No Time to Collaborate? Make Some.

Breaking down silos and getting people to work across disciplines, what we call “smarter collaboration,” leads to a host of demonstrable benefits ranging from faster innovation to stronger employee engagement. But just because it’s advantageous doesn’t mean it’s always practiced. Our decade-plus of research at Harvard has unearthed a range of common barriers. This post is the first in a series focused on breaking down those obstacles to smarter collaboration.

We’ll kick off with the sense of time pressure, or “I have so many things to do and it’s more efficient to just crack on and do it myself.” How can you defeat the sense of time pressure that holds you back from reaping the benefits of #smarter #collaboration?

A few simple steps can help:

1.??????Bring in stakeholders and functional support early on. At the beginning of a project, you may feel you have no time to wait for experts (such as colleagues in compliance, R&D, or sales), but this is a false sense of economy.

Involving the right people early in a project increases their sense of belonging and ownership—which boosts their commitment and ultimately their follow-through. Yes, when an organization is set up for this kind of collaboration, participating becomes more genuine—which has all sorts of productivity and quality benefits.

The alternative is doing all the work yourself (not a timesaver) or chasing down experts later on, which not only annoys them but can also result in rework and lost time, since you didn’t have the right point of view from the get-go.?

2.??????Focus and filter. Think hard about the areas and activities that provide the most value to you, your company, and your customers (targeting 3-5 is ideal). This could be selling into a new industry, finding lower-cost suppliers, boosting employee satisfaction, improving customer retention, or a host of other possible initiatives.

Then you have a guiding framework for collaboration, knowing which requests and responsibilities to prioritize. If Joe down the hall asks for such-and-such favor, consider how this ask aligns with your top objectives. If it’s off mark, then redirect him to another resource, explaining why.

And don’t feel bad. By delegating, you can help someone out—matching them up with one of their focus areas. Everybody wins by knowing and seeking what they want, not by spreading themselves thin across all tasks.

3.??????Get control of your calendar. Block out time for admin so these tasks are not interrupting your “deep work” (concentrating on your highest priorities). If you let these pesky but crucial duties seep into your high-value projects, you’ll never make enough headway where it matters.

Use tools like Microsoft Outlook categories to easily tag, label, and group messages and calendar events. This gives you a better sense of your high-pressure work, lessening the perceived burden of the other items. My preferred categorization method is color coding. When my calendar looks like a rainbow on any given day, I know I’m too much in reactive mode.

Never schedule meetings for a full hour, or even full half-hour blocks. Instead, make them a max of 50 or 25 minutes so that you–and everyone else–have time to regroup, follow up, prep for the next meeting, or just take a stretch break. Also: You’d be surprised how many meetings only need 15 minutes of someone’s time.

4.??????Make sure you’re not the problem. When you get a call from a customer or your boss, do you raise the alarm and send people running? Or do you gather the information, sort it into the “What can I/we control?” and “What is outside our zone?” categories, and at least start to develop an action plan before communicating the issue?

Knee-jerk, havoc-wreaking responses are like the boy who called wolf: Not only do these messages lack weight over time, but they put unnecessary stress on one’s colleagues—who have a smaller reserve to draw from when real issues do arise. As Scott Peltin recommends in Tignum’s new book BeMore, “Stop fire alarms rather than pull fire alarms.”?Amen.

Another pitfall is overstaffing projects. People shouldn’t be on every team but instead those that benefit from their specific skills or foster their career growth. And when they are brought on, it’s important to alleviate the costs (for example, though focused sub-groups) while better capitalizing on the various advantages (for more on that point, see the HBR articles on “Over-committed Organization” I wrote with Mark Mortensen ).

For more tips on reducing barriers to smarter collaboration, check out my upcoming book Smarter Collaboration—which is available for pre-order through online retailers. Ordering a copy now will help ensure the book’s success—thank you in advance.