8 Ways to Improve Collaboration in the Roofing Industry

You and your employees/co-workers all work for the same company and share common business goals (revenue, profits, jobs per month, etc.), but your drastically different individual roles (and in some cases different offices or locations) can easily prevent you from coming together and collaborating. The perspectives of colleagues in different functions like service/repair, new construction, project management, marketing, accounting, estimating, etc. may prove to be valuable though.

Collaboration is an essential business activity that is often overlooked in the roofing industry. The bottom line is that the employees of your company can not operate effectively in individual silos - they need to work seamlessly across the various functions. Leadership should ensure employees are working across functions to accomplish the company's goals and put less emphasis on organizational structure and hierarchy.

One thing to keep in mind is that when it comes to collaboration, more is not better. There is a right way to collaborate and a wrong way to collaborate. My challenge to you is to figure out and implement the right way to do this for your particular company.

To get you started, here are some tips on getting collaboration right:

1. Collaboration is not about gaining consensus. Encourage debate among everyone involved, but make sure you have defined decision-making responsibilities.
2. Not all collaboration is good. Ensure the benefits outweigh any potential costs (like time and resources).
3. Don't reinvent the wheel! Leverage your network (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or even ask RoofPal to survey annonymously on your behalf) to see if similar work has already been done elsewhere.
4. Recognize where you'll get the greatest value from collaboration. Three key areas to focus on include innovation, customers and efficiency.
5. Build your network out further. Come up with ideas for 'building bridges' into different geographies, industry functions or related businesses.
6. Share goals across other functions of your company to identify where you can combine efforts to create mutual value.
7. Create a shared goal that is simple, concrete and stirs passion.
8. Recognize and reward. Everything from a simple 'thank you' to a happy hour or lunch with the boss to your annual employee review/bonus process are ways you can reinforce the value of collaboration.

If you have any questions about or would like assistance with improving collaboration in your roofing company, please email Chris@RoofPal.com.