6 essential tools for high-functioning, collaborative teams

“Collaboration” has scaled new heights on business buzzword mountain over the past few years. People grappling with this idea have spawned entire categories of new software tools, consulting, theories of leadership, office space and organisational design.

We know it’s important. But why?

Teams that collaborate effectively will outcompete those that don’t.

If the future is owned by organisations who energise, inspire and motivate great people to throw their lives into their work then they need to win, not just in the market, but in the ‘war for talent’ too.

A collaborative culture that attracts and brings out the best in people is how this war is won. Collaboration means getting things done better and faster. Collaboration is how the world’s best work happens.

At Enspiral, we’ve been lucky in so many ways. The right people, the right time, the right collaborative balance of altruism, activism, business thinking, financial motivation. We’ve worked hard to lay some groundwork for high functioning teams to begin to thrive in a ‘collaborative’ atmosphere.

Sharing is winning these days, so here are 6 key functions of any high performing team and 6 critical tools that we have used to help make the magic happen at Enspiral.

1) Communication.

Function: Communication is the oxygen for any groups of people trying to achieve anything together. Collaboration is heavy on the oxygen.

Tool: Slack is how collaboration breathes online. It’s the tool kicking up big waves that many others are riding on. Slack is well tuned to the zeitgeist of aspirational, purposeful, high achieving people who really care about the work they do and want to have a good time while they do it. Which mean’s it’s designed to make work feel like not work.

2) Making decisions.

Function: The ability to make effective decisions is the difference between ideas and action.

Tool: Loomio is the central nervous system of the Enspiral network. It is a tool designed around one simple, extremely important task: Helping teams make better decisions together.

Inherent in working out how to make decisions together means working out who decides what, how to work out the best solutions where not everyone gets it their way, and collaborating beyond ‘the boss’, or just doing what the loudest voice comes up with. It’s not easy — but its the essential wiring of any collaborative team.

Loomio is also open source and built by an Enspiral team who are pioneering new methods of values driven collaboration with their investors. Learn more about that here.

3) Managing tasks.

Function: Who does what? What is due when? How do we make a project plan that works for the unique conditions we have?

Tool: Trello is still the most flexible, simple, multi-platform, multi-user compatible tool I’ve come across for managing tasks. Breaking a project down into ticket sized tasks is an important part of working out how to execute anything and trello makes it easy to do this across team and organisational boundaries

4) Making documents.

Function: Writing things down, making spreadsheets, organising, sharing and presenting information.

Tools: Google docs is winning this race. They are easy to use. They don’t break. Easy to share, easy to work together in real time to create, edit and improve documents across organisational boundaries.

5) Spending money.

Function: Money is power. And deciding how to spend money together is the most explicit way of sharing power, building trust and a shared sense of purpose.

Tool: Cobudget is a giant, waking up in the form of a quiet public beta. It is built on a premise as simple as it is powerful: Spending money together on shared funding objectives creates a tangible sense of investment in any idea. If you really want a team to dig in deep together, make financial interdependence a part of the mix.

6) Solving hard problems and remembering why you care.

Function: Solving really hard problems, remembering why you give a shit enough to deal with hard problems and making everything else make sense.

Tool: Sitting in circles and taking turns to talk is one of the oldest tools we have as a species. When things break down (and they always will when you are trying to do anything remotely challenging) this is the tool to fix things. When teamwork is fraying, timelines are splitting at the seams and projects are burning down, this is the only tool that I have seen that can get the smiles back on faces and the work back on track. Equally — when things are going well, talking as a group feeds the wellsprings of human motivation, connection and shared ambition. There is no monthly subscription needed either :)

Collaboration is an imprecise recipe. You need to throw things into the blender, give them a blast, taste them and see if they work for you. Good luck. May the delicious, collective cream rise to the top of your organisation!