“We need better collaboration.” That phrase is hard to deny in any corporate setting but what exactly does it mean and is it any more important now than it was in the past? Here are several reasons why I believe collaboration in business today is more of a survival trait than a buzzword:

The supply chain of work is getting longer. Getting any product or service into the market is the result of a much larger set of people, organizations, places and processes than before; a dizzying number of interfaces with people who all seem to speak a unique dialect – even within the same company: finance, legal, HR, engineers, marketers and so on. They are quite independent in how they see and speak about the world and yet wholly dependent upon each other to get anything done. The more moving parts required to get work done, the more chance there is of creating confusion, rework, variance and other inefficiencies. The only known remedy is structured communication (aka collaboration) across the supply chain.

Teams are global, the workplace is virtual. The more multicultural, multilingual, multinational you are, the harder it is to achieve knowledge exchange and timely decision-making. You may not be in a global organization but telephone, email, video conferencing, web meeting, smart phones and real-time messaging have allowed the under-one-roof workplace to diffuse into a loosely-joined workforce. Even when in close proximity we may not be together. How many of us send email or chat over messenger to a colleague down the hall? As our organizations slowly diffuse across time zones and space, collaboration is a glue to keep people together.

The world of the future will not be served by the organization of the past. The delineations that allowed us to have very separate functions within an organization (R&D, Marketing, PR, Product Development, Customer Service etc.) and across the entire value chain of stakeholders begins to break down when the customer’s view of your company becomes the prevailing reality. With the customer’s new-found communications power that is exactly what is taking place today. Any weakness across the complex customer relationship is potentially exposed to the world. You may have a brilliant marketing campaign but if the product is a loser – you are lost. You may have a brilliant product but if your customer support is appalling, your potential buyers will be forewarned. Therefore any planning exercise in one silo will necessarily require collaboration with the others to have any chance of success.

While the drivers that make collaboration vital are technical, the solutions are not. Collaboration is, at its root, a social activity. It is founded on generosity, sharing and openness. As such collaboration begins in organizational culture.