Optimizing Performance: Beyond Collaboration Overload

Optimizing Performance: Beyond Collaboration Overload, by Prof Rob Cross 2pm on the 23^rd February 2022. 

Most organizations have created always-on work contexts that are burning people out and hurting performance rather than delivering productivity, innovation and engagement. Collaborative work consumes 85% of employees' time and is drifting earlier into the morning, later into the night, and deeper into the weekend. The dilemma is that we all need to collaborate more to create effective organizations and vibrant careers for ourselves. But conventional wisdom on teamwork and collaboration has created too much of the wrong kind of collaboration, which hurts our performance, health and overall well-being.  In a recent book Professor Cross demonstrates how top performers, those who thrive at work, collaborate in a more purposeful way.  This makes them 18-24% more efficient than their peers. Good collaborators are distinguished by the efficiency and intentionality of their collaboration--not the size of their network or the length of their workday.   

Professor Rob Cross is Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College, he is also the co-founder and director of the Connected Commons, a consortium of over 100 leading organizations accelerating network research and practice.  He is the author of over 50 articles for Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, Academy of Management Executive and Organizational Dynamics. His work has also been repeatedly featured in the business press in venues such as Business Week, Fortune, The Financial Times, Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.