When you are ready to make the decision and collaborate… how important is strategy and planning? Implementing a collaborative teamwork methodology on your business can be a real headache if you do not know how to start or just don’t study and plan every single detail to achieve your goal. So today I wanted to go through the 10 more important issues and topics you should consider and foretell before starting your collaborative planning.
1. Focus on questioning yourself for a start. How can collaboration help your business? Have you already consider pros and cons? Have you taken human and technical resources into account? Changes are sometimes hard to get used to and accept for some employees, so here comes the second tip.
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2. Target and get advantage of knowledge workers. You know there are always different profiles on your team so focus on knowledge workers and those who can really deal with others, those with amazing empathy and communication skills, because those employees can really be helpful and encourage and support other teamwork members.
3. Think as a Leader 2.0, not as a boss. You have to be there whenever your team needs you, but don’t try to control all tasks, instead monitor 
the workflow and make sure that milestones and individual goals are being accomplished.
4. Before implementing a collaborative teamwork, talk to all the stakeholders and explain all details to them, their role, their tasks, the schedule, the milestones, the timing, tasks, goals, workflow… Make sure everyone knows all the time what to do and encourage your team to communicate and be aware of the importance of being a team player, with a dynamic participative commitment to the ultimate goal.
5. Once the teamwork is set, it’s time for technical resources: find the best tool that fits your needs. There’s a bunch of tools that will help you to collaborate, chose the most accurate to your purposes: Google Docs, Zoho, Huddle… (check the best 25+ tools for collaboration).
6. Teach your team to best use the tools, applications, software and whatever other technical resources they are going to need to be connected and collaborating. But also, be there when they need support: again, remember how to get the best out of every employee, knowledge workers, good communicators, tech profiles and skills… Managing and optimizing human resources are essential for collaboration success.
7. Empower trust: if you do not trust in your employees or team, you will start a dangerous double wheel process. For a start, the employees you do not trust in will not feel comfortable and therefore will not commit to the tasks and goals. Then the rest of the team will not trust him/her as well, so the collaboration chain breaks and you won’t get the expected results from collaboration, instead, you will have a bunch of unhappy employees who cannot commit to goals and teams and therefore, to collaboration.
8. Schedule periodic meetings for communication, brainstorms, ideas, issues, etc. That will help you get everyone on board: manage emotional intelligence as much as you would technical 
resources. Remember you are counting on everyone’s skills and ability to cooperate, share and communicate and not everyone is always into it. So make sure you are providing also the tools and time for meetings and gatherings.
9. Monitor every milestone. Help your team achieving their individual goals in time and the team goal by supervising and being available and supportive.
10. Once the goal is achieved, sit down with your team and get feedback from them: did collaboration help them? How did they readjust their routines to collaboration? Was it a positive experience? What would they change for the next project or tasks? Were tasks properly managed and distributed?
And remember, collaboration is not just about sharing and communicating, but also knowing how to best distribute, manage and monitor your resources and ideas.
Have you ever been in a collaborative teamwork? What else would you recommend?
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