1. You would remember that we talked about Interdepartmental collaboration in our last Sunday Digest. Today we would like to embellish it a little.
2. Inter-departmental collaboration is an indispensable aspect of team building. It happens pre-eminently in the context of shared values and shared information. Yes, since no Staff is expected to work in silos, and also no unit or department, it presupposes that work ‘ related information, professional insights, and subject matter expertise, must be shared among Staff in related and interconnected areas of work.
3. For example, there is an essential link between the Finance Unit, the Grants, and the Audit Unit including the HR unit. In standard practice, the Audit unit is the watchdog of the entire system, ensuring that due processes are observed in all financial transactions. It does a pre- and a post-audit of all financial transactions, to prevent the occurrence of fraud. The Grants unit pay due attention to issues of compliance. Finance Unit for instance, collaborates with the Audit unit to ensure a seamless process. There would be chaos if these three units do not collaborate in an efficient manner.
4. The same is true with collaboration with the HR unit. All financial transactions concerning the Staff goes to Finance after audit processes for payment. The system would have been compromised if these units are at loggerheads.
5. The Admin Unit coordinates all admin processes, arising from all the units. It takes responsibility to organise and ensure that all training, meetings, procurements, logistics, productions, etc are timely executed. Therefore, there should be none of these activities, that do not pass through the admin unit. In case one is not sure of how some of those processes happen, kindly ask the necessary questions and seek clarifications.
5.The Business Development unit is responsible for proposal development, prospecting for new grants and building networks among funders. The unit collaborates with other units is putting forward requests and applications. It cannot work in isolation. It depends on inputs from other units, while it pushes out via the Communication department our articulated concerns.
6. The Communication unit, in its own right, including knowledge management, and research and development units are deeply interconnected. They cannot afford to work at cross purposes. The Communication unit for example warehouses Caritas Nigeria’s institutional memories. She communicates to the world all that Caritas Nigeria is doing and how she is living. All units of Caritas Nigeria, therefore, are inexorably linked to the communications units.
7. We can go on ad infinitum, to elaborate on the interconnedness of the units with one another. That explains why we work in teams in pursuit of a common goal. Subsequently, we would find time to harp more on the possible challenges that could arise, as a result of the interconnections.
Meanwhile, let us try to minimize the occasions of misunderstanding and conflicts as we work to deliver on our mandates.
