Photo: Findaphoto

This collaboration idea will literally move you to greater business success and will ensure IT (Information Technology) is a part of the strategic business conversation.

In “The Easiest Way to Get Your Team to Collaborate” Sam Shank, CEO and Co-Founder, HotelTonight, shared the successes of a “desk swap day, where people traded desks with colleagues on a different team.”

Overall, this idea was well-received by most HotelTonight employees. When reading the comments posted on this story, I noticed many people asked how this idea could effectively work for an IT team.

The best way to implement this idea for IT is to already have IT employees co-located with other business teams. This leads to positive relationships between IT and other areas of the business and improved collaboration, which leads to greater business success.

For example, in “How CIOs Build Bridges with Other C-Level Execs,” Leslie Jones, Senior Vice President and CIO at Motorola Solutions, talked about the success of “embedding IT staff in business functions, or instituting functional rotations to familiarize staff with other parts of the company. Now they are part of their business operations teams, determining strategies and plans for new customer services along with the other leaders in those groups. And then those teams turn to IT to help execute those plans.”

Here are some other resources to help focus IT on greater business success:

• “Journey to the Future-State CIO” by CIO Executive Council
• “State of the CIO 2014: The Great Schism” by Kim S. Nash

Need help creating and managing high-performing integrated communications and learning systems for your IT professionals? Contact me at peggy@starrybluebrilliance.com to discuss how we can collaborate to create masterpiece communications for your organization.