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While collaboration is often valued, it is rarely easy. Disparate interests need to be integrated. People drop balls despite their best intentions. Exciting new initiatives lose their sheen.
Because of these and other challenges, collaborative work often falls short of its promise and potential, resulting in dashed hopes, fallen expectations, high frustration and lackluster performance.
Leaders understandably seek to protect against these risks. One way they do so is by investing in collaboration software, hoping that technology solutions can mitigate the real challenges of complex collaboration. But is it really the answer?
Why Collaboration Technology Investments Fail
When trying to implement collaboration software, companies might pay $25 per user per month for a project management platform, hoping that detailed task lists and public dashboards will keep everyone on the same page. They might spend an additional $18 per user per month for an infinite whiteboard, hoping that visual collaboration across the miles will ensure projects benefit from a range of perspectives. And they may add on another $12 per user per month for an always-on messaging app, hoping that everyone on the team will feel engaged, informed and able to contribute.
These costs add up. Just these three basic pieces of collaboration software would cost the company $55 per person per month. For a small company of 100 people, that adds up to $66,000 per year, a significant chunk of change for a lot of small businesses. Of course, the costs increase as the number of people and the tools increase.
Many leaders opt to spend that money because they believe these tools will make efficient and effective collaboration easier across individuals, teams, projects and departments. While it is certainly possible for technology to increase an individual’s or organization’s capacity for collaboration, it won’t necessarily do so and it won’t solve a company’s collaboration challenges.
Why not? Well, because people are involved. If you have collaboration tools in place, but aren’t also investing in boosting the collaborative skills of individuals and nurturing the collaborative culture of the organization, you’re failing to unlock the full potential of collaboration even as you invest significant resources in doing so. You’re cooking without salt.
Related Article: Want Your Collaborative Teams to Perform Better? Support Their Individual Needs
How to Bring In Collaboration Tools Effectively
Here are six cautions and associated pieces of advice to hold in mind as you consider adopting more collaboration tools for your company.
Make the case. While early adopters of technology may need little more than the promise of something novel to compel them to try a new tool, many people won’t adopt new technology unless they believe that doing so will benefit them in some way. Before dropping a new collaboration technology into the mix, make a compelling case about why individuals should adopt it. Answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”
Failure to do so can undermine the collaboration itself because people will be slow to adopt new collaboration technology or may revert to their tried and true tools, which can result in unintentional parallel systems, confusing workflows, dropped balls and mixed messages.
Socialize new habits. Adopting a collaboration tool isn’t the same thing as actually using the tool — or using it well. All of us need time to learn, practice and develop habits around new technology and it can take a while for the use of the tool to normalize. We need to understand when, why and how to use the tech and, equally importantly, when not to use the tech.
If you’re going to onboard new tools, provide plenty of lead time and professional development time to increase the likelihood of a successful adoption. Do the upfront work to articulate expectations about the tech as guidelines for those who will be using it. As practices settle in, refine those guidelines to help establish the norms of engagement so that current and future team members will know what’s expected.
Don’t tolerate bad behavior. Technology can be weaponized to undermine rather than enhance collaborations. A bad actor on a team that utilizes a project management tool, for example, could withhold making updates to their task lists until the last second, undermining others’ timely initiation of their tasks and possibly setting up later blame for missed deadlines. If and when you notice poor behaviors within and around collaboration tools, have the tough conversations to clarify expectations and highlight the downstream impacts those behaviors have on others and the team’s objectives.
Keep relationships central. Outsourcing relationship building to technology undermines the very relationships good collaboration relies on. It is possible to hide behind the technology without interacting with real human collaborators by, for example, religiously updating statuses on the project management platform, but then either not attending or sitting passively in team meetings. Noticing and naming the disconnect between expectations and behavior is an important step to ensuring the collaboration tech remains a boost vs. bust.
Be choosy. There seems to be a technology tool for every challenge. If you try to adopt everything, people will feel overwhelmed and none of the tools will be leveraged particularly well. Be choosy about which collaboration tools you bring to the table and thus how you’re asking others to allocate their time and attention. In conversation with those who will be using the tools, pick one or two that hold the most potential for improving, rather than burdening, collaborative work. “More” does not equal “better.”
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Be wary of pet tools. The plethora of available tools also means that individuals or teams can become attached to a particular tool or approach to using that tool. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, too much attachment to one particular pet tool can undermine the ease with which those individuals can later transition to another team or even the ability of someone elsewhere in the organization to transition in, which hurts cross-team collaboration for the entire company. Standardizing platforms, tools, vocabulary, conventions, etc. can make it easier for people to move across teams.
While collaboration software won’t solve a company’s collaboration challenges, it can help — but only if close attention is also paid to nurturing the individual behaviors and interpersonal dynamics that form the durable core of effective collaboration.
