Research Reveals Collaboration Is a Key Driver of Business Performance Around the World

Research by Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications, a leading provider of advanced communications and information technology (IT) solutions, sponsored by Microsoft, found the following:

Collaboration is a key driver of overall performance of companies around the world. Its impact is twice as significant as a company’s aggressiveness in pursuing new market opportunities (strategic orientation) and five times as significant as the external market environment (market turbulence).

“As a general rule, global companies that collaborate better, perform better. Those that collaborate less, do not perform as well. It’s just that simple.”

The “Meetings Around the World” study surveyed 946 information technology and line-of-business decision-makers from a cross section of 2,000 small-to-medium, midmarket and global companies in the U.S., Europe (France, Germany and the U.K.) and Asia-Pacific (Australia, Hong Kong and Japan). The researchers created a collaboration index to measure a company’s relative “collaborativeness” based on two main factors:

• An organization’s orientation and infrastructure to collaborate, including collaborative technologies such as audio conferencing, Web conferencing and instant messaging
• The nature and extent of collaboration that allows people to work together as well as an organization’s culture and processes that encourage teamwork

The study, conducted in March, found that the high impact of collaboration on a company’s overall performance was consistent across the, Europe and Asia-Pacific, and across the six key vertical industries that were examined: healthcare, government, high technology, professional services, financial services and manufacturing.

Of all the collaboration technologies that were studied, three were more commonly present in high-performing companies than in low-performing ones: Web conferencing, audio conferencing and meeting-scheduler technologies.

Collaboration helps information to flow within organisations, crucial information, such as, what team members are busy with and how they are doing it, what they’re learning, how competitors are performing and how customers are behaving. It’s the sharing of this information increases the collective learning and competitiveness of organisations. I personally feel that a collaborative environment is preferable over a competitive environment. Internal competitive environments tend to create a whole lot of undesirable side effects:

• Internal competition re-enforces departmental and division sub-cultures, creating ’silo mentality’. This makes organisation rigid, hinders learning and the sharing of knowledge.
• Internal competition places an emphasis on the differences between departments and divisions.
• Internal competition creates an internal focus, rather than having a focus on customers and competitors within the market place.

Are you fostering an internal work environment that is team-based and collaborative?

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, Communication, Technology, Management, Leadership, Research, Team, Teamwork, Business

Related posts:

1. Implications of Poor Collaboration within Organisations is Weak
2. Research finds leadership critical to organisational performance
3. Research reveals six key drivers for inspiring and retaining top talent
4. Effective Communication: A Leading Indicator of Financial Performance
5. Research finds that future-focused leadership brings innovation…

Tagged as: Collaboration, Research