There is an adage that says that “two heads are better than one” – it is no rocket-science, the possibilities when there are three or more. This expression comes in handy as advice and as a key tool for businesses. As a business owner and all-round growth – the power of collaboration cannot be over-emphasized.
Collaboration offers many benefits to a vast array of subject matter as it involves the coming together of individual strengths to complement the weaknesses that exist on both ends in a bid to achieve a common goal. As a business and more succinctly as humans we have imperfections which could be used as a drive to enable and challenge us to attain perfection, through others – one of the many reasons we are social beings.
In application to businesses, each business has its value propositions and elements that make it different from competitors but in like fashion, there are things that a business competitor possess that give their business an edge and vice versa. From a better online presence to better customer service, or something as simple as understanding client’s needs – these strengths could be peculiar to your competitor’s business or a business in a different niche but absent from yours, due to several factors. There are a plethora of remedies for such situations but the cost implications and valuable resources used to implement them can be channelled to collaborating with the business which could bring the same or much better results.
Most businesses want to do it all on their own and unknowingly sabotage and run their businesses down or out. Take, for instance, a new start-up that cooks and delivers food to working-class individuals. Their value proposition is easing the burden of early morning meal preps or long searches for good food-spot during lunch breaks – this is specifically what their business is about. We, however, find that in a bid to deliver the orders the business owners also take up the responsibility of hand-delivering to each office. A smarter way to navigate this business to prevent burn-out especially at the early stages and to ensure optimal performance would be to partner or collaborate with a logistics company – no matter how basic the agreements. For one, it saves the business time and gives room to deliver quality and for the logistics company, an additional clientele base that they might have not had the opportunity of getting, considering they also belong to the start-up category. Collaboration fosters and enables start-ups to achieve more in less time, giving rise to better performance, efficiency, and effectiveness on the business front. It also allows the business to focus on only the important things.
A form of collaboration is evident and optimized in the concept of business automation and more traditionally, out-sourcing. Many things business owners traditionally spent time on are now being managed by software and automated programming – things they otherwise invested valuable time, effort and financial capacity to achieve on their own in the past. It also factors in the act of out-sourcing especially for the financial auditing and human resources part of a business. There are many private entities whose primary focus is to handle these aspects for businesses – engage them.
To put this into perspective, to fasten your processes or to grow and develop your business or to have time to focus on the creative aspects, and achieve more, collaboration is a crucial tool in the right direction.
