Why collaboration is important in strategy

Strategy execution – despite meticulous planning – can fail due to a number of reasons, with misalignment, miscommunication, and a lack of internal buy-in most often noted as contributing to the gap between ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’. The key ingredient for these three issues? Collaboration.

Effective collaboration within an organization has been proven to consistently lead to better outcomes. It encourages productivity among teams, employees are more engaged, and those who regularly collaborate on initiatives are more likely to experience higher job satisfaction – leading to higher buy-in on projects.

So why is collaboration overlooked as a component to consider when planning and executing a strategy? Is it due to its intangible nature? That it’s hard to measure? Or is there an assumption that collaboration will happen naturally?

What does collaboration look like in strategy

Collaboration is more than just working together. It’s about integrating knowledge and experience, and working together to drive the organization forward in order to achieve mutual objectives; to achieve your vision. However, the exact definition of collaboration, specifically good collaboration, can look different for every organization as it depends on objectives and expectations.

There should be a strong focus on three key areas when looking to improve collaboration in your organization:

• Cross-functional alignment: Allowing different departments to contribute their views and experiences to shape planning
• Shared understanding: All stakeholders working towards the same goal, reducing miscommunication
• Iterative optimization: Creating feedback loops that make strategy adaptive and dynamic

Each of these go beyond basic cooperation. Having an initial understanding of what you expect from collaboration can really help with creating awareness of what you’re trying to achieve.

When done effectively, collaborating on a project can bring additional value. This is through following a structured process that enables team members to share ideas, information, needs, expertise, experience, and resources. By encouraging open communication among employees, you create a culture that integrates these elements of collaboration into daily ways of working. In turn, this empowers employees to make more informed decisions that enrich your strategy conversations.

How collaboration improves strategy

There are specific points in strategy planning and execution where collaboration is essential. Collaboration can help with creating a comprehensive and holistic strategy that considers various lived experiences, giving you more options for how best to execute your plans.

Planning

Collaboration can, and should, feature in the following stages of the strategy planning phase:

• Information gathering: At the very beginning of the strategy process, you will need to undertake some information gathering to guide your future plans. By including a diverse range of roles, expertise, and experiences, you will procure a wider range of information that helps you make decisions in the later strategy stages

• Objectives and goals: Defining your objectives and goals using collated information from prior meetings will ensure that your goals are, firstly, achievable, and, secondly, that they do not overlook obvious or indirect risks. Involving more stakeholders in objective and goal setting will also increase employee engagement and help you understand appropriate timelines for your strategy execution

• Roles and responsibilities: Establishing roles and responsibilities early in the process can reduce the risk of confusion, miscommunication, and misalignment. Collaborating when assigning roles can also support in choosing skillsets that complement each other, and demonstrate the connection between contributions and outcomes

Execution

Executing a strategy, owing to its complexity, is usually always too much work for one person. Working together as a team will allow you to combine strengths and get the best possible result from your plans.

• Continuous alignment: Alignment is a critical driver in any project. Close collaboration throughout the lifetime of the project or strategy ensures there is continuous alignment on contributing activities as well as how individual efforts are supporting your overarching goals

• Strategy optimization: Strategies don’t always go to plan when it comes to execution. Using the various skills in your team means you will be better positioned to identify issues but also areas where you can improve efficiency. This shared knowledge pool will allow you to quickly share insights and feedback, developing more robust methods to respond to challenges as they arise

• Performance monitoring: Regular performance monitoring that involves the entire team can quickly demonstrate what’s working well and where there are areas for improvement. It keeps individuals accountable for their role in the strategy and enables you to adjust your resource allocation if certain skills are better suited to another strategic discipline

Benefits of working collaboratively

As we mentioned earlier, working collaboratively isn’t always something that comes naturally. It can take some effort to find the best ways of collaboration that work for your organization. But, when you find the right balance – the synergy – you’ll find you’ll experience various benefits.

Diverse perspectives

Having a diverse range of perspectives involved in strategy discussions will give you a greater variety of data to draw conclusions from. Each stakeholder can contribute their own lived experiences that shape strategy planning, allowing you to investigate more possibilities and opportunities – and have deeper insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your team. Combining this knowledge means you will have a holistic understanding of the full scope of your strategy, leading to more informed decision-making and increased options for optimizing your strategy in the execution phase.

Improved problem solving

Through including varied experiences and knowledge in your strategy, you will have more information to work from that will guide your strategy. Each team member from a different business function will have their own opinion on how to resolve issues as they arise. This expertise means you can solve problems quicker as you have more solutions and resources available to draw on.

Increased engagement

Involving more people from various functions and seniorities from the beginning of your strategy discussions can increase employee engagement, or buy-in. Being included from the outset gives project leaders the opportunity to build understanding with stakeholders, so they are aligned to your vision. The ability to contribute – and see those contributions in action – will show you value your employees’ views, encouraging them to be more involved throughout the end-to-end process, and motivated when it comes to execution.

Better communication

Bringing employees across the organization together will reduce siloed and fragmented communication, and create an environment where individuals feel they are able to share constructive feedback that positively contributes towards your objectives. Creating new lines of communication between departments will not only enhance strategy discussions, but also business-as-usual activities through more effective teamwork.

Next steps

Collaboration is often an overlooked component of strategy. It can take time to work out what effective collaboration means for your organization, but leads to improvements in communication, alignment, and performance. In turn, this can remove data siloes, a lack of shared ownership, and employee engagement – challenges that can contribute to poor strategic outcomes. Introducing specific times to collaborate will encourage teamwork in other areas of your organization so it becomes embedded in your company culture.

Working together, all focused on the same end goal, also moves strategy from a static to dynamic and adaptive process. Involving a range of perspectives in the planning stages will allow you to create a more comprehensive plan, with these perspectives also creating opportunities to adjust your plans as required, keeping you on track for success.