Are you making collaboration happen for your company, or are you hindering it? Fostering collaboration requires a bit of forward thinking and organization to make it seamless. A few things you can do:

1. Synchronize your calendars. A lot of office software allows you to view your colleagues’ calendars from your desktop. If you don’t have that option, wall calendars and bulletin boards can work well even for a big office. Flag special events and opportunities for your colleagues to work together.

2. Schedule regular meetings to get updates on progress, brainstorm and work together on specific projects.

3. Encourage water-cooler chats. A simple coffee and water station can be a focal point for some informal chats and collaborative efforts.

4. Collect emails and send out a daily or weekly memo with a quick update from everyone about what they’re up to. This simple habit will help everyone keep up to date.

5. Get to know each other outside of a work setting. Whether this means organizing a company softball team, grabbing a slice of pizza at the corner or a round of mini-golf, seeing each other in a less formal setting can help reinforce relationships and even inspire some out-of-the box thinking that will help when you get back to the office.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

Tags: calendar organizing, collaboration, Linda Chu, organizing consultant, organizing expert, organizing tips, out of chaos, Professional Organizer Vancouver, small business tips, Vancouver professional organizer, Women in Business

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 4:36 pm and is filed under 1+1 = 3 The Power of Collaboration, Blog, Linda Chu-Organization & Productivity, Productivity & Organization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.