How to Measure Your Organization’s Collaboration Condition . . .
Would like to be able to quickly and easily measure how well your internal collaboration is working?
If your answer is “yes,” calculating your Internal Collaboration Score (ICS)™ will give you the answer.
This blog post is for you if . . .
- You are the chief collaboration officer in your organization,
- You wonder just how good your internal collaboration really is,
- You’re beginning to look at social collaboration platforms for your organization,
- You implemented a social collaboration platform and your people aren’t using it,
- You just like to measure things and see how well they work!
Building Effective Collaboration is Job #1 . . .
As managers and leaders, a big part of our job is making sure that our teams have the tools and processes they need to work (collaborate) effectively. Oftentimes, though, it’s hard to tell if our internal collaboration is running smoothly.
I’ve been in the collaboration space for my entire career, we just didn’t use the term. I learned the importance of collaboration early in my Army career, especially when my infantry platoon needed artillery and close air support. We constantly practiced combined arms operations and we measured our performance after every mission.
Most businesses don’t operate in a life and death context, but effective internal collaboration is central to business success and sometimes even survival.
But how do we know if we have the right collaboration tools and workflows in place? I learned as a young Second Lieutenant that if you really wanted to know what was going on in your unit, you could find the answer just by asking your troops — the people tasked with getting the job done. If there was a better way, they knew it. It something wasn’t working, they knew it. We just had to ask. [Sometimes a hard thing to do!]
For the past several years I’ve been deeply involved in the enterprise social collaboration space, both on the software development side and the user side. And I have been searching for an easy way to measure internal collaboration.
This post will show you a quick and simple way to have your teams self-evaluate just how well your internal collaboration processes and technologies are working, and reveal any gaps.
Enter the Internal Collaboration Score (ICS)™ . . .
To solve my problem, I created a simple collaboration measurement process based on the concept behind the Net Promoter Score® (NPS)*
All you need to do is ask your team one question — “Do you have the tools and processes you need to collaborate effectively within our organization?” — and have them give their evaluations in a 1–10 numerical score.
The ICS™uses the same 10 point scale as the NPS® but with different category names: Promoters I call Active Collaborators; Passives I call Intermittent Collaborators; and Detractors I define as Disengaged Collaborators.
Scores of 9–10: these are ‘Active Collaborators’ who find the current systems and tools work just fine and use them.
Scores of 7–8: these are ‘Intermittent Collaborators’ who generally are satisfied with the tools and processes but may or may not be contributing much.
Scores of 1–6: these are your ‘Disengaged Collaborators.’ They either are having trouble with the tools or processes, or possibly they are simply disengaged employees.
Analyze Your Collaboration Buckets . . .
Once you have your survey results, total the responses and how many fall into each bucket — Active Collaborators, Intermittent Collaborators, and Disengaged Collaborators.
To arrive at your ICS™, subtract the percentage of your Disengaged Collaborators from the percentage of your Active Collaborators.
You now have three very valuable pieces of information: 1) an overall score of how your people rate their current ability to collaborate with each other, 2) insights into technology or process roadblocks that exist, and 3) a baseline you can use to track the success of your internal collaboration improvement programs.
For More Insights, Add Two Open Ended Questions . . .
When doing an ICS™ survey, we’ve found it’s very useful to add two open ended questions . . .
- What is your most difficult collaboration challenge?
- If you could, what collaboration change within your organization would you make Monday morning?
Fixing the problems highlighted in these answers could be a huge benefit to your bottom line.
Why Make the Effort to Do an ICS™ Survey?
- It takes less than a minute or two for people to answer the questions and will provide actionable insights from the people in your organization who actually are driving your business growth.
- It gives unhappy or disengaged staff an opportunity to provide anonymous input, which can be extremely valuable.
How to Create Your ICS™ Survey . . .
There are a number of easy and free or inexpensive survey tools available.
- Use a free online tool like Survey Monkey
- Or, just copy or adapt the survey at the following link to fit your organization — https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/InternalCollaborationScore
- Analyze the results
Summary . . .
Effective internal collaboration is a fundamental requirement to get the most value from your most scarce and costly resource, your people. A great idea will falter without strong teamwork and a great product will fail unless your team is effectively managing the customer journey. It’s all about effective communication and collaboration.
- An Internal Collaboration Index ICS™ survey will show you where you have problems and how your staff thinks it can — and should — be fixed.
- The responses to the additional questions will provide some useful insights about your technology infrastructure and processes.
If you don’t have survey skills or access to a survey tool, we’ll do it for you. We do three free surveys each month. Just email ICS @ SuccessFoundry.io and get on the waiting list. We’ll take care of everything and send you a free detailed report.
Stay Calm and Collaborate!
Best,
Robert
The Success Architect®
*In case you’re unfamiliar with The Net Promoter Score® (NPS), here’s a quick summary: https://www.netpromoter.com/know/
