Insights
Smart Collaboration
Organizations earn higher margins, inspire greater customer loyalty, produce more innovative work, and attract and retain the best talent when specialists engage in Smart Collaboration across boundaries.
Lateral hiring
To generate competitive advantage through lateral hiring, it’s not enough just to optimize laterals’ individual capabilities. You need to integrate them so that your whole business generates more value.
In-house legal teams
Today’s complex business problems span departments, disciplines and geographies. Savvy in-house lawyers know that collaboration across organizational silos and with external organizations is critically important. But how?…
Leadership and performance
Leadership must permeate an organization—it’s too important to leave only to those with a formal title. Our research delves into the tools, techniques and topics that are essential for leading high performing organizations.
Over-committed organisations
The “dark side” of collaboration emerges when people are stretched too thin across many projects, often with competing priorities and deadlines. How can you mitigate the downsides of an over-committed organization while reaping the benefits of Smart Collaboration?…
Boards of Directors
Boards of directors face increasing pressure to diversify their ranks, stay on top of regulatory and technological advances, hold executives accountable, and improve their functioning. Yet, they’re susceptible to all the foibles of human dynamics.
Sector leadership
Clients increasingly expect service that is tailored to their specific industry—and help in learning from more advanced sectors or those that pose potential threats. You need to collaborate with other sector experts to build an integrated, value-added offering.
Client Work
Smart Collaboration Accelerator
The Smart Collaboration Accelerator is a research-based psychometric assessment that helps individuals understand their behavioral tendencies and turn those behaviors into ‘catalysts’ for Smart Collaboration. Integrating cross-disciplinary knowledge—Smart Collaboration—is essential for addressing the most pressing strategic issues. This is where the Smart Collaboration Accelerator comes in: understand your behavioral tendencies…
Bespoke research
We deliver bespoke research and custom case studies for leading organizations. Our unique blend of academic rigor, empirical analysis, practical insights, and straightforward writing creates compelling material to deliver fresh insights for your business.
Board & executive advisory
I engage with boards, senior executives and their leadership teams as a thought partner and advisor on complex strategic issues with a human angle. I also commonly partner with other professionals (e.g., strategy or compensation consultants, economic advisors, process engineers) to contribute my unique expertise about human behavior, group dynamics…
Smart Collaboration Diagnostic
No two firms are alike, and so their approach for fostering Smart Collaboration must be highly customized. We run an in-depth Diagnostic to uncover specific, tailored actions to make measurable progress.
Keynotes
High-energy, interactive, research-based keynote sessions and longer workshops that spark innovative ideas and produce measurable results. This is not “edu-tainment”; it’s an investment designed to alter mindsets, behaviors and outcomes.
Leadership development
Leading companies hire us to design, chair, and teach their internal leadership development programs and Academies.
About
Applied research, real-world insights, pragmatic solutions, measurable impact.
We help our clients across professional services, industry, government, and non-profits to drive change through smarter collaboration.
Combining our unique blend of empirical research, academic rigor, and top-tier consulting experience, we partner with the Board, C-Suite and leadership teams to help transform organizations.
We are passionate about collaboration because it creates opportunities for every employee to thrive when they contribute with their full potential.
Gardner & Co is led by Dr. Heidi K. Gardner (Harvard Fellow, best-selling author, sought-after advisor) and supported with a world-class team. Gardner & Co also draws on its network of top-tier experts for both research and advisory work. We not only deliver Smart Collaboration, we live it.