Is Collaboration Worth It?

Welcome to the very first Evolving Workplace Newsletter, where we will explore the changing nature of teams, collaboration, and the future of work.?

If this is your first step toward the future design of work, you can learn more about me and what I do here.

Is collaboration worth it?

As a professor of organizational behavior and someone who made a career studying, coaching, and advising teams, you might be wondering where I’m going with this. How could I be advocating against teams? Let me be clear, I love teams. When they work, they really work, but as the world changes, our approach to the workplace has to change as well.

While teams have been around for ages, they became the dominant organizational paradigm in the early 1980s. As an organizational structure, they were well-suited to handling both rapid technological advances and the globalization of the economy - leading many organizations to great success. You can, however, have too much of a good thing.

I don’t question that teams are powerful tools organizations can use to deliver exceptional results - far above and beyond what individual contributors can produce. Good teamwork, however, doesn’t come for free. Teams have to expend a significant amount of time, energy, and attention on tasks like coordination and relationship management - costs which need to be weighed against the benefits they provide. The increasing popularity of remote and hybrid work add significant complexity (and cost) to the mix. It’s therefore critical that we double check our math, to make sure the cost-benefit equation still makes sense.

I expand on this in my latest article in Harvard Business Review with Connie Noonan Hadley, where we ask, Do We Still Need Teams?

For a different take, my friend and expert on collaboration, Rob Cross, explores Where We Go Wrong With Collaboration in the Harvard Business Review. He argues that the conventional wisdom on teamwork has created too much of the wrong type of collaboration—saying “yes” too quickly which may leave us overwhelmed, fear of losing control of a project and therefore not delegating tasks, or even experiencing FOMO.

Can teams be salvaged?

The good news is, there is a lot of advice on Managing the Return to the workplace (however that looks now). Maybe you disband or reduce your teams in favor of a higher proportion of individual contributors. Or, maybe you step down from “true teams” to the use of “co-acting groups,” which allow room for plenty of coordination and flexibility.?

So what do we do now?

Consider the stress that comes with teamwork as Chidiebere Ogbonnaya discusses in this article, When Teamwork Is Good for Employees — and When It Isn’t.

Take a look at Ron Friedman’s 5 Things High-Performing Teams Do Differently, and think about whether your team is being met with these three psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Ask yourself some key questions, like: Are your teams collaborating for the sake of collaborating? Are multiple people taking on responsibilities that could be handled by one individual? Should you abandon difficult to coordinate meetings in favor of individual check-ins?

The answer to these questions are going to vary from organization to organization, but if the teamwork math doesn’t work out, you may need to seek ways to replace the gains once provided by teams. Social support mechanisms, brainstorming opportunities, and compelling culture-building activities do not look the same as they used to.?

The most important takeaway from this is: it is time to think seriously and critically about how we organize our work.?

The world is changing, and so is the workplace. Subscribe to The Evolving Workplace to learn more about the changing nature of teams, collaboration, and the future of the workplace, or connect with me via email: [email protected].?