The Importance of Peer to Peer Collaboration

There’s not a single piece of content that a business produces that is created without input from external organizations. For instance, a financial report must have contributions from the contracts coming into the business, while the business development team needs counsel from the engineering department on what’s in the realm of the possible for customers, and even a company’s social media content involves inputs from different teams.

We often look at these interactions as transactional to get the work done. However, we can make businesses and relationships more rewarding if we change our mindsets from transactional to collaborative.

The best way to do this and move the business forward is to collaborate and break down silos between peers. From here, the best ideas, streamlined processes and innovation are created.

Start by thinking how you can work with your direct team more. How can you help your teammates optimize what they are working on? Are there things that overlap that can be streamlined?

Last year, my team developed a new process for management that harmonized financial, manpower, facilities and IT planning. It was incredibly hard work by these teams, but it was rewarded with an integrated process that significantly improves the quality and timeliness of data, which means we can deliver better products to our customers.

Outside of our direct teams, we can work with other departments. This is where we really must dig deep and have honest conversations about pain points. What are you and your team doing that prevents another team from operating efficiently?

We’ve recently established an employee experience team which includes many functions and levels of employees. Their role is to identify, resource and deliver improvements to our work processes and environments to make the workplace a better experience for our team. The final projects were implemented rapidly because they had buy-in from across the business from the get-go.

Don’t forget about continuing personal research. Creating new ideas and pushing boundaries also includes personal research. We can’t always rely on others to provide the big ideas. Continuous learning and research are vital, so we can bring our best selves to the brainstorming table.

I read quarterly publications by business consulting companies to understand what’s happening across the industrial space, technical journals to see what’s new in technology, biographies about leaders current and historical, and good leadership books that educate me not only on skills, but character development.

Some of my personal favorites are “The Advantage” by Patrick Lencioni, “Humilitas” by John Dickson, “The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership” by Steven Sample and The Bible.

Peer to peer collaboration is better for the business. Nothing successful happens in a vacuum. Reach out and use each other’s strengths to provide the best value.