Process: Collaboration

“Organizations…often develop barriers that hinder information sharing and collaboration. … The job of a leader is to spot these barriers and tear them down….”—Morten T. Hansen

Organizations differ in their ability to collaborate within and across teams and business units. A unique combination of organizational, cultural, and interpersonal barriers to collaboration afflicts any organization that is experiencing difficulty collaborating. Therefore, to assess their organization’s ability to collaborate, leaders must first determine what barriers to collaboration exist within their organization. One effective way of doing this is to conduct a survey to identify which of the behaviors that hinder collaboration commonly occur within their organization.

Once leaders understand what dysfunctional behaviors are preventing their people and teams from collaborating effectively, they must tailor solutions to address the specific barriers to collaboration that exist within their organization. They must motivate their people to change the behaviors that are preventing or diminishing the success of collaboration within and across teams and business units.

In this column, I’ll describe some common organizational, cultural, and interpersonal barriers to collaboration and provide solutions for overcoming them. To create a culture of collaboration, an organization must overcome these barriers. Read More

Have you ever spent a lot of time and effort on a project that you thought would be really exciting and impactful, but the big announcement barely registered with your audience—or perhaps you realized it was way off the mark? Or have you ever worked on something only to realize that another team was undertaking a similar project? Having experienced all of these situations, I’ve been focusing on working smarter. Communication, collaboration, and continuous feedback are essential to efficient, effective companies. Great teams are transparent and synergistic, continuously communicating—to avoid creating discrete silos and duplicative efforts—streamlining their work, and combining cross-functional expertise to achieve better outcomes.

Share Your Work While It’s Still in Draft Form

Iteration is a core component of design thinking and user research. Sharing your work early and often is a great way to gather constructive feedback and make sure you’re on the right path. Read More

Not all Customer Success executives have had the opportunity to experience deep dives with UX researchers and designers to see how the magic is made. I consider myself lucky to have worked with world-class UX teams at companies such as LinkedIn, Cisco, and Coursera. But the unpopular reality for UX professionals is that the success of a product hinges heavily on factors beyond the platform—no matter how well thought out the design is. With increasing frequency, companies are coming up with solutions with Customer Education, in ways that are dissociated from the UX team.

Customer Education is a relatively new function that is typically a part of a Customer Success (CS) or Customer Marketing organization. Their goal is to provide proactive communications and resources that change behaviors, enabling users to gain maximal value from the solutions they’ve purchased. However, it is rare for the Customer Education team and the UX team to collaborate. In fact, in the State of Customer Success 2023 Survey, User Experience didn’t make the top-10 list of departments that CS partners with. Read More