For executives hoping to promote cost-effective collaboration between different silos at their organization, here’s a simple tip: Pair technology or organizational experts with others who excel at ideas.

An inexpensive and downloadable tool such as Skype or Dropbox can help do the trick, once it is clear the programs work with your IT systems. Once that is the case, both tools (and others like them) can make it easy for teammates to communicate and share documents and ideas for all kinds of projects, notes Heidi Gardner, faculty chair of the Accelerated Leadership Program at Harvard Law School.

Gardner, writing online for Harvard Business Review, added that unconventional parings on a team work well too, such as putting a “technology whiz” together with a team member who doesn’t know how to use the IT collaboration tools very well.

Gardner cited Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as an example of how to do this. The research hospital pairs experts from a wide variety of disciplines. Team co-leaders often handle administrative tasks, and the “superstar researcher” took on the “thought leadership role,” freed from worrying about technological issues. By keeping in mind those varying skills, collaboration becomes easier and not a financial or time burden, Gardner wrote.

Gardner offers other tips on how to get people from different silos at your organization to collaborate, and you can read more about those here.

Source: Harvard Business Review