Collaboration is an important part of nearly every business. If there were no collaborative strategy, every task within the business would be delegated to a single person with a limited scope and mindset, placing a cap on both the task’s potential and the business’ potential.

What Is Collaboration?
Some business professionals mistake “collaboration” and “communication”. These two terms are actually quite different, albeit related Collaboration is the act of working directly with other people toward a common goal, whereas communication is more like the medium through which collaboration occurs.

Here are three levels of collaboration that a business can use:

• Simple collaboration: This is enabled by quick communications like instant messaging. These tools make it easy to get distracted, but they can be a great way to encourage cooperation and communication toward the end goal.
• Document collaboration: Document collaboration expands the ideas of simple collaboration and explores the ability to collaborate on documents with multiple users at the same time. This would give users the ability to work side-by-side on a document regardless of whether they are in the office or out and about.
• Structured collaboration: This final collaboration type is one that involves physical presence: meetings. Of course, meetings are only as effective as their agenda, so there needs to be some kind of structure. The best meetings are ones where everyone is involved, and their voices are heard.

Why Is Collaboration Important?
Supporting collaboration is one of the best ways to make improvements to your organization. You know what they say: “Two heads are better than one.” Collaboration is best reinforced through the use of modern tools designed to connect users through an intranet solution. Simply put, collaboration is capable of giving your organization the ability to work faster and smarter.

What are some ways your business uses collaboration to its advantage? Let us know in the comments.