Collaboration Key Contributors

As with any activity there are people that are more adept and communicating and bringing people together than others and the trick to success in the collaborative network is to identify these key communicators and let them do what they do best - bring people together.  This may sound simple when you read the sentence, and I think everyone knows one of these key communicators in their life that brings people together, the difficulty though sometimes is encouraging these communicators to get involved.  The collaborative network is especially dependant on the key communicator concept due to the nature of the network and the broad expanse of partners participating in the network.

The collaborative network and partners must take advantage of the initial high and excitement from members joining the community to identify key communicators and encourage and nurture their participation. This starts off simply by engaging members in the initial interaction with the network members.  During these initial engagements you can begin to identify the level of participation simply through the level of engagement.  Then you expand the investigation and determination by the continued participation and engagement of the members.  The key communicators will tend to actively participate in discussions and will also return regularly to the network for participation and support.  These key communicators are essentially self identifying and simply require the outlet and the encouragement to participate.

The collaborative network requires a continuous flow of ideas, initiatives and offers to support the members in order to maintain the robust participation of members.  In order to continuously grow and support the members, the network must become a central clearinghouse of ideas, information, initiative execution and support.  This clearinghouse concept will both attract and support the key communicators and their participation and encouragement of other members to participate.  This is an interesting ‘chicken or egg’ question, the network must be developed in order to provide this clearinghouse of collaboration, and on the flipside, the clearinghouse will never survive without the active participation of the members.  In addition, the active participation of the members also provides a compelling reason to retain members in the collaborative community.

The successful collaborative community is a complicated network of members that develop and grow through the participation of the members and also the value that is delivered by the community.  There can be no members without the community and there can be no reason for members to join the community without the promise of value returned.  The initial attraction for members to join is the promise of the value returned and the continued growth can only be achieved through the actual delivery of value.  Your efforts in creating and maintaining the collaborative community must be the participation of the members in order to be able to deliver on the promise of value.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Collaborative Communication

Communication is the cornerstone of both trust and collaboration in a partnership.  Communication is probably the single most important foundational building block in developing and maintaining a robuts collaborative network.  The free and flowing communication should be the first and the last point that comes to your partner network members when thinking about the collaborative network.  In fact, in the case of the collaborative network truly do not think there can be a case of over-communication when interacting with your partners.  Communication in any network is important and this importance is increased dramatically in a collaborative network.

The plan for communication is very simple in a collaborative network, because everything should be communicated across all channels of the network over and over again.  The collaboration network can be challenging because there are general no rules for engagement, the partners can engage when they desire and as something that is important to them is addressed.  You can probably already see the challenge in this; how does a member know that something important to them is addressed if they are not continuously engaged?  This is where the communication across all channels becomes important, and where the engagement of partners must continuously be a priority to the network.  Collaborative networks will fall apart if the lines of communication are not actively and faithfully maintained.  

The challenge in the communication channels is that while the lines of communication must be actively maintained, you must accept and embrace the fact that there will always be one member or partner that is more focused or active in maintaining the communication.  The optimum process in this network framework is to encourage partners to take the lead on communication in areas that are of interest.  This requires that all network members engage and respond to communication to encourage others to take the lead.  Communication is a participation sport and if there is no two way communication across partners then it is not communication and communication will dry up if the partners are not responding the the communication.  

You must understand though that the communication will never evenly split across all members and I think the good news is that there will also always be members that are more engaged than others.  These key communicators should be encouraged to carry forward the activities that engage the members and encourage the participation.  I think that most members in the network will participation with a little encouragement from other members and this is one of the strengths of the collaborative network; there will always be members that are more extroverts and bring members together for an initiative.  I also think you will find that with this encouragement more and more members will participate and even grow into encouraging partners.  You must use the people that like to bring people together and develop the relationships and then you must have the patience to stick to the process and agenda to give all members an opportunity to participate and grow into an interactive member of the community.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Collaborative network Trust

Trust in and across the members of the collaborative network is a foundational feature that must be nurtured and encouraged across the network and especially in the new members to the network. The other foundational functions also encourage trust across the network such as sharing the leadership, developing guiding principles and a participation platform.  These foundational function though all encourage and support the development and growth of trust across the network partners.  Without a level of trust across the partners it becomes very difficult to retain network partners and to maintain the growth of the network and especially the value delivered through network initiatives, or programs.

Trust is very difficult to develop and requires encouragement and nurturing in order to develop and grow.  Initially trust is a fleeting entity that is easily and quickly lost due to intentional or unintentional actions.  Developing trust in and across others first requires that you show trust in and across others.  This sometimes requires setting aside past experience and disappointments when dealing with others in order to grow trust and confidence in your current partners.  This initial suspension of past difficulties can be very difficult however without this initial willingness to give trust when there is no foundation is the single most important ingredient and first step in gaining and developing the trust across the network members.

I am not saying that you should act foolishly in trusting these new partners with the keys to your success, or your industry secrets.  I am saying however that you must show trust in your actions with others to act in the best interest of the collaborative network.  This act of showing trust initially in your interaction with your network partners will cause and encourage your network partners to show trust in their interaction as well.  I understand that these initial steps are taken hesitantly and in a spirit of ‘trust but verify’ and there is nothing wrong with this.  In fact, I think it would be foolish to recklessly trust partners initially without a period of verification.  These actions of verification and confirmation should, in fact, be encouraged across your network and interaction with partners in that network.  These actions in themselves will also encourage and breed trust across the collaborative network.

Trust breeds trust is a foundational principle of the collaborative network.  There is no reason for partners to participate in the network if they cannot trust their partners.  While this trust should not be given blindly, it should also not be held back simply because there was a previous transgression or broken trust with another partner.  Trust requires honesty first and foremost and this means openly communicating with your partners to communicate and identify actions that cause a loss of trust to ensure they are recognized and addressed before the trust is lost.  This is important because your partner may not realize that their actions are causing you to lose trust in them.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?