Connected Commons

Effective Strategies for Intentional Collaboration in the New World of Work (i4cp login required)

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 15:58:00 GMT

In today's fast-paced and ever-changing work landscape, organizations must innovate boldly and execute with speed to remain competitive. This requires a new way of working that actively facilitates collaboration and connections among team members, regardless of their location or working arrangements.

We need to become more intentional in how and where we collaborate. One study suggests that teams that are more intentional about how and where they collaborate are 2.2 times more productive, according to Gartner. As defined by the Connected Commons, intentional collaboration emphasizes the significance of connections in facilitating both innovation and execution within organizations. It leverages a teaming perspective that prioritizes distinct types of connections to enable specific business outcomes.

A teaming approach provides a more dynamic response that supports a team to more actively adapt its connections and collaboration practices to facilitate outcomes. In other words, the connections necessary to discovering new ideas is different than the connections necessary to bring those ideas to life. As a result, teams need to adapt their collaboration practices to better facilitate their desired outcomes. Just think of it this way, the way you discover new technology is different than integrating that technology into a new product. Each, requires a distinct set of collaborative practices. We believe these practices are best determined and managed at a team level.

Adaptive Teaming

Adaptive teaming is a collaborative approach in which teams intentionally come together, shift, and reform based on the specific needs and challenges of a project or task. It involves the ability to quickly assemble diverse expertise, leverage collective intelligence, and adapt to changing circumstances. This approach emphasizes the permeability of team boundaries and the need for teams to be well connected to key stakeholders in the broader organization.

Adaptive teaming enables organizations to effectively respond to complex and rapidly changing environments, driving innovation, problem-solving, and successful execution. It can help us to address the challenges of hybrid work by focusing on the flow of work and the need for teams to rapidly establish relationships inside and outside the group. The four intentional collaboration modes that help facilitate the various practices of adaptive teaming are discovery, development, diffusion, and delivery.

Discovery Collaboration Mode

In the discovery phase, teams are focused on identifying new opportunities and exploring potential solutions. This is where lateral bridging connections are critical, as team members must be able to share ideas and insights freely and collaborate effectively to identify the most promising opportunities. The discovery process is often inhibited by siloed structures that limit access to new insights. Research shows that if these bridging connections aren't nurtured, new ideas will stop flowing. In one case, employees spent 24% less time on idea generation when bridging connections deteriorated.

Intentional collaboration emphasizes the importance of creating connections across different teams and functions to ensure that diverse perspectives and insights are brought to bear on the problem at hand. The discovery collaboration mode also focuses on outside connections and learning. It enables teams to tap into a wider pool of knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. It helps teams avoid insular thinking, stimulates creativity, and fosters a culture of continuous learning and adaptation. By actively seeking external insights, teams can discover new opportunities, challenge assumptions, and improve their problem-solving capabilities in a rapidly changing environment.

Intentional discovery positions team members to more fully leverage their collective intelligence, diverse perspectives, and network expertise to generate new ideas and insights. Such intentionality is crucial in a rapidly changing and uncertain environment because it allows organizations to adapt and respond more rapidly to emerging challenges and opportunities.

Development Collaboration Mode

However, new ideas are not enough. These ideas need to be brought to life. The development phase is where ideas are transformed into tangible products, solutions or services. This phase requires bonding connections , or close collaboration within a team to design, build, and test new solutions. Intentional collaboration emphasizes the importance of creating connections with team members that have complementary skills and expertise to ensure that the product or service being developed is robust, effective, and meets the needs of customers.

In the development collaboration mode, small teams engage in local bonding interactions to facilitate idea elaboration and refinement. These interactions are designed to foster trust and positive affect, which are crucial components of creativity and development. High levels of trust within cohesive groups facilitate active learning and speed, enabling the rapid development of new solutions.

Intentional collaboration for development enables teams to more fully leverage individual capabilities, skills, and experiences to build out solutions quickly. It promotes idea iteration and refinement, resulting in the development of high-quality solutions and projects that can effectively resolve challenges and opportunities.

Diffusion Collaboration Mode

Local solutions have limited impact unless they are scaled more broadly. Research shows that ideas that are developed within cohesive teams are 43% more likely to be rejected by the broader organization. Intentional diffusion is essential to getting solutions more widely disseminated across the organization. It involves moving concepts, knowledge, and products beyond a core team or project to facilitate broader usage, scale, and greater adoption. Diffusion is the process of taking new solutions and spreading them throughout the organization, it is an essential part of the innovation process.

This requires connections across different teams and functions to share solutions across the broader organization. It also requires vertical bridging interactions to facilitate intentional collaboration with key stakeholders, decision-makers, and thought leaders across the organization who can contribute to the successful diffusion and implementation of ideas.

Fostering intentional collaboration ensures that knowledge and solutions are shared, resources are leveraged, and stakeholders are actively engaged , resulting in successful scaling and adoption of ideas that contribute to organizational adaptation and success.

Delivery Collaboration Mode

The delivery work mode is a crucial aspect of adaptive teaming that focuses on executing and implementing proven solutions at the individual level, or sometimes within larger teams. This phase requires deep focus for individuals, often complementing strong team collaboration, to ensure that issues are identified and addressed quickly. It involves setting clear goals, establishing team roles and responsibilities, ensuring efficient execution, and maintaining regular communication and feedback to drive successful delivery.

This phase often emphasizes a heads-down focus on work that enables productivity. Interruptions and distractions need to be minimized. Intentional collaboration is limited to working together towards common milestones that drive the successful execution of projects or initiatives. These bonding interactions are designed to ensure that the team is focused on achieving clear goals, establishing team roles and responsibilities, and ensuring productivity. Regular communication and feedback are also essential to driving execution.

Enabling Adaptive Teaming

To enable this new way of working, organizations must intentionally collaborate within and across each of these four modes of collaboration. An adaptive teaming approach helps an organization to focus expertise, knowledge, and diverse perspectives of individuals and teams. It also promotes the right type of collaboration to facilitate innovation, and effective execution in a dynamic environment by intentionally aligning collaboration activities to the designed outcomes of the four modes. In other words, intentional collaboration practices are leverage to create a form-follows-function approach. That is, specific interactions are designed to achieve the desired function or business outcome.

Just consider the case below of a large, maturing technology company. The organization has been incredibly successful over the past decade, but has become growingly concerned about its ability to generate new innovations as it dedicates more time to the scaling and delivery of current services. This concern is magnified based on the recent success of a couple competitors in the artificial intelligence (AI) space. As a result, one division within the company deployed an intentional collaboration method using the adaptive teaming model and then validated its approach with a network analysis.

Figure 1 below highlights these findings. The analysis highlights the primary collaboration mode for each person, the green nodes demonstrate a focus on discovery, the orange on development, the blue on diffusion and finally, the red on delivery. The first thing to notice is that two of the three big bets that are being incubated as future AI innovations are well positioned for collaborative success. The first being the orange cluster of nodes at five o'clock, with the second one being the orange cluster at twelve o'clock. These small, cohesive teams are well positioned to rapidly iterate and develop out AI solutions with great velocity and focus.

Figure 1. Work Modes of Large Technology Division

That was not true for the third bet, a larger cluster of various color nodes near nine o'clock is much more mix-mode in nature. That is, this bet includes individuals that are focused on development, diffusion, and delivery. Upon review, this was not a major surprise for the technology company as this bet was not performing as well as the other two. This third bet emerged from an existing product team and was therefore tightly coupled with the current solution.

While this group was able to quickly influence others to get their new ideas into existing products, this was at the expense of slowing down the overall development process. Based on the prevailing collaboration practices, team members were often distracted and pulled away on more urgent issues. The result, was unsatisfactory progress on this bet.

Finally, the division also recognized another major collaboration challenge. The large blob of green, red and some blue nodes in the upper right was also operating in mixed-mode. At first glance this seemed promising as these individuals represented a well-integrated group of sales, customer solutions, marketing, and customer service professionals. The challenge was that most of the new discovery for the division was coming from these teams. While that was beneficial for improving current products and solutions, the firm believes it stifled the new learning necessary to aggressively advance on the AI front.

Intentional Collaboration Actions

As a result of the organization's strategy and the findings from the network analysis on adaptive teaming, the technology division decided to take three additional actions.

Stratify out the development team for the third bet. The firm recognized that this bet needed to be separated from the current product delivery team to ensure more rapid iterations, deeper focus, and limited distractions. The desired outcome is to improve innovation velocity.

Create an advanced strategy team. The firm also recognized that too much of the discovery collaboration was coming from the operators of the current product line. The result was a less aggressive view on possibilities of future growth bets. As a result, the firm created a dedicated strategy team focused on larger discoveries and longer-term possibilities.

Invest in future scaling connections. While the firm was satisfied with the progress of bets number one and two, they recognized a future need for scaling beyond the development teams into the broader organization when the solutions seemed promising. As a result, they began to build out some diffusion practices to more tightly connect these two teams to other core influencers to position themselves to scale faster in the future.

The combination of these actions and an ongoing focus on intentional collaboration will help to prepare this company for the new world of work.

This article was originally published on hrexchnagenetwork.com .

Rich Products' Network Approach to Culture Shifts (i4cp login required)

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 13:17:00 GMT

An i4cp Next Practices in Action Video

Watch this 17-minute presentation from Gian Martinelli, Manager of Talent Technology, Innovation & Analytics at Rich Products Corporation at the June 2023 Connectivity & Collaboration Community meeting . Gian shares how Rich Products leveraged organizational network analysis to identify their collaboration and network strengths, and their issue for collaboration overload.

Having identified behaviors slowing down productivity, they worked towards culture change by empowering employees to own results and "make decisions with urgency on things that matter." Below are key highlights from the presentation with time stamps:

Leadership Development Program Overview at 1:28
Organizational Network Analysis Takeaways at 4:10
Culture Shifts Initiative to Own Results 6:48
Online Own Results Toolkit Demo 11:00
Toolkit Launch Plan & Progress 14:56

If you'd like to learn more about Rich Products leadership development program, check out Rich Product Corporation's Executive Learning Journey For An Enterprise Mindset .

Leveraging Social Capital Compendium Article (i4cp login required)

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 20:50:00 GMT

View i4cp's and Connected Common's Leveraging Social Capital article.

Connected Careers - Connectivity & Collaboration Community (i4cp login required)

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 17:00:00 GMT

Helping employees, teams, and organizations survive and thrive in a volatile world (one shifting from jobs to work and in which opportunity / talent marketplaces accelerate skill building and talent mobility nurtures key networks) is a critical outcome. Adding the social capital lens to the necessary but not sufficient human capital lens will usher in a new career framework—one that unlocks what we know from those we know and accelerates career success.

Whether by so-called great resignation, reorganization, redesign, or reduction; employee transitions between teams, jobs, and companies will be in the fabric of the next world of work. This ongoing great reshuffle will require customized, coordinated efforts to help teammates get acclimated to new networks and prevent costly disruptions.

Throughout 2023, the Connectivity & Collaboration Community will delve into the five outcomes critical for connected work. In this session, members will build on our curriculum and learn about the third outcome of connected work: connected careers.

Featuring: Greg Pryor, Connected Talent Program Lead; and John Boudreau, professor at USC's Marshall Center for Effective Organizations and author of Work Without Jobs

Supporting Resources: HBR | How to Succeed Quickly in New Role

Takeaways:

How the fundamental shift from jobs to roles, increased role of talent / opportunity marketplaces, and agile ways of working increase the need to more quickly effectively build productive connections
Research-revealed practices that enable Fast Movers to achieve job success and satisfaction 3x faster than their peers when transitioning into a new role
How the next world of work's career framework could look much less like a ladder and much more like intentionally connecting through oscillating waves of career connection discovery, delivery, and diffusion
Why intentional talent mobility is so critical (high-performance organizations are 2x more likely than lower performers to emphasize mobility)

Adaptive Teaming - Connectivity & Collaboration Community (i4cp login required)

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 16:00:00 GMT

Although organizations strive to become more agile and resilient by organizing around a network of teams, challenges remain for practitioners who seek to successfully lead teams in a new hybrid environment. This particularly true in current times—characterized by the effects of the pandemic and financial uncertainty—in which people are more dispersed and in need of leadership and guidance. Many leaders still rely on old models of teamwork, not realizing that the definitions and roles of teams have changed in fundamental ways. Our research revealed strategies used by high-performing team leaders that provide powerful insights to help academics and managers significantly improve the success of their teams.

Over the course of 2023, the Connectivity & Collaboration Community will delve into the five outcomes critical for connected work. In this session, members built on our curriculum and learned about the second outcome: adaptive teaming.

Featuring: Michael Arena, Author of Adaptive Space; and Dr. Inga Carboni, Associate Professor, Leadership, at College of William & Mary

Supporting Resources: Collaborative Practices of High Performing Teams; Adaptive Teaming Card Explorer, Personal and Team Compare Questionnaire

Takeaways:

Why the old approach of team forming, storming, norming, then performing is not responsive enough to meet the next world of work
The Six Dysfunctions of Teams and how can you proactively mitigate them
Next practices from i4cp research to build the critical bridging, bonding, and cohesive connections required for team success and satisfaction
The active interactions necessary for a team to ensure ongoing discovery, development and diffusion

Beyond Collaboration Overload - Business Leaders Workshop (i4cp login required)

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 12:08:00 GMT

Was the pandemic to blame for always-on work contexts or was it always there? A record number of employees have experienced burnout in the past two years and rather than increase productivity, innovation, or engagement, it has negatively impacted performance. We have also uncovered that working collaboratively consumes 85% of employees' time and is drifting more outside of normal working hours.

The conventional way of thinking about teamwork and collaboration has created the wrong kind of collaboration, which has done more harm than good for performance, health and overall well-being. How can organizations collaborate in a way that is more effective for the company and employees?

The Beyond Collaboration Overload Business Leaders Workshop will explore how to apply the principles of effective networking and learnings from business executives and HR leaders to revolutionize the way we collaborate.

Join us to:

Uncover the three principles that make high performers 18-24% more efficient than their peers
Learn how to impose structure in your work and eliminate non-productive collaboration
Alter behaviors to create more efficient collaboration strategies

We will share a personal assessment to help you identify blind spots and opportunities for improvement.

Improving Well Being and Reducing Turnover through Employee Connectivity - i4cp 2022 Conference (i4cp login required)

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 22:34:00 GMT

Employee well-being and burnout are important and not-easy-to-solve challenges facing organizations today. In this innovation session, hear from thought leader Rob Cross about a radically different way to address well-being. By focusing on employee connectivity and embedding such focus in various people programs, you can help your workforce develop more authentic relationships, reduce attrition, and improve the health of your employees. Rob will discuss how to turn this into reality using currently available tools and resources.

Sign up for next year's Next Practices Now Conference.

Connectivity & Collaboration Community Launch (i4cp login required)

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 21:05:00 GMT

As individuals and organizations reimagine the NEXT world of work, its clear that - Connections Matter. The pandemic has underscored the value of connectivity in the context of business, increasing the importance of understanding how, when, where, and through who work happens.

Connected Commons is reigniting our practitioner community through the Connectivity & Collaboration Community working group. In our launch call, Rob Cross, professor at Babson College, co-founder of the Connected Commons (co-managed by i4cp), Greg Pryor, Connected Talent Program Leader, and Carrie Bevis, Managing Director of Communities & Partnerships will be joined by Connected Commons practitioners to explore how organizations are establishing, strengthening, and analyzing employee connections.

In this community, you can expect to:

Learn about the research on how relationships influence employee productivity, collaboration, and well-being
Foster idea sharing and support within practitioner community
Become familiar with Connected Commons tools and case studies
Engage your business leaders to adopt these principles

Micro-Stresses and Purpose Worksheet (i4cp login required)

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 09:36:00 GMT

Use this worksheet with your workforce, department, or team to help them identify their micro-stressors and relational purpose sources.

This worksheet was provided by Rob Cross, co-founder of the Connected Commons, at the i4cp 2022 Next Practices Now Conference.

White Paper: Driving Personal Growth Through Relationships (i4cp login required)

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 11:00:00 GMT

The three kinds of trust essential for driving personal growth through relationships are:

Competence-based Trust: This involves establishing that you know what you're talking about and have the skills to get the job done. It includes highlighting your knowledge boundaries, being clear about what you don't know, admitting mistakes, and not being afraid to ask when you don't know something.
Reliability-based Trust: This is demonstrated by setting realistic expectations and then coming through on your commitments. It also involves being honest, even when it means pushing back or telling people (tactfully) what they might not want to hear.
Benevolence-based Trust: This type of trust is built by showing genuine concern for the well-being of others. It involves getting to know the whole person by periodically connecting on non-work subjects, such as hobbies, interests, or aspirations, and giving status to others for shared accomplishments.

This whitepaper explores the role that our networks of relationships play in helping us realize our full potential.

Beyond Collaboration Overload: Reducing Micro Stresses (i4cp login required)

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 11:34:00 GMT

Stress assaults us today in small moments that in aggregate come at us at volume and velocity never experienced before. We end each day exhausted but can't quite point to what is draining us. Happier people tend to be more proactive in altering stress-inducing interactions and initiating ones that help them rise above the sea of stress.

Watch this video by Rob Cross, professor at Babson, co-founder of the Connected Commons, and author of the book Beyond Collaboration Overload , to hear more about reducing stress in your life.

Beyond Collaboration Overload: The Secret of Ten Percenters (i4cp login required)

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 10:47:00 GMT

People that score higher on measures of career satisfaction, well-being and resilience develop specific connections inside and outside of their work. Proactively cultivating these relationships pays off in the form of physical health as well as experiencing greater growth, purpose and resilience in life.

Watch this video by Rob Cross, professor at Babson, co-founder of the Connected Commons, and author of the book Beyond Collaboration Overload , to hear more about proactively cultivating your relationships to help your work life.

Physical Health is Not a Solo Sport (i4cp login required)

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 10:30:00 GMT

Have you ever set a New Year's resolution to get into better shape, only to see it fizzle by February? If so, you're not alone. Each year, more than half the US population makes a New Year's resolution, with exercise and weight loss topping the list. Eighty-eight percent or more of them fail, the large majority by the second week in February. The usual response is to blame yourself—too weak-willed, not enough focus—or chalk it up to the demands of life. It may come as a relief, then, to know that maybe the problem isn't you. Even an intense personal commitment to getting your health back on track may not be enough to actually achieve it. What you need is to have the right people around you. In our research, we listened to people describing times in their lives when they were able to change course from unhealthy routines to healthy ones; what we heard were stories not of stunning self-discipline or steely determination but of connections with others who supported their journey to physical health.

Our research is clear: Improving and maintaining physical health is not a solo sport. We found specific ways that connections with others help to initiate a healthier trajectory, to create "stickiness," so it's not abandoned when work becomes pressing, and importantly, to create benefits of identity, friendship and belonging that embed new health behaviors in our lives.

This white paper from the Connected Commons details the importance of relationships for your physical health.

Beyond Collaboration Overload: Being an Energizer (i4cp login required)

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 09:45:00 GMT

People that create energy in networks are four times as likely to become and stay high performers. Energizers win because opportunities flow to them and other high performers want to work with them. Engaging consistently in specific behaviors - even when under stress or pressure - wins the day for these people.

Watch this video by Rob Cross, professor at Babson, co-founder of the Connected Commons, and author of the book Beyond Collaboration Overload , to hear more about how to become an energizer.

Beyond Collaboration Overload: Creating Kevin Bacon’s Network (i4cp login required)

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 10:00:00 GMT

High performers cultivate and tap networks to produce more innovative and substantive solutions than their less-connected peers. They win not by tapping an invisible power structure but by producing more impactful work while simultaneously building a network and reputation that brings opportunities to them over time.

Watch this video by Rob Cross, professor at Babson, co-founder of the Connected Commons, and author of the book Beyond Collaboration Overload , to hear more about employee performance and well-being are affected by collaboration overload, and ways to mitigate the effects.