Cooperation between organizations in the same industry leads to progress and innovation that benefits all involved. Nevertheless, competition often hampers collaborative efforts between companies. Implementing strategies to encourage teamwork both internally and with other firms in your field pays dividends.
Promoting an Internal Culture of Collaboration
Before seeking outside partnerships, make sure your own house encourages collaboration. Ensure departments and teams openly share information and ideas rather than hoarding data in silos. Institute flexible workflows rather than rigid structures so people interact more fluidly. Provide platforms and channels facilitating company-wide communication like online forums and town halls. Recognize those promoting knowledge transfers between groups. According to the good folk over at Motivation Excellence, effective external channel partner engagement hinges on overcoming internal obstacles to collaboration.
Building Personal Connections
Even in the age of digital transformation, the human touch still matters, especially when collaborating. Leaders should encourage employees to network with peers in other organizations. Industry conferences, virtual meetups, and joint committees offer networking opportunities to forge personal bonds. Casual gatherings like sports outings, happy hours, or volunteering events also bring people together amicably. The more colleagues interact face-to-face, the easier collaboration flows thanks to understanding colleagues as people with common goals beyond job titles.
Identifying Shared Objectives
Seeking potential alignment of overarching vision and motivations opens doors to collaborative opportunities. Identify broader industry targets all players have stakes in, like sustainability initiatives, diversity goals, or specialized credentialing programs. These big picture objectives benefit all organizations when progress occurs through cooperating. Having shared superordinate goals help firms recognize collaborating beats competing. It also frames partners as working together towards common good versus transactional relationships only when immediately useful. Mutual participation then arises more organically.
Enabling Idea and Resource Exchanges
Magic happens when companies share ideas and resources while checking egos. Structured programs like secondments, skill swaps, reciprocal mentorships, and crossover training encourage this intellectual blending. Short-term staff exchanges expose colleagues to fresh approaches sparking creativity. Co-development projects unite complementary capabilities to tackle ambitious innovation goals jointly. Open forums to voice challenges benefit from diverse stakeholders suggesting solutions. A little bit of give-and-take thinking rubs off on each party.
Formalizing Governance Standards
Well-defined governance frameworks reduce miscues from assuming how collaborative programs will operate. Institute organized bodies for making structural decisions, handling disputes, and upholding standards. Draft participation Terms of Reference outlining roles, responsibilities, decision authorization, and intellectual property considerations. Build regular review points to evaluate progress and realign objectives if needed. Embedding robust governance gives members confidence in the process, reducing the likelihood of misunderstandings undermining cooperation. It also holds parties accountable to their commitments.
Cultivating Trust and Transparency
For any collaborative initiative, a foundation of trust must exist for it to succeed long term. Organizations need confidence that partners will fully contribute without exploiting opportunities for self-gain. That faith emerges from transparency about limitations, open acknowledgment of failures, and avoiding over-promising. Taking calculated risks to extend trust builds bonds. Validation builds as projects unfold successfully. A track record of following through on commitments and communicating with candor/empathy boosts trust. Without that credibility of trustworthiness, securing engagement in ambitious cooperative ventures falters.
Conclusion
While competition has merits driving innovation, too much prevents the exponential advances possible by collaborating. Companies wanting to move their whole field forward should start by tearing down internal barriers stunting cooperation. Then they can forge personal connections with other organizations and identify shared goals to work towards collectively. Structured exchanges of ideas, skills, and resources as well as formal governance standards sustain these collaborative efforts. If organizations aim higher than just immediate self-interest, they may be surprised at what heights their whole industry can reach together.
