How Well Do You Work With Other Fish?

Monday, December 11, 2017


Does collaboration play a role in your business?

The EPA is concerned about how well salmon farmers could deal with a mass fish mortality event. The problem is that certain environmental conditions such as low water oxygenation could cause a mass mortality event in Tasmania’s fish farms.

A recent virus outbreak killed some 50,000 juvenile salmon but, with around 12,000 tonnes of Salmon in Macquarie Harbour, a larger mortality event could turn into a serious environmental disaster. The Tasmanian Salmonid Growers Association (TGSA) has organised a think-tank to work towards a viable solution involving the EPA and Tasmania’s Salmon producers.

Wes Ford, Director of the EPA, felt the joint collaboration was invaluable, as "we can have a discussion about shared resources, see what's available and also each of the companies can understand what the contingency plans of the other companies are."

The Salmon companies agreed that the collaborative approach was a much more effective way to deal with issues that all the companies are facing.

Why is collaboration essential in your business?

Sometimes we’re so immersed in maintaining trade secrets, protecting our IP, optimising our cost/ profit margins, even getting involved in price wars that we lose sight of our essential purpose: providing value in our products and services to our customers.

Equally importantly, a business model with no room for collaboration can also lead to a dogfish eats dogfish approach in relationships within your organisation. While competition can be a great thing, fostering a fierce, survival of the fittest mentality can set up some unhelpful patterns within departments and across the organisation.

When your teamwork starts to suffer and you begin to notice those telltale signs of office backbiting and underhand verbal slights (or worse) then it’s probably time to introduce a more collaborative, team-building ethos.

Talk to us and let’s see how we can help you change your business approach.