Collaboration is a necessary part of a successful business. Lots of great ideas have been shared this month by the SheTeam contributors and I found myself considering many of the ideas and putting them to work in my own business. Now a way to pull it all together.

1. Take an objective look at people you are working with. Is it working? If it is, keep on keeping on. If it isn’t. End the relationship and find someone more suitable
2. Look at areas of your business where collaboration could bring you (and someone else) to a higher level of business performance.
3. When you identify those areas, start to get ‘curious’ about who could fit the bill. What are you looking for? What qualities do they need to have?
4. What rules and boundaries do you need to have in place to protect the interests of all involved?
5. What are the individual and shared goals of the collaboration.

It’s okay to be selfish in a collaboration as long as you encourage others to be selfish as well. When everything is out on the table, collaborators can all benefit from the multiplying effect of their efforts. Don’t forget to examine your collaborations on a monthly basis. Whatever you do, from teaming up with another business to contributing to a blog like this one, if it stops serving you…stop doing it.

Chris.

www.GhostCEO.com

Do you find yourself procrastinating on your marketing and business development due to a lack of time? Does Friday roll around and you think “I’ll get to it next week”?

You are crazy if you are doing it all yourself or trying to. Successful businesses joint venture. And no – I am not talking about going out and looking for venture capital or an investor. I am talking about forming an alliance with another non-competing business that services the same type of customer as you. Come up with a joint marketing program that you can share the costs on. For example, a florist and event planner team up. The florist promotes the event planner’s services to their customers, even offers them preferred pricing; the event planner promotes the florist on their website and marketing brochures. It’s a win-win all around. You can do coupon offers, online contests, preferred pricing for customers, or anything your creative mind comes up with.

Share the cost, the stress and the creativity. It will pay off!

Fiona Walsh, CEO, FM Walsh & Associates Inc., www.fmwalsh.com

A lot of the web tools we use for marketing purposes or just for fun can also be used to help us collaborate better in our work.

For instance, if you’ve ever tried drafting a document with two or more people, you’ll understand the frustrations of using email to send drafts back and forth. Is this the latest draft? Who made these changes? How do I get rid of all of this markup?

One alternative is Google Docs, which allows all invited users access to the same document, which they can look at and edit all at the same time.

Cell phones are also rapidly becoming mobile computing devices with tons of capabilities. If you’ve got an iPhone or a device with recording capabilities, consider recording a voice memo and sending the recording off to your teammates with just two more clicks.

Apps like Tweetdeck can also act as mobile group messaging devices on the fly. Take five minutes to create Twitter accounts (if you don’t already have them), create a work group on Tweetdeck and download the application to your phone. Now you’ve got a quick messaging platform that can also be used to share links and pictures.

With more teams working remotely than ever before, technology is awfully useful for helping people collaborate in new and practical ways. Experiment a little and you’ll find even more tools and tricks to keep your group in sync.

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

My friend is dating a much younger man. I must confess, I’m jealous. Though, not for the reasons you might think.

I’ve had friends date younger men before, it’s no longer a novelty, but I’ve personally never seen the appeal. I guess I just prefer someone who can appreciate a level of shared cultural history, particularly music.

But I’m beginning to see where there may be some serious benefits. Well, one in particular actually. Tech support.

I’m serious! As an immigrant to the world of technology it’s an irritatingly regular hassle having to find someone to answer every little question I didn’t know I’d have to ask in order to get my many gadgets to work.

It would be very handy to have someone around who was born into this techno world we now inhabit and thinks it’s all so obvious there’s no need to explain, for example, about the settings you first need to find and then adjust so you can use your TV as a laptop – sorry, notebook – monitor, since that’s a given. (Huh?!)

The point here is, there are many, many ways and just as many reasons to collaborate. I’m all for getting creative, and frankly, that’s about as good as it gets. Think about it, personal tech support on call! It’s brilliant.

Ladies, stop for a moment and think about what you don’t do well or dislike doing or simply find boring. Quit fighting it. Now think of someone for whom that activity comes easily. Mull it over, ask your friends for ideas. Once you’ve got some options lined up, all you have to do is figure out a way to create a win-win meeting of the minds.

I’m not likely to resolve my tech support issues via the route my friend has taken, but I do intend to take her creative approach to heart.

– Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

It’s more important than ever these days to take stock of who you are spending your time with? Are you hanging around with positive opportunists or negative nellies who are running around screaming the sky is falling. Are your conversations filled with hope and excitement or doom and gloom? Does your social environment challenge and uplift you or defeat and threaten you?

Trust me when I tell you that whether you want to acknowledge it or not, the people you are spending time with are influencing every part of your life. The way you think, the way you feel, the actions you do or don’t take – all are being shaped by the environment you are surrounding yourself with.

If the people in your life are not serving you, start the weening off process sooner than later – don’t put it off. You don’t have to be harsh or mean, you don’t even have to tell them, just stop going as often and don’t stay as long. Start looking around for those who you want to be like, or whom have things you admire or personalities you’d like to emulate. Start finding ways to hang out more with those who will assist you in growth and development.

This is the easiest, cheapest thing you can do right now to make sure you not only survive the so-called tough times, but, thrive!

All the best,

Heather White, CEO, 2020 Communications Inc.

Experience, hard word and talent are not enough to succeed in today’s workplace. You need to also focus on building a network that will bring you the success you want. Your career will likely span multiple jobs and fields and the best and fastest way to get where you want to be is having a network of people you can call on. Building an effective network takes time, planning and intention. Here are 5 rules that will help you out:

1. Talk to strangers. You never know who is standing behind you at Starbucks.
2. Build a network with intention; create a plan of the types of people you want to meet and work the plan.
3. Give as much as you get; don’t be stingy about looking for ways to help others out. This will repay itself many times over when you need a helping hand.
4. Reach out to people long before you need anything; do not be that person who only ever calls when they need something. That is not networking – that is using people and you will not be appreciated for it. Stay in touch regularly with the people in your network.
5. Ask for what you want, not what you think you can get. The simple act of asking will get you a lot more than you can ever imagine.

Remember: success does not come to those with a low tolerance for risk or those who are led by fear. Start talking to people – you will be surprised what you learn!

Fiona Walsh, CEO, FM Walsh & Associates Inc., www.fmwalsh.com

We don’t always appreciate what we have, whether at home or at work. That angst that fights against complacency is actually a good thing – the sense that the grass is always greener on the other side is what makes us jump into new opportunities. That said, making a team work together with real synergy is not an everyday feat. Learn to spot the successes in your collaborations, so you can replicate that synergy elsewhere.

Does your team actually seem to enjoy working with each other? Happy people are productive people. If you find yourself actually looking forward to seeing the people at your office every day – well, that’s no small thing.

Then there’s the skill set. With an optimal balance where everyone is assigned tasks and workload according to their talents rather than which person has the smallest stack of projects on their desk, you’ll get real productivity.

Next, look at how your group talks to each other. If discussions are fluid, with plenty of back and forth, engaging ideas, and everybody listening to what other team members are saying, you’ve got something special. Far too many groups are dominated by someone with a forceful personality rather than expertise in all areas that the team has to work in. Freedom of speech and thought are not just good for civil society – they make businesses work better.

If you do recognize your team is functioning very well, analyze what it is about this group that works well. Often, it is based on good habits rather than some innate ability to work well with others. Try to transfer these habits to your other collaborative activities and watch your successes add up.

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

Last week’s post on the Benefits of Collaboration got me thinking more about values fit and how that alone can make a significant difference in the success of a partnership.

In case you missed my earlier comments, let me explain. Partners’ values — the intangible outcomes they hold as important — don’t have to match up identically for a joint project to work. They do need to be compatible, not in opposition to each other. And if they are not mutually exclusive and not identical, they do need to be mutually respected.

A misalignment of values means that even if you and your partner have compatible skills, personalities, and communications style, the collaboration still may be a bust because you’re at cross purposes. You have your heart set on different intangible benefits, even if your tangible benefits are the same, i.e. financial success.

Mutually respected values means that even if you don’t hold the same priority to your partner’s values, you still respect and will honour those values equally to yours.

Now here’s where things get interesting and where 1+1=3 really takes off. By not prioritizing what matters to me more than what matters to you, but making them equally important, we push for a better outcome.

Say one partner values functionality over design, and the other values design over function. One is the technician, the other an artist. If the value for function wins out, you have a chair, but it’s aesthetically uninspiring. If the value for design wins out, you have a really cool looking chair that is uncomfortable to sit on.

However, when those two values come together, you get a chair that is cleverly designed and beautiful, as well as comfortable and stable.

Another example we can all relate to, technology tools were primarily functional from the day they were invented. Then along came Apple and turned things upside down. Their products are highly functional, no one can dispute that. But at last, someone over there decided functional could also be beautiful. They compromise neither form nor function, and the result speaks for itself. They have raised the bar and continue to do so.

Don’t compromise what really matters, work together to create a more amazing outcome than you might have.

Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

In business we talk a lot about about externals, outside measurements, deliverables and objectives. Yet, today I feel the need to address the often ignored, but, integral part of business – YOU. At the end of the day, business is still done by people. Yes, technology has greatly improved our processes, but 99% of the time, it’s humans that do business. Yet, how well do we really know ourselves, trust ourselves, give ourselves permission to act on our intuition in our day to day business activities?

I remember seeing Lisa Nicholas speak at a conference and saying, in only the way she can, “you best get to know yourself, because no matter where you go….YOU’RE coming along”. This struck me as incredibly profound, because when I thought about the major challenges I encountered in business, they weren’t about business at all. They were about humans. Crossed boundaries, abuse of power, manipulation, fear tactics, gossip, etc. It was all the things that got in the way of doing business that were the real road blocks. So how do you overcome these human barriers in the business world?

My answer – take responsibility for yourself. Start trusting yourself, your knowledge, your experience, your power. Build a relationship with yourself. Do your personal work. Know who YOU  are, and there by you take responsibility for what you’re bringing to the table. If you can’t bring your best self, don’t come. And if you really knew yourself, you’d know not to go that day. You’d recharge and go tomorrow, when you’re ready to be your best.

In regards to those whom you encounter in business, unless they’re colleagues or partners and you have to see them regularly, don’t over think your relationships, they either serve you or they’re don’t. If they’re not serving you, focus on what your contribution is and decide if you have the ability to make changes? If you can’t or won’t interact differently, then take responsibility for controlling their interaction with you.

It sucks to think that we die alone, but we do. Or, you could die with your best friend, in yourself. We all know relationships take time, nurture, attention, intention, support, collaboration, cooperation and much more. Where do you stand today in your relationship with yourself? Start there.

All the best,

Heather, CEO, 2020 Communications Inc.

I’ve read through a document that was championed by Maria Shriver. It’s entitled, ” The Shriver Report” and it focuses on today’s woman in America. It is really a well done and I wanted to share it with you. You can find it online (and download it for free) here.

As well, NBC news is supporting this topic with there own series. Here is one of the segments.

Best,

Chris.