Collaboration is taking over the workplace. According to data collected
by the authors over the past two decades, the time spent by managers and
employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50% or more.
There is much to applaud about these developments—but when consumption
of a valuable resource spikes that dramatically, it should also give us
pause. At many companies, people spend around 80% of their time in
meetings or answering colleagues’ requests, leaving little time for all
the critical work they must complete on their own. What’s more, research
the authors have done across more than 300 organizations shows that the
apportionment of collaborative work is often extremely lopsided. In
most cases, 20% to 35% of value-added collaborations come from only 3%
to 5% of employees. The avalanche of demands for input or advice, access
to resources, or sometimes just presence in a meeting causes
performance to suffer. Employees take assignments home, and soon burnout
and turnover become real risks. Leaders must start to manage
collaboration more effectively in two ways: (1) by mapping the supply
and demand in their organizations and redistributing the work more
evenly among employees, and (2) by incentivizing people to collaborate
more efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]