Innovative leaders know the value of collaboration and the multiple benefits that come from working with others to achieve goals that improve the customer experience. The resulting benefits of such interactions provide a space for problem-solving and allow people to learn from one another. Collaborating is often encouraging, resulting in increased productivity. Being in diverse groups increases an organization's potential for successful change and awareness of different viewpoints.

Promote Collaborative Teams Across Departments

Innovative leaders

• • Know that when you win, we all win. Form cross-functional teams to synergize innovation throughout an airport, using this collaboration to infuse innovation into its culture. Make the most of such collaborative encounters and build from them to reach greater potential. When cross-functional teams come together, it's a win-win scenario for the entire organization. For more on this subject, see How People in Business Functions Impact a Culture of Innovation in Chapter 3. Use cross-functional teams to keep information flowing and new ideas coming. More information on how this is done can be found in Play 6: Develop an Innovation Mindset.

One cloud-based software maker encourages its programmers to write software in pairs. The company believes this motivates employees and inspires them to meet the goals and objectives of the company. Further, they say it also provides a safety net to test, experiment, and fix code in a collaborative manner. Partners rotate and work within larger teams to ensure that everyone in the company is exposed to new perspectives regularly.¹

Promote Collaborative Relationships with Outside Partners

Innovative leaders know that when their employees collaborate with external partners, these connections can lead to amazing results. And while it may be tempting to only consider external partners within the aviation industry, innovative leaders know there is a huge benefit to reaching out to other lines of business too. Whether collaborating with other airport-oriented businesses or other community partners, this type of collaboration can have stunning results for your customers and the services you provide.

Innovative leaders

• Close the gap. Find ways to collaborate with industry partners, like airlines, aviation-related government agencies, concessionaires, ground transportation, fixed-base operators, and even other airports that are focused on how to improve the customer experience. Collectively, these collaborations can create a meaningful and positive impact on the customer experience. Also set up collaboration sessions with passengers to understand service inadequacies that may exist and to educate customers about the unique environment that is airports.
• Are community-centric. Recognize the importance of connecting and collaborating with community partners. By collaborating with nearby businesses, multimodal industries, start-up technology companies, colleges or universities, and local innovators, new ideas can be generated that that may result in new revenue streams and jobs with new skill sets. The airport is a huge economic generator for communities; when the airport makes local connections, the community wins.