Every organizational leader has a need for employees to have buy-in to strategy and vision, so it is vital for leaders to provide flexible avenues for collaboration. Through collaboration, effective strategy can be developed from thinking, conversations and negotiated agreements among groups through the organization (Eden & Achermann, 2012). Through collaboration organizations are able to develop unity throughout the various level of employees which assists in the implementation of strategy because it assists the various levels of employees to act cooperatively with alignment of action rather than perpetual conflict (Eden & Ackermann, 2012). Without collaboration, strategies are likely to fail at the implementation stage and not realize the level of success intended by the leadership that develops the strategy (Campbell et al., 2005). The key is for organizations to provide opportunity for collaboration without deluding the process and keeping things moving forward at a reasonable rate.
The purpose of collaboration is to make the whole more than the sum of the individual parts by allowing various levels of employees to combine resources and leverage ideas and information by sharing with one another (Losey, 2005). Efficient collaboration begins with teamwork training to learn the skills of effective collaboration (Losey, 2005), which curbs employee collaboration from becoming committee atrophy. When employees are able to communicate effectively in the collaboration process, decisions are made efficiently once they have presented themselves (Church, 1996). A pitfall of collaboration is ‘paralysis of analysis’, but employees trained in effective collaboration skills are able to efficiently work together, come to decisions, and execute them for the collective good of the entirety of the organization (Church 1996). Such skills keep the process from being deluded and stagnating into inaction, which is why collaboration is a hallmark trait of successful organizations (Losey, 2005).
References
Campbell, B., Kay, R., & Avison, D. (2005). Strategic alignment: a practitioner’s perspectivenull. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 18(6), 653–664. http://doi.org/10.1108/17410390510628364
Church, A. H. (1996). Giving your organizational communication C‐P‐R. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, vol. 17(iss. 7), pp. 4–11. http://doi.org/10.1108/01437739610148321
Eden, C., & Ackermann, F. (2011). Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success (Second Edition edition). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Losey, M., Meisinger, S., & Ulrich, D. (2005). The Future of Human Resource Management: 64 Thought Leaders Explore the Critical HR Issues of Today and Tomorrow (1 edition). Alexandria, Va. : Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.
McCallum, S., & O’Connell, D. (2009). Social capital and leadership development. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 30(2), 152–166. http://doi.org/10.1108/01437730910935756
