Ask any C-level manager what their top three business priorities are, and there’s little doubt you’ll hear something like: increasing enterprise growth, delivering results, and reducing costs. It’s that third prerogative that echoes the loudest throughout most organizations, and with an impact that spans from initiatives to output. But with most companies driving teamwork like never before, we’re uncovering brand new opportunities to stabilize finances and boost productivity. Here are 5 ways collaboration saves time and money.
1. Shared Vision, More Resources
More people involved in a project means more talent, untapped ideas, hours, and often, more budget. When a greater number of stakeholders is tasked with shaping initiatives, innovation happens. The network of available resources grows, and collaboration sprouts up naturally.
Caution: more people also means more egos, so don’t forget to clearly define individual needs and priorities.
2. (More) Mistakes to Learn From
Collaborating allows people to bring their experiences — and along with it, their failures — to the table, and gives the rest of the team a chance avoid certain blunders and bad decisions without having to be burned by them first.
Caution: failure is not something we like to be afraid of in agile business, so don’t spend so much time trying to skirt it that you forget the value of taking risks.
3. All Your Budgets Are Belong to Us
When more departments and businesses partner up and pool their finances, minimizing expenses becomes a little less difficult. Like having roommates to share the electric bill, only minus the thermostat wars.
Caution: never assume that a budget is up for grabs just because the person or team controlling it is involved in your project. That money could be promised elsewhere.
4. Welcome to My Thought Bubble
Brainstorming is an indigenous by-product of collaboration, and within the right team, can evoke new, unique ideas and drive productivity. A shared mental load can be a welcome and innovative relief for folks tasked with creative initiatives.
Caution: some people aren’t great at playing well with others, and it’s important to remember that brainstorming can be an individual activity, too. But it shouldn’t be forced — it should be inspired.
5. The Bigger Bandwidth Backup
It’s empowering and even freeing to have individual ownership on a project, but there’s a scary downside — if you have to reprioritize projects, leave the company, or are otherwise unable to keep working on something, everything comes to a screeching halt, and it doesn’t matter who or what was depending on those deliverables. Collaboration provides a safety net that allows projects and initiatives to continue moving forward even when one aspect gets put on hold.
Caution: to capitalize on this collaboration benefit, transparency and communication are key, so make sure all parties are aware of needs, changes, and roadblocks as they’re discovered.
Collaboration has a lot of relatively self-evident benefits, but sometimes it’s the way we collaborate that makes a difference. A recent survey noted that over half of the respondents credited cloud computing with reducing “the need for their IT team to maintain infrastructure, giving them more time to focus on strategy and innovation.” It also found that “88 percent of cloud users pointed to cost savings and 56 percent of respondents agreed that cloud services have helped them boost profits.”
Here at Mindjet, we believe that working together is the best way to drive innovation and growth, and we get a kick out of helping companies do it better.
Want to learn more? Try Mindjet free today.