Insights

This indispensable new book lays out a pragmatic action plan blending rich stories, new empirical research, and loads of practical advice to help companies thrive by collaborating more effectively.

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.

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.

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?…

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.

Over-committed organizations

Despite organizations’ best intentions to inspire cross-project learning and maximize utilization of experts, the reality of assigning people to many simultaneous teams is often the opposite: progress stalls, performance drops, and outcomes lack creativity. Oftentimes it is your best performers who bear the disproportionate brunt of competing deadlines, overload, and possible burnout. More than that, the risk dramatically increases that an unexpected shock on one project will ripple across the company and endanger higher-priority projects.

Our research identifies concrete steps for executives, team leaders, and individuals can take to design and implement solutions to address these challenges—while still getting the benefits of cross-silo collaboration. It starts with data and analytics, and the solutions are informed by behavioral science. Our research is ongoing; contact us for more information or to get involved.

Publications

PUBLICATION TITLE / The Overcommitted Organization. Why It Is Hard to Share People Across Multiple Teams – And What to Do About it?

Through multiteaming (the same person works on a number of teams at once), organizations aim to become more efficient and productive. Due to the competing priorities, group cohesion often suffers and the individuals may experience burnout. Team and organizational leaders can take action to reduce downside and to better capitalize on the advantages multiteaming offer.

Journal: Harvard Business Review

Year: October 2017

Link: http://bit.ly/2PR92Rt

PUBLICATION TITLE / How to make sure Agile Teams Can Work Together

In today’s business environment, agile collaboration is more critical than ever. Tackling issues quickly through nimbly forming and disbanding teams often faces the reality of misaligned incentives, hierarchical decision making and cultural rigidities, resulting in stalled progress or no action at all. By steadily nurturing agile collaboration, leaders can efficiently and effectively access the expertise of key collaborators.

Journal: Harvard Business Review

Year: May 2018

Link: http://bit.ly/2qjCRzB

PUBLICATION TITLE / Coming through When It Matters Most. How great teams do their best work under pressure

The pressure to perform drives people paradoxically toward safe, generic solutions, even though they want to do their best on high-profile work. They miss out on specialized insights and the opportunity to deliver innovation. This article offers solutions for teams to keep doing their best work when it matters the most.

Journal: Harvard Business Review

Year: April 2012

Link: http://bit.ly/2WLvNba

PUBLICATION TITLE / How to Stay Focused if You’re Assigned to Multiple Projects at Once?

Despite the benefits of ‘multiteaming’ (like increased utilization of talent), it has dark sides (like failed projects when members are pulled off to fight fires elsewhere). The article discusses specific and tactical advices to better manage the tensions of an over-committed organization.

Journal: Harvard Business Review

Year: November 2017

Link: http://bit.ly/2PJuV5j

PUBLICATION TITLE / The Overcommitted Organization

Event: Tatarklubben live with Harvard Business Review

https://tatarklubben.com/videos/?video=921