Analysts, collaboration professionals and even businesses are realizing more and more frequently that in order for team collaboration to work in their business, they need to accept it into their corporate culture. It’s not just the tools and processes that make collaboration - it is the people using those tools and the people following those processes.

Last week, we talked about some of the common challenges with accepting collaboration into a business’s internal processes. One of the biggest challenges is that team members will revert back to their old habits of ineffective collaboration if they aren’t pushed toward making the new collaboration processes work. In this post, we will expand on ways to encourage others to keep collaborating in the new way to make it more effective.

Make Collaboration Fun
Who says work needs to be all about work? Once you’ve identified your new collaboration process and tool, begin playing some games to bring your team into the tool for fun. Offer incentives for activity or discussion posts, and try working on a fun project together that isn’t related to work at all. Your team will be learning how to use the solution while having a great time, so it definitely won’t feel like training.

Take Small Steps
You don’t need to dive in head first for collaboration to be successful. Take baby steps toward integrating it fully into your business. Start by collaborating on one or two projects, or a handful of clients. This will allow your team time to iron out the kinks and get used to the new system.

Set a Deadline
Even with the baby steps, you should have a definitive date indicating when all collaboration will be following the new processes and inside the new solution. If this isn’t set, people will continue on in their usual fashion, and collaboration won’t take hold fully inside your organization.

Encourage Others
People like encouragement, so use this to help bring people into your collaboration solution. Keep educating your team on the benefits of collaboration, and give them recognition when they’ve done something great. This will help push them toward full acceptance sooner.

Keep Collaborating
Even though a project is complete doesn’t mean you can stop collaborating in your organization. Continue collaborating on all projects and even internal processes so everyone feels involved in all parts of the business.

When you and your team take the necessary steps toward collaboration, make sure you are making the most of it by continuing to collaborate effectively as a team. Just as the name implies, team collaboration works best when the entire team is working together.