How to improve interdepartmental collaboration.

For a business to succeed, all departments need to work together effectively. Learn how to promote interdepartmental collaboration and efficiency in your organization.

What is interdepartmental collaboration?

Interdepartmental collaboration is when people with specific expertise work together to complete a project or achieve a common goal. For many modern businesses, these multi-departmental experts might be in different locations — from the other side of the building to across the country and even the globe.

To help your business thrive, it’s essential that you put in place an effective process that ensures those various departments can work together.

Common interdepartmental collaboration challenges.

Effective collaboration among different departments within an organization is essential for achieving business objectives and fostering innovation. However, it is not always as simple as it seems. Challenges can arise and create blockers across teams. To overcome these obstacles, it’s important to identify and address them proactively. Here are some common challenges to be on the lookout for so that you can learn how to improve interdepartmental collaboration:

• Communication barriers. Inadequate communication channels, different communication styles, and a lack of clear information can lead to misunderstandings.
• Silos. Some departments tend to isolate themselves, leading to a lack of transparency and a reluctance to share resources or ideas.
• Misaligned goals. If you have different objectives and priorities between different departments, this can lead to competition rather than collaboration.
• Resource constraints. Limited resources can constrain support for cross-departmental initiatives, resulting in resource allocation disputes.
• Resistance to change. Employees may resist changes in processes or technologies that impact collaboration.
• Lack of accountability. Without having clearly defined ownership and accountability for collaborative projects, tasks may end up being overlooked, and responsibility can become ambiguous.

5 tips on how to improve interdepartmental collaboration.

It’s not always easy to foster collaboration, but it’s something all businesses need to do well. Here are a few tips to help you with interdepartmental collaboration:

1. Create a collaborative culture. Department members are more likely to collaborate when it’s ingrained in the company culture. Build trust by creating an environment that promotes collaboration with meetings, team-building activities, and regular follow-ups.
2. Define communication channels and methods. Give your employees a space to collaborate by defining the right channels and methods to communicate.
3. Use collaboration tools. Project management and communication software are powerful collaboration tools to ensure your departments are on the same page with projects, no matter how far apart they are.
4. Share feedback. Listen to what your team members say about interdepartmental work. They’ll tell you what works and, more importantly, what doesn’t work so you can make changes to optimize team collaboration.
5. Celebrate wins. Recognize and celebrate successful collaborative efforts.

Interdepartmental collaboration vs interdepartmental communication.

Interdepartmental collaboration involves different teams working together to achieve shared goals, often sharing resources and decision-making. Meanwhile, interdepartmental communication focuses more on exchanging information, updates, and insights between teams. While they are different, in the end, effective collaboration relies on good communication, and communication is made better through collaboration. Both are essential for efficient teamwork and achieving common objectives within an organization.

Interdepartmental collaboration tools for smoother approval.

Another way to improve interdepartmental collaboration is through the use of collaborative tools. Projects that go through multiple departments typically require authorization from several parties. Instead of dealing with printers, scanners, and fax machines to add signatures to documents, use software that allows electronic or digital signatures, like Adobe Acrobat.

Electronic signatures let department managers sign documents digitally with the click of a button. This makes it easy for projects to move down the line and promotes interdepartmental collaboration.

Discover more about what Acrobat can do to help you create an effective work environment for your departments.