Improved collaboration is a business imperative – to develop and implement strategy, to leverage existing capabilities and knowledge, to innovate, be more resilient in a rapidly changing environment and to reduce costs. Creating communities of practice is one of the key ways to build collaboration, but there are other important dimensions leaders and managers need to know to systematically build a collaboration capability.

If you’re in the business of business, whether in the public or private sectors, you need to know about collaboration. Collaboration activities are ongoing in every organisation. Yet according to a recent Economic Intelligence Unit survey most collaborative activities are not completely successful because collaborators fail to establish a deep sense of trust among themselves. Then there’s also lack of clarity on roles, support etc. There’s a whole gamut of things one needs to pay attention to. Unfortunately, this is not an area they cover in business school.

We’ve learnt a lot about collaboration techniques in our journey and are keen to share some ideas about how organisations can make their workplace more collaborative. Given this, we are pleased to announce a new workshop called Building a Collaborative Workplace. The workshop is running in Canberra on 28 April and four other capitals later in the year. Go here to register.

We’ll be discussing issues such as:

• the various types of collaboration
• roles required to foster and sustain collaborative behaviors and practices
• getting the most from your collaboration tools
• starting and sustaining communities of practice
• helping leaders foster a collaborative culture

And, of course, we will be providing many examples and stories to illustrate these issues.