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Youtube comments:

“Charlie- ‘Cuts like butter’. Branch gets the sloppiest peel cut I’ve ever seen.”

“Lived in Wisconsin my whole life, can confirm this is a normal interaction. The polite wars that happen in public are just as terrifying. Just wait until you hold the door for someone that also wants to hold the door for you.”

“I feel like I could do this. My neighbor walks down the street and pulls all the garbage cans back to the garages.”

“Our neighbor mows our lawn in the summer, and we shovel her walk in the winter. True midwest neighbor-ness.”

How To Drive Cross-Function Collaboration

• How can companies continue to digitize in times of sluggish demand and shaky supply chains? By focusing on cross-function collaboration.
• Even in “normal” times, a lack of collaboration on complex challenges like digital transformation can cost organizations ROI and future revenue growth. In the time of COVID-19 and economic downturn, the age-old siloes problem could be disastrous.
• We have uncovered a group of companies that have solved the collaboration conundrum—that work across functional lines to innovate, stay relevant, and drive profitable growth.

Fast-changing global markets put a premium on simplifying processes radically and breaking through silos.

Companies have long struggled to break down silos and boost cross-functional collaboration—but the challenge is getting more acute. The speed of market change requires a more rapid adaptation of products and services, while customers increasingly expect an organization to present them with a single face.

Even well-established multinationals routinely fail to manage operations end to end. The result: interactions with customers are sluggish; complex, customized products are hard to create on time and on budget; and blocked lines of communication make new sales and distribution channels difficult to navigate.

The basic principles for improving performance—imposing stretch targets from the center, empowering cross-functional teams, standardizing processes, tightening up execution—are mostly familiar. But making these things happen is a different matter. In many companies, ownership of processes and information is fragmented and zealously guarded, roles are designed around parochial requirements, and the resulting internal complexity hinders sorely needed cross-business collaboration.

What’s more, in our experience, companies that apply traditional solutions (such as lean and business-process reengineering) either exhaust their managers with efforts to rework every process across business units or, by contrast, focus too narrowly within functions.

Our observations of 25 companies in a wide range of industries in Europe, Asia, and North America have led us to conclude that perspiration is as important as inspiration in addressing these challenges.

Here’s the story of how two companies launched new approaches successfully. One needed to focus narrowly to fix a critical process that compromised its core business. The other, swamped by the complexity of its processes, required a broad-based transformation.

Collaboration is a vital component of the workplace, enabling individuals or groups to achieve common goals. You can find opportunities to collaborate with people within your organization or outside of it, including in-person and virtual interactions.

Learning about the various types of collaboration available can help you identify the best ways to meet and work with others. In this article, we define collaboration and offer a list of 10 collaboration types you can find in the workplace.

When it comes to the future of work and collaboration I’ve worked with and researched hundreds of companies. Collaboration is indeed a top priority for many business leaders but knowing what makes organizations successful can be a tricky thing.  

After all no two companies are like and their strategies and technologies can be quite different. In addition collaboration initiatives come from different departments with different budgets, they have different uses cases and corporate cultures, and different approaches, goals, and measures of success.  

So if there is so much variety here then how do we know what makes organizations successful?  The answer lies in chess.

Throughout 2020, the pandemic, lockdowns, and remote work have made businesses and organizations worldwide recognize the importance of efficient cross-functional culture of collaboration. Teamwork is appreciated more than ever before, and recruiters are focusing on team spirit and effective communication as some of the top soft skills required in new employees.

The coronavirus is predicted to stay in our lives well into 2021. Therefore, the importance of cross-functional collaboration cannot be denied. This blog post discusses the best ways to build a cross-functional collaboration culture across the organization.

Let us first start by discussing what cross-functional collaboration is?

People across the United States are taking steps to help one another amid the coronavirus pandemic.
 
From companies donating masks and ventilators to hospitals, to everyday people helping their neighbors, there are countless examples of people trying to do the right thing during an extraordinarily difficult time. 
 
The Hill is keeping track of them here.

The history of volunteerism in America is rich and complex. As long as the United States has been a nation, it has focused on helping and improving the lives of others, and this has produced a culture that deeply values volunteer opportunities.

Everyone in the public and nonprofit sectors has a role to play in fostering volunteerism, and engagement can pay dividends for all.

As a former public sector leader now working in the social sector, I have witnessed the tremendous impact volunteerism has on American society—on both the people providing social services and the people receiving them.

These altruistic interactions often serve a broader purpose: They bond together neighbors and communities in a common cause, and enable us to see and appreciate each other’s humanity.

When we recognize the humanity in each other, we lay the foundations of understanding, empathy, and compassion. These then form the building blocks of a healthy civil society in which citizens are more likely to focus on what unites us than what divides us.