Not leveraging the power of collaboration is losing your company money every day. All too often, collaboration has lived in a company’s VMV (Vision/Mission/Value) statements as a core philosophy, but not daily reality. Smart leaders know that collaboration is a vital part of business, but what they often don’t know is…

Collaboration is a highly profitable part of the Millennial DNA.

Millennials grew up playing on teams. From the time they could swing a bat or kick a ball they played on a sports team where the measurement was a group one, not just an individual accomplishment. Millennials have been creating spontaneous teams for everything from school work, to volunteering to serve and make a difference to creating a start-up business online.

They are comfortable pulling together virtual and real-time teams of talented individuals they have never met, but know have the right skills to get the job done.

It can be uncomfortable for managers to deal with the organic, fast-past, egalitarian nature of Millennials’ collaboration style. Millennials don’t start with the traditional titles and tenure as the qualifying factors of who should be selected and who has the permission to lead. They jump in and get started in a cacophony of action that accepts that mistakes will be made, but crowd sourcing intelligence will solve or resolve them quickly. By engaging not only the identified team members, but also their extended network of resources that are just a text, tweet or Facebook post  away, Millennials are confident they can come out on top. And if you let them, they’ll take you with them.

How are you using collaboration (or not)?

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