Roadmap to collaboration: journey from silos to enterprise

Collaboration facilitates competitive advantages. That’s the reason why every leader should be concerned with whether his or her part of the organization embraces collaboration or not. Collaboration in itself is an instrumental value, and it should be pursued as part of an organization’s enterprise-wide strategy, especially in merged organizations. Unfortunately, the natural inclination in merged organizations is for the merged entities to continue the past practice of independent, autonomous operations. When merged, the separate entities of the new organization naturally resist integration. The leader must infuse collaboration to enable knowledge sharing and the integration and employment of the new organization’s capabilities. The following discussion presents a roadmap to collaboration focused on the leader’s employment of seven critical practices.

Concept Paper

Scholarly study points to collaboration as an instrumental value. If it must become a value in the organization, then leaders must use seven practices as part of an enterprise-wide strategy and carefully follow the implementation of the seven practices until collaboration becomes a value and the natural instinct of the organization.

Leaders struggle with how to bring collaboration into an environment where inertial forces impede it. The following discussion presents a roadmap to infuse collaboration and grow an appreciation for it because this process will facilitate the development and implementation of goals, objectives and action plans for the organization. Seven practices are discussed and integrated into an operational design-like method just like the one commanders use to achieve victories in military campaign planning and execution.