Written by: Curtis Hughes
What is collaboration? No, don’t Google it. I don’t want Webster’s definition; I want your definition. Hard question, isn’t it? Now imagine trying to actually measure whether or not you are actually doing a good job of collaborating. How do you measure something you can’t clearly define? Impossible, pointless, meaningless? Trust me, I get it – it might seem that way – but we think measuring collaboration is possible, but it’ll take some work. In fact, this isn’t the first time we’ve touched on this subject, but it’s still something we hear often, and I believe is critical if an organization is going to maximize their investment in collaborative technologies.
I think we all want to collaborate better, and you can find stats everywhere you look, but did you know that 36% of company’s performance is directly tied to their ability to collaborate effectively? (Frost and Sullivan) And this study was done in 2006, a decade ago! Imagine what it is today?
If you have been around C5 Insight for any amount of time, you have undoubtedly heard us talk about applying our LUCK Principle to collaboration. But despite our best efforts to plan, analyze, design, and build, it is all for nothing if we don’t know whether or not it was worth it – in other words, what value did it add?
You see, knowing the impact of collaboration is very different than measuring the impact of collaboration, and if we’re being honest, if you aren’t going to measure it, then why do it? So we have to set a new goal, not to collaborate better, but to effectively measure our collaboration, analyze the findings, understand how we’re doing, and act on this information accordingly to make lasting change in our organization. So where do we start?