The Tribe Report 9. The Collaboration Issue | Page 6

FINDING THE ROUND TABLE How Three Very Different Companies Help Employees Collaborate More Easily BY STEPHEN BURNS Amex OPEN is the small-business card of American Express. Providing small-business owners with quick, responsive and comprehensive service is no easy task, but Gina Principato, Senior Manager, Top Client Strategy and Field Effectiveness, and her team’s work behind the scenes allow it to all happen smoothly. “OPEN deals with a lot of cross-functional collaboration,” she explains, “Marketing, Acquisitions, Finance, Legal, HR and everyone else have to work together well. You can’t get anything done if you don’t engage all of these parts of the organization.” Businesses of all shapes and sizes use OPEN, so employees have to be ready for anything. It takes a certain type of culture for such spontaneous collaboration to happen. They need to be accessible, mobile and up to date. “A lot of our collaboration isn’t structured. We have smaller teams that invest in each project, and we assemble teams on the spot based on the nature of the work. If we could incorporate the information from the project into training, we want someone from HR on the team. If there’s a tech component, we call in someone from Capabilities.” Amex OPEN manages this open, flexible environment and facilitates collaboration in a number of ways to ensure everyone is always on the same page. They host crossdepartmental events, and American Express offers BlueWorks, a customized virtual work environment. 6 | TRIBE REPORT www.tribeinc.com