Measure collaboration among employees

By Kim Sang-ik

Collaboration is hugely valuable but largely intangible. Most managers today understand the importance of collaboration to the success of their companies. Important outcomes ― revenues, patent approvals, cycle time reduction and client retention ― are associated with collaboration. Moreover, investors regard it as an asset that differentiates frontrunner companies from those in the middle of the pack.

Collaboration may never appear on a corporate balance sheet but it directly affects enterprise valuation while knowledge sharing is also the core essence of building smart companies. However, most modern IT infrastructure and mere sharing of knowledge does not automatically make a company smart.

Accenture defines the “smart company” as the ultimate company with the collaboration and knowledge sharing culture that encompasses “three C” elements; Connect, Contribute, and Cultivate.

“Connect” refers to the connection between people to people, employee and data, data and data. “Contribute” is when one employee shares the process and result of the experienced trial with other employees which constitutes contributing culture of sharing and learning. “Cultivate” is the proactive behavior of voluntary debates, idea proposals, upgrading of company’s know-how.

These 3C’s will bring out each employee’s talent development and foster collaboration & knowledge sharing culture within the company and will make a company stand out from the crowd.

Defining collaboration is important but it only takes us part of the way to resolving its paradoxes. Equally important is the ability to see it and measure it. Fortunately, research on social networks has enhanced our ability to “see” collaboration at work and to measure its consequences.

However, the more important contribution of social network analysis is that it forces managers to prioritize their quest for collaboration because the preconditions for productive collaboration ― trust and respect ― don’t take root overnight.

Kim Sang-ik is a partner at Accenture Korea.