Without implementing tangible measures to foster collaboration, departments and teams can become disjointed as a company grows. This is bad news for everything from morale to innovation to day-to-day productivity.
But expansion doesn’t have to divide teams — it just requires more intentionality when it comes to fostering collaboration through its processes.
Most organizations claim to value collaboration, but how many are really walking the walk? Below, we share some real-life collaboration examples, plus best practices to help you apply the same approach to your company.
5 collaboration examples from real-life workplaces
The best way to understand collaboration is to see it in action. Below, we’ve compiled five real-life examples of collaboration from successful companies of all sizes and industries.
Streamlining communication
While most companies dream of enjoying rapid expansion, doing so has its issues. Companies that experience fast growth may find that they’re left with the ad hoc processes of a startup in its growth stage but the scale and staff of an established large company.
For instance, a firm may consist of various teams using different communication channels because each manager has stuck to their own preferences.
This becomes even worse if each team stores its information in different places, leaving everyone unaware of how to access the information from other teams (or even what information is available in the first place).
Without efforts made to streamline processes, inefficiencies result — with employees unable to contact the people they want or access the information they need.
Using a tool to centralize communication and doc storage provides a solution.
ZUS Coffee experienced the dilemma outlined above. This specialty coffee chain expanded rapidly from two outlets to over 300 but failed to upgrade its processes alongside its operations.
As a result, it was left using multiple channels — email, WhatsApp, and Telegram, to name a few. Nobody knew how to contact the right person, and the team became disjointed.
When ZUS turned to Lark Messenger, its communication gaps disappeared. The company also moved to a single base file to manage all outlet information, allowing everyone to access up-to-date information in the same place — and resulting in 90% less time spent on paperwork.
Plus, the team used additional features to tackle the disjointed feeling and foster togetherness:
An announcement feature on Lark Messenger to keep everyone updated
Search functionalities for information retrieval
Use of the Lark Moments platform to celebrate achievements for everyone to see
Ensuring transparency
Sometimes, a workplace's biggest problem is its culture rather than its processes. Some organizations have a team that feels too distributed, with no sense of community or shared purpose. This can result in those lower in the hierarchy not trusting the company’s leaders.
And when there’s no trust, employees are less likely to be honest with managers, provide feedback, or share their ideas — all of which hold the organization back from innovation and collaboration.
Buffer is one company that goes to extreme lengths to ensure this doesn’t happen by pursuing a culture of transparency. This social media company's approach is best described as “radical transparency.” It became infamous for publishing employee salaries and company financials.
But while this grabbed headlines, Buffer’s efforts go beyond this, aiming to make employees at all levels privy to all information. The company actively seeks feedback from employees through surveys and communication channels and uses it to improve its policies.
Buffer also makes all meetings open to all employees, fostering inclusion as a result. This ensures that everyone feels valued within the company — thereby improving collaboration.
It’s hard to measure the success of such an intangible approach. But Buffer followed the radical transparency approach in 2010 and upped the ante in 2015. Fast-forward to 2024, and the company has an annual revenue of around $18 million, up from less than $6 million at the start of 2015. Naturally, it publishes these figures transparently online.
Fostering a shared sense of purpose
So far, we’ve focused on small but fast-growing teams that removed obstacles stifling their growth.
But bigger corporations can also face problems.
One of the most common is top-down management suffocating employee creativity and engagement. This makes employees feel like simple “cogs in the machine,” which has a knock-on effect on the firm’s productivity and growth.
Organizations in this position can foster common goals to unite their team. One way to achieve this is through programs that encourage employee-led innovation and give people a greater sense of ownership.
Multinational pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson seeks ways to keep its employees engaged, inspired, and connected to its mission. The firm has adopted a culture and operating model that gives employees ownership and agility. One way they do this is through its Talent for Good program.
These initiatives not only give employees a chance to connect to the business’s greater purpose, but they also involve cross-functional collaboration since employees from different departments have a unique opportunity to come together to work on a task.
Thanks to its efforts, Johnson & Johnson has been named one of Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators in 2020.
Plus, Johnson & Johnson supports employee resource groups — voluntary, employee-led groups that allow workers to apply different perspectives to the whole firm. These connect employees and help them have a bigger impact on the company.
Bringing together teams from different projects
In any company, talent is spread across different departments — departments that don’t always communicate with each other.
This means projects tend to belong to one team and one team alone. While this is arguably the most straightforward way to organize projects, it also means that a project or team gets deprived of the creative ideas another person may have been able to bring.
A traditional organizational process also tends to mean that a project is passed linearly from one team to another. Again, this is straightforward to organize, but it means that innovation cycles are slow.
To combat these problems, many organizations have sought to replace the traditional hierarchy with autonomous teams. This means bringing together employees from different teams for creative solutions.
Spotify did this using its very own “Squads” model, which sees teams broken down into the following:
Squads: Small teams working on particular projects or products
Tribes: Made up of various Squads with adjacent projects
Chapters: Groups focused on skills, which they share with Squads
Guilds: Groups based on personal interests rather than work
Each employee is part of one Squad, which falls into a Tribe. But they may also be part of various Chapters or Guilds. Each group consists of members from different departments with different skills, creating a flat hierarchy and allowing teams to take a flexible approach to their projects.
This method also encourages collaborative efforts and engagement and creates more collective responsibility for tackling the organization’s challenges.
Plus, the collaborative teams tackle challenges from different angles, fostering innovation.
Considering the success of Spotify today, it’s safe to say this approach has helped the company grow.
Hosting creative meetings
Everyone wants to work with a group of people who are inspired, energized, and feel comfortable bouncing ideas around and taking risks.
Yet, the reality is often the opposite — a group of individuals who are uncomfortable sharing ideas with each other and prefer to play it safe. This results in groupthink, a lack of innovation, and an absence of diverse perspectives.
Organizations can solve this problem by simply injecting a little creativity. One way to do this is through brainstorming sessions that encourage open communication, feedback, and problem-solving.
For the production company Pixar, creativity is the very bones of the business. So, it’s unsurprising that creative collaboration is where it shines.
Pixar began following the “Brain Trust” framework, which involves directors presenting work that’s still in progress to a group, who then analyze the production. This might not sound groundbreaking yet, but the standout detail was that Pixar encouraged honesty rather than specific solutions. This shifted the focus to simply exploring and understanding problems.
All this helped everyone at Pixar gain a deeper understanding of what was going on and allowed creativity to flow rather than pressuring anyone to find the perfect solution or act as though they knew better than the director.
After using the Brain Trust method, Pixar went on to produce classic films like Frozen and Big Hero 6.
7 best practices for fostering a collaborative spirit at your company
Now you’ve been given some inspiration from the companies outlined above, it’s time to put collaboration into practice.
Every organization should tailor their approach to its own needs, but here are a few universal best practices:
Use the right technology
In the modern workforce, many organizations do a huge amount of their work online, and more companies than ever use remote or hybrid working models. This means that no matter how collaborative an organization’s culture may be, it will always be held back if it doesn’t have the technology to complement its efforts.
Lark is a productivity tool designed to simplify the processes of fast-growing companies, simplifying their processes so that they can collaborate more easily.
Its most useful features include the following:
Lark Base. Automates various business processes to give teams more time to focus on important tasks like collaboration.
Lark Meetings and Lark Minutes. Transcribe video and audio meetings and provide translation to ensure that nobody in a team gets left out.
Lark Messenger. Facilitates quick exchanges without the need for multiple communication channels so that teams can collaborate with ease.
Lark Calendar. Allows employees to schedule meetings without the need for back-and-forth, making it easier to make time for each other.
Lead by example
Employees generally follow their manager's behavior and the organization’s overall culture. If they don’t see collaboration being valued and acted on, they’re unlikely to magically become collaborative themselves.
Managers play a crucial role in establishing a collaborative culture. In fact, 80% of employees under the best bosses report favorable interdepartmental cooperation, compared to just 25% under the worst bosses.
The best managers show that they’re team players. They might do this by sharing credit or acknowledging employees’ achievements, such as posting a public message on the team’s communication channel celebrating what somebody did.
It’s also crucial to treat all employees with respect. Give everyone a chance to share ideas and actively show that you value their input. For instance, you could introduce one-on-one manager meetings to show you’re willing to listen to everyone’s experience and input individually.
Provide cross-departmental training
We’ve seen in the collaboration examples outlined above that cross-departmental work is key to collaboration. Even if an organization doesn’t follow a structure like Spotify Squads, there are plenty of ways to facilitate collaborative teams to work together across departments.
Some forms of training include:
Workshops: Giving people from different departments a chance to work on tasks together
Mentorship programs: Partnering a mentor and mentee from different departments to facilitate a relationship between them
Job shadowing: Giving people a chance to see what those from other teams are working on by letting them job shadow for a day
Cross-departmental training helps create a more cohesive workforce where individuals can learn from each other and borrow skills.
Adopt a feedback culture
Feedback is essential for collaboration. Employees who don’t receive feedback may start to feel like their efforts are futile or that they’re invisible, dampening their efforts and motivation.
In fact, 80% of employees who received meaningful feedback in the past year said they were engaged.
But for people to be confident enough to give feedback to others in their team, they need to feel safe. This was a big part of the motivation behind Buffer’s radical transparency outlined earlier.
Managers can play a pivotal role by showing vulnerability and proving they’re available to help others. They can also provide training in active listening so that employees know how to receive and give constructive feedback productively or use software (such as digital surveys) to automate the process.
Value diversity
True collaboration means everyone on a team — including those of different genders, religions, and ethnicities — is involved and listened to. Diversity is also about celebrating people at all levels in the organization.
Many organizations emphasize diversity in the recruitment process but don’t actively encourage diverse perspectives in their day-to-day operations. Make a conscious effort to elicit input from everyone, and include this intention in your team meeting agenda.
For instance, you could ask every person in a meeting to offer input on a subject instead of just having a few individuals contribute.
Make it part of your hiring process
Great managers and processes can go a long way toward establishing a collaborative work environment. But to some extent, if you hire the wrong people, you don’t have a chance.
Look for a collaborative attitude in candidates from day one. That means candidates who align with your company culture and show a willingness to work with others.
For instance, instead of sticking to the usual interview questions, you could ask candidates to take part in a real-life job task to determine their collaboration skills and emotional intelligence.
Recognize collaboration when you see it
Even if you implement all the tips above perfectly, your collaboration efforts can still fall apart if you fail to recognize great work when it happens.
Acknowledge and celebrate your team’s efforts, whether they’re collaborating with others or succeeding in individual achievements. This gives everyone an incentive to get involved.
In addition to company-wide announcements over communication channels or in meetings, consider giving specific employees shoutouts on social media.
Here comes improved collaboration
There are various types of collaboration, so success will look different for every team.
That said, there are a few common threads, such as bringing diverse teams together and using tools to streamline communication.
Let technology be a part of your collaboration efforts with Lark Messenger, a pragmatic approach to communication that connects with other apps and provides context cues for employees. Contact Lark to learn more.
