3 Tips To Avoid Collaboration Overload

We can all instinctively articulate the benefits of working in a collaborative environment.  Enhanced results, improved innovation, greater morale through team member engagement and belonging, better-informed decision making and problem solving.  The list goes on. The question I pondered today with a group of bright and thoughtful managers was this: Is there such a thing as collaboration overload? In other words, do we, in our well-intentioned endeavors to build and promote collaboration create some unintended and unproductive byproducts? Do we sometimes throw collaboration at a problem, decision, or initiative, when something else would work better, or when there’s more definition required before even the most capable team can achieve meaningful forward action?

How many of you have experienced, at times, some or all the following symptoms of Collaboration Overload? Do you:

• Start your day feeling defeated because you’re greeted by an overly colorful calendar app demanding your presence at back-to-back meetings, the purpose of half of them being a mystery?
• Attend some meetings because someone thought to invite you, but you’ve no idea why your presence was requested (and nobody seems able to enlighten you)?
• Sit in these meetings thinking, on more than one occasion, “What are we trying to accomplish here?” and often leave saying to yourself “Well, that was a waste of my time”?
• Have days when your window to “eat” finds you with, at best, a protein bar and a Starbuck’s Grande Latte?
• Attend recurring meetings and experience unsettling déjà vu moments until you realize, “No, it’s not my imagination. We did in fact already talk about this a week ago”?
• Spend the precious little non-meeting time on your schedule battling a nagging suspicion that you’re supposed to be getting something done, but you’re not clear what it is?
• Find yourself burned out, demoralized, or simply fed up with the meeting requests clogging your inbox which feel at odds with your desire to simply get things done?

You may have noticed the implied interchangeability between meetings and collaboration. While they’re obviously not the same thing, the former is at least a symbol, if not a symptom, of the latter.  Afterall, meetings are the place we are asked to come together, share our opinions, solve problems and make decisions, and ultimately roll up our collective sleeves to achieve a common outcome. What if answering yes to the questions above indicates something more than just meeting overload? What if it’s really evidence of serious shortcomings in our good intentions to create collaborative work environments?

And what if there’s something we can do to move the needle away from meeting overload and closer to truly productive collaboration? The business case for such a shift is clear. If you answered yes to the above questions, odds are others in your company or organization did too. The cumulative impact of meeting overload diametrically opposes the intent of collaborative work places: Productivity falters, innovation dithers, and morale declines.     

Let’s assume our intentions to promote collaboration have merit. Perhaps the failures lie in execution.  What, then, can be done to stem the tide, improve productivity, performance, and optimize people’s time.

1.       Ask Why:  A skilled leader will define why a team should collaborate, delineating clearly its shared goals.  Shared is a key word here. Too often, teams are thrown together from separate parts of an organization (again, with the best intentions) only to flounder and grapple because leadership failed to provide a clear vision of a common successful outcome.  In its absence, they remain driven by siloed-thinking and parochial agendas. In fact, in my experience, some leaders seem to hope the team of capable and committed people can do the hard and long-reaching work of answering the Why question. What results is a do-loop of uncertainty and misfires, and ultimately, frustration and decreased commitment.  As a leader, until you can give a clear answer to the question “Why,” wait.

2.       Ask Who: Once the outcomes are clear, take the time to determine who the right people are to see them through.  Do this, honestly, with a balance of inclusion and moderation. Remember, a variety of options exist to involve the correct stakeholders in your work.  They may well be a key contributor, whose input is necessary throughout, but perhaps they need only be consulted on occasion when direction requires, or informed so they are not surprised. If your reason for including someone on a team or project falls anywhere in the vicinity of “nice to do,” don’t.

3.       Ask How: For a team to successfully collaborate, it requires structures and processes.  We are not talking micro-management here, but instead the establishment of consistent and shared methods for delivering what’s been asked. If as a leader you hesitate to provide guidelines, hoping or assuming the team will sort them out, start sorting.

In the end, we live in a world that requires collaboration, and what we produce has the potential to be enhanced by it. The onus, then, is on leaders to take the first steps to set our teams up to be successful.
©Susan M Vitale, 2019