Rob Cross - Beyond Collaboration Overload: How to Work Smarter, Get Ahead, and Restore Your Well-Being

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My long list of heartfelt thanks begins with the Connected Commons, the consortium I cofounded as a way to help organizations participate in and stay up to date on network research.

The idea for this book goes back to when my colleagues and I were analyzing large networks within Commons member organizations and realized that individual employees and managers desperately needed new collaborative skills to thrive in an environment of ever-escalating work intensity. Once the idea for the book got rolling, member organizations supported the research in two vital ways: first, they provided tremendously valuable resources, allowing me to conduct massive quantitative network analyses and to interview more than five hundred executives in a series of qualitative studies. I am grateful to all those interviewees for letting me into their thoughts and experiences.

Just as important, the Commons organizations constantly challenged my thinking, pushing me to come up with insights that were not only academically interesting but also relevant to their struggling employees and managers. Practically every page of this book can be traced back to a conversation or an Aha! moment in a discussion with people connected to the Commons. I am aware that this kind of fruitful, long-term collaboration is exceedingly rare. Access to the Commons resources and brain trust is a gift that goes beyond anything I ever anticipated when I began studying networks years ago.

Though there are far too many people in the Commons to call out by name (and I ask everyones forgiveness for this), I would like to thank a number of individuals who have formed the inner working group of the Commons over the years. Deb Zehner has provided tireless support to the Commons in many ways, big and smallher work has been central to its successand to me as a researcher and writer. Her intellectual contributions underpin the chapters on collaborative overload. Similarly, Greg Pryor has been a nonstop source of intellectual contribution, creativity, and energy since day one of the Commons; many of the ideas in this book were shaped through countless weekend calls where we both found space to think and be creative.

Peter Amidon, Michael Arena, Mike Benson, Inga Carboni, Jim Carling, Arun Chidambaram, Sally Colella, Chris Ernst, Rebecca Garau, Peter Gray, Andrew Parker, Jean Singer, and David Sylvester have been similarly important to the evolution of this work through many, many interactions. My thanks also go to Beth Horowitz Steel, a partner at the strategy consulting and research firm Glenbrook Partners, for her insights into the payments industry, which helped in the drafting of .

On an institutional level, I am deeply indebted to Babson College and many academic colleagues who see the value in rigorous applied research and have created space and support for this work. A wonderful set of corporate advisers has also provided a vibrant interface between the world of academia and practice and helped me focus my research on what matters most to people. In particular, I am extremely grateful for the partnership with the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) and the entire team there. Although there are too many to name, I would like to specifically thank Kevin Oakes for seeing the possibility in the partnership and Carrie Bevis, Kevin Osborne, and Erik Samdahl for their ceaseless efforts and their unflagging belief in this work. I would also like to thank the Innovation Resource Center for Human Resources (IRC4HR), and in particular Jodi Starkman and Hal Burlingame, for their belief in and support of early stages of this work.

Many thanks to the editorial team at Harvard Business Review Press. Melinda Merino was an enthusiastic supporter of the ideas, and my editor at the Press, Scott Berinato, did a wonderful job on idea development, editing, title, jacket design, and exhibit design. I am extremely thankful to Andy OConnell for helping me integrate nearly two decades worth of research into a rich and engaging format, and for his kind and tactful persistence in not letting me take the easier routes at various points in this process.

Most of all, I would like to thank my family. My wife, Deb, has been a constant source of inspiration and support throughout this work. Many of the core ideas in the book were developed in discussions with her. Deb, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me! Thanks also go to my son, Connor, and daughter, Rachelyou have kept me humble and grounded through constant chiding and have taught me a tremendous amount about what to value in relationships. If you are representative of the next generation, then we will all be much better off in the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ROB CROSS is the Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College and the cofounder and research director of the Connected Commons business consortium. For more than twenty years, he has studied the underlying networks of effective organizations and the collaborative practices of high performers. Working with more than three hundred organizations and reaching thousands of leaders from the front line to the C-suite, he has identified specific ways to cultivate vibrant, effective networks at all levels of an organization and any career stage.

He is a renowned thinker, writer, and speaker whose category-defying ideas, courses, and tools have influenced fields as diverse as organizational design, change, collaboration, teams, agility, innovation, and talent optimization. His network strategies for effective collaboration are transforming the way people lead, work, and live in a hyper-connected world.

He has authored six Harvard Business Review articles on practical approaches to enhancing collaboration. He is the coauthor of five books, including The Hidden Power of Social Networks . He can be reached at www.robcross.org.

An Amazing Leader Falters

When I met Scott, he was managing more than five thousand people. He started in his organization in a technical role and for four or five years led projects with a handful of direct reports. His rise through the ranks was swift from there, culminating with being put in charge of a new-product development effort that became the companys blockbuster product.

If I could mention the name of the company and the product, you would immediately recognize both. The product was huge. It transformed how its customers operated, and it spawned derivative products that became big earners themselves. Over a fourteen- to fifteen-year period, because of the initial product win and the derivative solutions, Scott flew up the hierarchy. When I came in contact with him, many presumed he was in a final grooming role, and they believed he was the leading contender for the CEO spot.

My team and I had come to the company to help reduce time to market for new products, and when I observed Scott, I saw what his admirers were talking about. He was clearly a strategic thinker. As soon as he had gotten into a position of real authority, he had prioritized actions aimed at increasing agility within the three 1,800-person units he managed, all of which were part of a division that facilitated credit-card payments to merchants. He broke down functional walls by merging smaller groups into larger groups. He took layers out of the hierarchy to speed decision-making. He expanded the number of people who reported directly to him from six to sixteen.

This expansion in the number of his reports was a form of de-layering: some of the sixteen people now reporting to him had formerly reported to some of the six who used to constitute his smaller corps of reports. Now, he said proudly, we are less hierarchical.

As a consequence, there was quite a range in responsibilities among the individuals directly below him. Some, as before, were managers of managers, but now a few of the people who reported to him were in charge of smaller teams with specialized areas. For example, Scotts direct reports now included the editor of a quarterly newsletter on industry trends. This individual was not a high-level executive like Scotts other reports, but that was OK with Scott. Im trying to send a signal that rank doesnt matter to me, he said.