Recently, I read an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review entitled, "Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams." The article was based on a study that examined 55 teams across 15 multinational companies, and provides valuable insight into the primary drivers of strong teamwork and high levels of collaboration. Both collaboration and teamwork are vital if your organization plans to run effectively and efficiently. So, with that in mind, I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight the eight key factors in building collaborative teams. As laid out in the article, the eight factors are:

What follows it a blog posted on Dan Pink's website and reposted here with permission. Dan is speaking at our upcoming Mission Driven Summit. Here is a link to the original post. Here's a tip for rounding out your summer reading. Pick up a copy of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. The book, which pubs today, is one of the best business books I've read in many years. (Buy it at Amazon, BN, or 8CR).

Peel back almost any case study of a failed organization, and you'll see, more than anything else, an example of a failure of alignment. Alignment, at its simplest, is the entire organization working towards a common goal. It seems so simple, but in practice is really difficult to achieve. Why is this? Is it just some perverse quirk of human nature? Or can alignment happen?

I'm a big fan of Monty Python, and a big fan of spiced canned meat, but I have to say that I'm not a big fan of random spam that comes to me (and other unfortunate blog owners) via comment spam. We've tried using CAPTCHA codes to slow them down, we've tried blacklisting IP addresses, and it's just a battle you can't win. Most of the spam doesn't even make any sense! So, effective today, we're moderating comments on this site. So, yes, I will still get to enjoy the crazy comments, but hopefully I can spare some of you. Continue past the break for the eponymous skit.

Does everyone in your organization clearly understand the organizational strategy and how they fit into it? Employees want to know where they fit into the overall strategy, and how their roles contribute to the success of the organization. A clear understanding of the organizational strategy is fundamental to achieving goals and objectives. The key to developing this understanding at all levels of an organization is effective communication. When implementing the Balanced Scorecard, the scope of an organization's internal communication can make or break the efforts.

OK, I forgot to finish my story about my plane flight and the nice woman who was so poorly introduced to the Balanced Scorecard by her University. Well, it turns out that she did have some established goals in her department, and at the end of the year, she was evaluated on these goals as well as several other measures as part of her Balanced Scorecard review. She said "it would have been nice if they would have told me what they were measuring before they gave me the evaluation." I responded, in a very sophisticated manner, "Duh!"