building a Culture of Collaboration

To thrive in a complex and volatile world, organizations require collaboration. Most team building approaches, though, don’t help. They may make people feel good, but they don’t develop the sustainable collaborative skills and capabilities your business needs. That’s where we come in.

Based on 8 years of research and development in one of the world’s largest and most successful global organizations, we define collaboration differently. It’s not about feel-good teambuilding. Instead we approach teamwork as a set of specific, learnable disciplines and practices. Teams and their leaders are enabled and empowered to take ownership of the quality and effectiveness of their collaboration. They learn to rely more on themselves and less on consultants and the latest team building fads.

It’s about igniting a culture of collaboration across your organization. We’ll work with you to:

• Clarify the values, mindsets and behaviors needed to bring your culture of collaboration to life throughout your organization.
• Consider and recommend the technologies and approaches needed to support on-going powerful, value-adding collaboration.
• Build an implementation and change plan to bring it all together.
• Implement your plan to ensure that your culture of collaboration takes root and grows. This includes leading senior team collaboration workshops, train-the-trainer and train-the-facilitator workshops, and on-going consulting and advising.

Building Collaboration Capability

Your teams are committed to building effective collaboration but the time and money they’re investing in team building isn't showing up in better results. We can help you change that.

Our approach is based on 8 years of research and development in one of the world’s largest and most successful global organizations. We will work with you to develop internal capability for supporting teams to ensure the entire organization sees a positive return on your investment in team effectiveness. You can count on us to:

• Provide a research-based team framework along with proven tools delivered by seasoned consultants.
• Prepare selected individuals to be internal collaboration experts using a tested train-the-trainer approach paired with active follow-up and coaching.

• Prepare your cohort of team coaches and facilitators to teach teams and their leaders the skills and techniques they need to cultivate and sustain effective teamwork and enhance your organization’s performance.

INtact team consulting

Typical team building approaches can be fun, even enlightening. But, they do little to enhance and sustain more effective, results-focused collaboration. We'll work with you and your team using a researched and tested approach, applying the practices and tools we've developed that will:

• Clarify how your team's collaborative efforts align with broader business needs and strategy. 
• Guide the team to clarity about how their collaboration will create value not only for the business, but for the team as a collective and for every team member. 
• Identify the specific work within the team that requires collaboration and that which is better left to individuals. 
• Help team members to contract for how and with whom they'll collaborate, creating a higher level of accountability for their collaborative commitments.
• Ensure that team meetings are 100% aligned with the team's collaborative commitments, significantly reducing time wasted on non-essential meeting conversations.
• Instill a spirit of on-going team learning and growth, the only sustainable kind of team spirit.

keynote speaking

Sometimes people need a jolt; to be confronted with ideas that challenge the conventional wisdom and get them thinking differently. The insights from our research into teams and teamwork found that typical approaches to team building are ineffective. They also pointed to a new, different and more effective approach. Carlos Valdes-Dapena will share his insights and fresh approach to team effectiveness in a style that is informative, engaging and enjoyable. His presentation may be just what your group or organization needs at this point if:

• Your current efforts at team building aren't delivering results and you're thinking about a new way forward.
• You haven't yet focused on collaborative effectiveness and want to get people excited about it.
• You plan to kick off an organization-wide initiative to build a culture of collaboration and want to start with a high-energy, engaging session. 

Keynotes vary in length from 30 minutes to an hour and can be customized to fit your specific needs.