Process: Collaboration

“Organizations…often develop barriers that hinder information sharing and collaboration. … The job of a leader is to spot these barriers and tear them down….”—Morten T. Hansen

Organizations differ in their ability to collaborate within and across teams and business units. A unique combination of organizational, cultural, and interpersonal barriers to collaboration afflicts any organization that is experiencing difficulty collaborating. Therefore, to assess their organization’s ability to collaborate, leaders must first determine what barriers to collaboration exist within their organization. One effective way of doing this is to conduct a survey to identify which of the behaviors that hinder collaboration commonly occur within their organization.

Once leaders understand what dysfunctional behaviors are preventing their people and teams from collaborating effectively, they must tailor solutions to address the specific barriers to collaboration that exist within their organization. They must motivate their people to change the behaviors that are preventing or diminishing the success of collaboration within and across teams and business units.

In this column, I’ll describe some common organizational, cultural, and interpersonal barriers to collaboration and provide solutions for overcoming them. To create a culture of collaboration, an organization must overcome these barriers. Read More

Not all Customer Success executives have had the opportunity to experience deep dives with UX researchers and designers to see how the magic is made. I consider myself lucky to have worked with world-class UX teams at companies such as LinkedIn, Cisco, and Coursera. But the unpopular reality for UX professionals is that the success of a product hinges heavily on factors beyond the platform—no matter how well thought out the design is. With increasing frequency, companies are coming up with solutions with Customer Education, in ways that are dissociated from the UX team.

Customer Education is a relatively new function that is typically a part of a Customer Success (CS) or Customer Marketing organization. Their goal is to provide proactive communications and resources that change behaviors, enabling users to gain maximal value from the solutions they’ve purchased. However, it is rare for the Customer Education team and the UX team to collaborate. In fact, in the State of Customer Success 2023 Survey, User Experience didn’t make the top-10 list of departments that CS partners with. Read More

A good onboarding team brings together people with many different talents, as follows:

• planners—Product managers map out the user journey and UX designers design the experience.
• UX designers—This team makes the onboarding process visually appealing and easy to understand and use.
• writers—They craft clear instructions and helpful messages.
• user researchers—This team endeavors to understand what users need and how they feel about the onboarding process.
• customer-support representatives—These people work directly with users to help them if they get stuck.
• data analysts—They track the ways in which users interact with the onboarding process.
• technology developers—This team builds the actual onboarding tools and features.
• project manager—This person oversees the entire onboarding project and makes sure everything works well together.

When everyone works together collaboratively to help new users get started, they can create a smooth, friendly experience for new users. They talk regularly with each other, share common goals, and follow the same plan, enabling them to adjust things throughout the project, as necessary, and make the users’ first experience even better. Read More