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BLOG: Collaboration — friend or foe?
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As a marketer focused on bringing ophthalmic medical devices to market, collaboration has become my best friend. However, I sense it is becoming such a popular buzzword that it’s in danger of becoming just lip service. Everyone is beating the collaboration drum, but are we actually putting it into practice? More importantly, are we teaching staff how and when to collaborate? If you answered “no” to one or both questions, continue reading to learn why I believe collaboration is a best friend for any person or ophthalmology practice desiring growth.
Successful collaboration
I became a true believer in the power of collaboration when building the commercial strategy for an ophthalmic first-of-its-kind medical device. While the temptation was to hunker down and build a plan all by my lonesome, I knew I needed everyone’s input to make it “our commercial strategy,” not “my commercial strategy.” The end result of this collaborative approach sold me on its value. In this example, collaboration helped us achieve all our goals:
1. Create a common focus that generates an incredible energy and passion throughout the organization.
2. Keep the team informed and, as a result, reduce overall stress. We need to remember that keeping the team in the dark creates doubt, raises fears and sends stress levels skyrocketing.
3. Encourage team members to identify risks to plan early and work with appropriate peers to find solutions before project management meetings. This went a long way in growing leadership skills and self-confidence.
4. Save time. Ironically, we sometimes resist collaboration because it takes a lot of time. However, in this case, a team approach made marketing programs and materials sail through regulatory and legal reviews so that we were ready to go when the FDA gave us the green light.
5. Stretch the marketing budget. By inviting cross-functional teams to participate in key projects like brand messaging, we avoided wasting time and money on multiple revisions.
When to choose collaboration
Despite all the positives, there are times when we may view collaboration as a foe. When collaboration starts to feel like it is not working, try to identify if it is really the cause of your difficulty. Here’s my short list of common causes to help jumpstart your thinking.
1. Time: In a busy ophthalmic clinic, it is not uncommon to find ourselves under pressure from the boss to finish a project. We simply don’t have the luxury to take time to collaborate. Identify all potential risks to determine if this is a time you should push back.
2. Distraction: Unmanaged, collaboration can become unproductive. It is important to know when to pull the team in and when to keep them focused on the critical day-to-day operations of the clinic.
3. Empowerment: You want and need individuals to feel empowered to make decisions. Creating a “we are going to collaborate on everything” environment hinders empowerment and professional growth. Make sure you are allowing your team to effectively do their jobs without overburdening them with too many collaborative meetings.
4. Control: There’s a concern that too much collaboration will stall a project, escalate the budget or completely derail it. I recommend weighing the pros and cons of working in a silo vs. working as a team to determine which is the most productive approach for your project.
5. Ego: As humans, it is natural to want to get all the credit and praise. The reality, however, is that when you share credit you actually gain more recognition and respect.
The key takeaway: There are appropriate times to collaborate and other times that it makes sense to fly solo. Learn the difference and live it every day.
Teaching collaboration
As a leader, you have a unique opportunity to build and guide collaboration by teaching your staff how to work together as a team. I have three go-to suggestions for teaching:
1. Model collaboration by soliciting team input, asking questions, listening to concerns, incorporating ideas and sharing credit.
2. Give examples of appropriate times to collaborate and when it is best to work independently.
3. Empower employees to make decisions by asking how they would solve a problem or handle a situation before you give your answer.
By teaching others when to collaborate as well as empowering them to make decisions independently, you create a spirit of innovation, comradery and loyalty. All of this can lead to unprecedented growth — personally and organizationally. Everyone wins and collaboration will be your best friend, too.
Wellentina Greer, Global Strategic Marketing, can be reached at email: wellentinag@gmail.com; website: www.wellamedmarketing.com.