CollaborWriting™
How business-building insights actually build business
Every Marketer’s Nightmare
You have a vision for where a company can go, but you hopelessly abandon it because the organization is so chaotic there is no chance it could get adopted or implemented.
Or you spend months and thousands of dollars on research to uncover a competitive advantage you can exploit. Then you invest weeks and more money planning an offsite for your project team to finalize a marketing plan to exploit it. Finally, you assemble the finance, manufacturing, and sales teams to unveil and help implement the plan. All is set to ensure success!
But the research is dismissed by those not previously involved for failing to include their issues. Insights from the research fail to be translated into action programs in the marketing plan. Progress is stalemated by political in-fighting between the agents of change and the defenders of the status-quo. Staff retreat to defend their departmental fiefdoms. Eventually, your opportunity to create a competitive advantage fades away…
Sound like a bad dream? Unfortunately, it is a story repeated every day in marketing departments in every industry. In the immortal words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy… and he is us!”
What CollaborWriting™ Does
How CollaborWriting™ Works
CollaborWriting™ is a powerful planning process that enables you to harness a team’s collective brainpower as well as its willpower. The process works with a combination of focused face-to-face group interaction with intuitive groupware on networked PCs for speedy, simultaneous, candid written communication.
CollaborWriting™ provides a clear and flexible planning process for one to three dozen contributors over one to several days, even when separated by locations or time.
Even complex situations can be analyzed by engaging the 360° thinking of a multi-disciplinary group working together, rather than in competition. Everyone leaves the session with a plan in hand – printed documentation of the decision path taken to the final outcome.
How CollaborWriting™ Increases Team Productivity
- Speeds team processing with groupware that allows everyone to contribute and process simultaneously, rather than waiting for every individual to address the group sequentially.
- Cuts planning time at least in half by eliminating numerous unproductive, morale-draining meetings, leaving more time for action.
- Raises the quality of thinking through anonymous input that focuses participants on the quality of ideas rather than on who contributed them.
- Transforms ‘nice ideas’ into bullet-proof action plans by allowing thorough, candid 360°evaluation, refinement, and improvement of initial ideas by all decision-makers and implementers.
- Builds team cohesion and project momentum through anonymous input that avoids traditional battle lines between agency and client or among client divisions, building enthusiasm as the team exceeds their expectations.
How CollaborWriting™ Builds Your Team
When team members blow past their pre-conceptions of what they can accomplish, they are transformed into a powerful force for change. This on-the-job team building has a binding effect that’s as important as the plan produced.
The CollaborWriting™ process powers you to translate market insights into marketing action… It’s how business-building insights can actually build business.
What Clients Say about It
“Working with Insighting Ideas and CollaborWriting™ was innovative, efficient, and quite valuable. They created a safe, non-threatening environment for all team members to offer their honest opinions and ideas – even from different cultures. Our offsite had ambitious goals, yet in just two days, we were able to get input from all constituencies and craft realistic goals and plans of action. It was a very rewarding experience.” – Rob Lightner, VP, Business Development, Sega America