Reprinted from Cloud Ave By Jacob Morgan on May 4, 2012 
1. Individual benefit is just as important as the overall corporate benefit (if not more important)
Don’t focus on the overall corporate value and benefit when communicating collaboration to employees. Employees care about how this will impact them on an individual basis. How will this make their jobs and lives easier?
2. Strategy before technology
Before rushing to pick that shiny new collaboration platform focus on developing a strategy which will help you understand the “why” before the “how.” This is crucial for the success of any collaboration initiative. You don’t want to be in a position where you have deployed a technology without understanding why.
3. Listen to the voice of the employee
We are always so adamant about listening to the voice of the customer, what about the voice of the employee? When going down the collaboration road within your enterprise it’s important to make employees a part of the decision making process from step one. Listen to their ideas, their needs, and their suggestions and integrate their feedback in your technology and strategy.
4. Learn to get out of the way
This is something Andrew McAfee talks about quite frequently. Learn to empower and support your employees and then get out of their way. By trying to enforce and police everything you stifle collaboration within your organization. Some best practices and guidelines are fine to have but let your employees do what they need to do.
5. Lead by example [click to continue…]
