Technological advances and pervasive use of the Internet influence every aspect of business operations. While keeping pace is a daunting task, companies have a secret weapon all around them.

Businesses operating at warp speed can create the ideal environment and opportunity to cultivate dynamic business leaders - and vastly upgrade overall leadership. In successful ones, functional silos have been smart-bombed by the one weapon giving them the ability to exploit change and stay ahead of the pack.

It's executive collaboration. And now is the best time to see the organization follow suit.

When people learn together how to better share new information and knowledge, they are collaborating - and quickly adopting a single, unified vision of business strategy and success. Melding functional business perspectives offers competitive advantages too.

Companies that embrace executive collaboration are renowned for executive teams that:

* Share similar priorities
* Jointly understand what's critical that needs to be accomplished
* Move as one and in the same direction
* Mutually gain a broader, more comprehensive view of the needs of their customers
* Better position their organizations for growth and speed, despite a shifting marketplace
* Develop bigger breakthrough innovations.

There's little doubt that a true collaborative spirit among an executive group must include all areas of the business: sales, marketing, IT, customer service, human resources, operations, finance and more. 

So exactly how does a company achieve superior executive collaboration?

Here are eight rules to help leaders understand a successful model:

#1 - Get grounded on a singular point of view: that the team's focus must be meeting the needs of the customer and helping each one of them attain stated goals. No "yes, but" people are allowed. No personal or hidden agendas. No compromises.

#2 - Seize executive ownership. For example, guarantee that what marketing learns about customer needs is intelligence that's known and used by everyone in the business to create a better customer experience.

#3 - Anticipate customer needs lying beyond ordinary response to their expressed need. The executive team must focus on "what's possible" before customers do.

#4 - Agree that there's no playbook to follow. The group must invent it and re-invent it as they go. Collaborating on key priorities will drive business success no matter how fast the marketplace is changing.

#5 - Be fast. In communicating. In responding. In achieving improvements. In measuring.

#6 - Be fluid. Cross-communication is the key to better collaboration. Remember that silos are for barnyards not businesses.

#7 - Be flexible. If one or more of the executives has a better idea to improve collaboration than is being practiced, forget egos. Build the better mousetrap.

#8 - Be focused. Consider creating cross-functional teams with responsibility to carry executive collaboration into the organization - on a focused track.

One more point: whether the business is a small company wanting to accelerate growth or a larger one struggling with staying agile, taking a more collaborative approach to executive leadership creates a whole that's much greater than the sum of its parts.

Bring the organization's best talents and experiences to bear. By doing so, the company will enjoy an unmatched level of collaboration and stay on the right track to success in today's rapidly changing business environment.

Adapted from article by Angela Hribar, GlobalSpec Inc. (http://www.globalspec.com)