Named the Best Management Book of 2021 by
strategy+business
Named one of "this month's top titles" in the
Financial Times
in September 2021
Named to the longlist for the 2021 Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award in the Management & Culture category
A plan for conquering collaborative overload to drive performance and innovation, reduce burnout, and enhance well-being.
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
Beyond Collaboration Overload
, Babson professor Rob Cross solves this paradox by showing how top performers who thrive at work collaborate in a more purposeful way that 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
Through landmark research with more than 300 organizations, in-depth stories, and tools,
will coach you to reclaim close to a day a week when you:
Identify and challenge beliefs
that lead you to collaborate too quickly
Impose structure
in your work to prevent unproductive collaboration
Alter behaviors
to create more efficient collaboration
It then outlines how successful people invest this reclaimed time to:
Cultivate a broad network
—not a big one—for innovation and scale
Energize others
—a strong predictor of high performance
Connect with others
to reduce micro-stressors and
enhance physical and mental well-being
Cross' framework provides relief from the definitive problem of our age—dysfunctional collaboration at the expense of our performance, health and overall well-being.