key to customer engagement, and if your employees can be empowered to be cooperative, actively pursuing a policy of collaboration in your business will provide your business with productivity gains that will certainly enhance the profitability of your business.
Furthermore, when your employees are empowered to take the initiative to improve the quality of what your business offers to customers, they will come up with creative and innovative revisions to your product/service that will place what you offer the leading among the competition. That will make your business the leader of the pack in your niche.
Examples of collaborative cultures
If you are to Google the companies that embrace collaboration and employee engagements, you will find lists of mostly international businesses that do so. Similarly, if you are to businesses that adopt such enlightened practices in your own country, you will find them as well.
For myself, over the years, I have spoken to business owners who have done well and excelled. I have identified some businesses whose owners have adopted such a culture in their workplace. And I have cited them in my books, articles like this one, and spoken of them in my podcasts.
I can think of a construction company that has a humane attitude towards their employees such that employees feel safe and cared for. ² Their productivity was a benchmark for the competition and they were the leading company in the industry.
Another was a pest control company that was leading with innovative work practices and a values-based work culture where employees were supported to function at their best. No wonder they were the leading pest control company.
A third was a graphics production company that specialized in ads displayed in public places such as in transport systems, and external facades. I have seen the company in action and the kind of interaction between management and staff was friendly and cordial, although when the situation demanded it, they changed swiftly to execution mode. No wonder they were able to innovate in their production techniques such that even their underwater productions were one of a kind, which they could only implement.
Implementing a collaborative culture
Given the advantages of a culture of collaboration and employee engagement, how do you then implement it in your business?
The first thing to do is to change your attitude toward the people who work for you. They are not an expense; they are your partners, and they represent you in bringing your products/services to the marketplace.
Hence you have to engage in conversations with them about your businesses and how to reach your customers. Listen to their feedback, and their complaints, and remedy it collaboratively.
Listen to their suggestions, and if they are workable, collaboratively implement them. Encourage cooperation and teamwork and break down organizational barriers that cause silos to persist in your business organization.
To truly implement a culture of collaboration, you need a plan to do so. You may need to evaluate your business vision, mission, objectives, and values, then align them with the collaborative culture you wish to implement.
You may wish to work with professionals such as coaches and/or consultants who can give objective and impartial advice as well as provide you with a sounding board to effectively make it happen and not be derailed by personal or political issues.
I have prepared an infographic on the steps you need to take to attain that collaborative work culture in your workplace. Contact me here for a free copy of the infographic.
If you have taken the step to build a culture of collaboration in your business, my best wishes to you, and hope that you will reap the benefits of a collaborative culture in your business in the coming years.
Dr. Douglas Kong, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr. Douglas Kong is a Business and Performance coach. His mission is to help entrepreneurs, small business owners, CEOs, executives, and professionals to be resilient and function optimally, achieving optimal business growth by achieving profitability and scaling therefrom. He is a Certified Executive Coach and a Certified Master Life Coach. His background is that of a consultant psychiatrist and specialist in stress management, psychological trauma, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and has completed non-graduating courses on MBA topics in business management and leadership. He is a best-selling author and has written books on personal self-help and 2 books on business growth and scaling.
References:
[1] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx
[2] Cited in my book: How to Grow Your Business and Double Its Value in 2 Years, chapter 5, “Co-create Customer Value”.
