It’d be easy to dismiss the importance of collaboration in business as a cliché but stay with us for a second. It might sound cheesy, but sayings like ‘no man is an island’ and ‘it takes a village to work on a project’ (we might have been paraphrasing with that one) have been around forever because, well, they’re true. And if you’ll let us humble folks at Tameday, we’ll count the ways in which business collaboration is absolutely vital.

 

1. It’s a Sneaky Easy Way of Making Unexpected Connections

You know that quiet guy down the hall that always brings spaghetti for lunch every day? The one you’ve never had a conversation with? It turns out he’s amazing at chess and his favourite movie is Jurassic Park. How’d you find this out? Because you were chatting on our app while brainstorming ideas on the next project.

One of the beauties of collaborating online is that you get to see different sides of people that normally wouldn’t come out in the offline world. There’s something about screens that lets us work with our guard down, so the next time you pass Spaghetti Sam in the hallway, you have a new and different connection with him you established through an online backdoor.

 

2. It Makes It Easier to Find an Expert

As amazing as your mom always told you you were, there are some things you just don’t know. And that’s okay! Thanks to being able to connect with business professionals at the click of a button, you can find experts to help you along, and vice versa.

 

3. More Personalities Lead to More Creative Solutions

Reply All did a podcast about Leslie Miley, Twitter’s only black engineer in a leadership position. One of the things Miley talked about was how diverse teams led to better outcomes — the more diverse the backgrounds, the more associations you get and the more paths towards solving a hard problem.

It’s way too easy to get stuck in your echo chamber, but collaborating means you can break out of it and start to find new and better ways of accomplishing things.

 

4. You Really Can Be In Ten Different Places At Once

Time is money, right? Well, one way you can cut down on a lot of that is by hosting meetings online. If you’ve ever tried to get a bunch of friends together, you know it can be like herding kittens. But thanks to the wonderful magic of the interwebs, it doesn’t have to be!

A great business collaboration app lets you create a calendar where people can sign up with the dates and times that suit them, no matter where in the world they are. And thanks to online meetings, you can attend one from home and nobody will ever know you’re not wearing pants. Just remember to turn off the meeting before you get yourself a cup of coffee. 😀

 

Tips On Collaborating Well With Businesses

  • Remember to lead as well as manage. Whether you’re in charge of the project or not, lead by example. Take part in researching and contributing your talent, and help your workmates. The project is only as good as the collective effort.
  • Select a collaboration app based on your team’s needs. Pretend you’re a triage nurse and identify your team’s needs based on must-haves, nice-to-haves, and can-do-withouts. You won’t find one app to rule them all, but if you triage accordingly, you can find an app that mostly suits most people most of the time.
  • Link people together through online conversations and communities. If you are the team lead, one of the most important things you can do is connect coworkers based on their mutual strengths, weaknesses and personalities. If Jim is good at detail work but not at the big picture, and Pam is the opposite, bring the two of them together. You never know what kind of happy ending you can script.
  • Don’t be shy about asking for help. Remember how we talked about finding an expert to help you crack a tough problem? The thing about that is experts won’t be able to read your mind, so put your problem or question out there so the right people can respond.
  • Offer up your strong points. There are always going to be shy people on a project. One way you can get around that is to write something like, ‘If anyone’s working on (subject), I’ve spent a few years on that area and would be more than happy to talk about it.’

So, it turns out we weren’t totally right about one thing: it just so happens there is a one-size-fits-all project management app that can pretty much do it all. No matter if you’re looking to build bridges in the workplace or just test out a new tool in your own office, Tameday’s got your name all over it.