Building a Collaborative Culture in Your Organization

Some managers see collaboration as a “nice to have” that interferes with core processes and productivity—in other words, time spent talking to colleagues is time spent not doing your job. But smart managers know this is a shortsighted attitude. Through teamwork and collaboration, employees are able to take advantage of the organization’s collective knowledge base, profiting from a much larger pool of expertise than would otherwise available to them. This enables the organization to avoid redundancy and reinvention while accelerating problem solving and innovation.

This collection outlines APQC’s perspective on fostering a collaborative culture. Topics include change management techniques for increasing collaboration, common cultural barriers and how to overcome them, what leaders can do to maximize collaboration within their teams and departments, communicating and branding collaboration approaches, rewarding and recognizing outstanding collaborative behavior, embedding collaboration in business processes, and measuring the health and impact of collaboration practices. Almost every insight is supported by examples from best-practice organizations that have integrated collaboration into the way they do business.