Beyond Collaboration Overload

**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, *Beyond Collaboration Overload* 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.