How Collaborative Intelligence Can Boost Business Innovation

 

Mike Letterman

 

Business innovation can be boosted by collaborative intelligence.

 

According to the State of the Meeting report, ineffective meetings cost businesses $541 billion a year. According to the State of the Global Workplace report, as much as 85% of employee time may be wasted on inefficient collaboration.

 

The real costs of such disconnection are much more than money.

 

In a disconnected organization, innovation stops. Great insights are trapped in silos. Employees feel stifled and disengaged. With record numbers of knowledge workers quitting their jobs, the risks of disconnection are more urgent than ever.

 

Your organization can’t afford to have a disconnected workforce.

 

Building a company culture in which everyone is connected to their teams and has a shared sense of purpose is fundamental for collaboration and innovation. Collaborative intelligence is a new systematic approach that connects teams to unlock their genius, taking insights and ideas from possibility to reality.

 

The five principles of intelligence.

 

The three main components of CI are intended to make collaboration intentional. There are both physical and online spaces where teams can connect. Collaboration design, the practice of intentionality and technology help teams connect and innovate. Collaboration insights allow organizations to measure and improve their collaboration. Everyone feels connected and confident in delivering great work when there is a culture of collaboration.

 

Collaborative intelligence is based on five principles.

 

1. People are greater together than apart.

 

Working in teams gives individuals power and value by coordinating a wider range of experience and expertise to tackle challenges and break down barriers to innovation and progress.

 

GitLab, a development operations platform with a 1,500-employee workforce, was fully remote and global before the Pandemic. Free-form, cross-functional collaboration is what developers and project managers depend on.

 

GitLab uses collaborative intelligence to create a space where peers can easily come together and share ideas in a safe environment, in order to ensure that working remotely doesn’t lead to acting remotely. A team leader describes it as turning order-takers into idea-makers.

 

Stakeholders come together to collaborate on solutions after creating categories or issues. Faster progress, easier organization, and more contribution are some of the benefits of including more team members in the ideation process.

 

2. Teams can’t exist without connection.

 

A strong, productive employee culture is forged by creating an environment that provides psychological safety, group commitment, and a common purpose.

 

The Human Centered Design (HCD) Institute is an internal consultant at the enterprise automation company, which facilitates and documents workshops for the company’s 88,000 global employees.

 

HCD Institute used collaborative intelligence to facilitate more effective and efficient workshops featuring a more engaging and inclusive range of expertise and ideas. The group was able to deliver post-workshop documentation up to 80% faster thanks to the help of CI.

 

3. Collaboration should not be left to chance.

 

It needs to be intentional. The strategy of relying on watercooler serendipity for innovation has been eliminated by the acceleration of remote and hybrid work environments.

 

Effective collaboration depends on ways of working that encourage inclusion. CI helps company leaders establish a single source of truth and insight that spans teams, practices, and locations, since it helps them forge stronger bonds among their executive teams.

 

4. Collaboration spaces power connected teams.

 

A hybrid common space encourages dynamic communication by getting past the limitations of email, documents, and chats for seamless collaboration in real time or across time zones.

 

A culture that encourages asynchronous collaboration is important in an increasingly distributed, remote, or hybrid business environment. The teams work together without the constraints of any region’s working hours. They were making decisions twice as quickly and improving talent retention.

 

5. Measuring collaboration is possible and essential.

 

Is working together really better? The proof is in the data. Insight into how teams are collaborating helps organizations figure out how to solve problems most effectively, where their best ideas are coming from, and how they can come up with more.

 

The Forrester report concluded that the adoption of this proven collaboration method helped IBM better understand and maximize the way its teams work together, resulting in a 50% reduction in the number of teams.

 

Collaborative intelligence can transform your workspace.

 

When an organization inadvertently siloes and stifles its teams and individuals, it loses its growth potential.

 

Collaborative intelligence can help your organization unlock the collective genius of individual employees and across teams and, in the process, fuse the full scope of their innovation and problem-solving capabilities so you can grow and lead.

 

Collaborative intelligence has the potential to become your organization’s most effective and essential resource due to the acceleration of remote and hybrid work and a powerful and mobile talent market.

 

Collaborative intelligence can be learned.