Collaboration overload: What would Kevin Bacon do?

Amidst the endless books about hybrid and remote-first working, launches Rob Cross’ Beyond Collaboration Overload (Harvard Business Review Press).

Despite ostensibly NOT being about the issues of the hour, it is the most relevant book I’ve read since the start of the pandemic. It dives into what Microsoft is calling ‘The Hybrid Paradox’:

We want more and better in-person collaboration but also want to spend more time working at home, while also feeling totally overwhelmed by incoming communication requests.

Rob Cross analysed a decade of research to explain what leads to high performance collaboration.

To collaborate better: 

⏳ We first have to claw back our time using every technique going.

🔋⚡️ Reduce our regular ‘micro-stressors’ (interactions which drain our time and energy).

This has led to some big chats in our house about the school run, managing a stressful client, and saying ‘no’ much more often.

🌅 Invest time in collaborating early on projects for max effect - gathering and testing ideas, building links.

🥓 How we collaborate really matters. We need to network more like Kevin Bacon—who has worked across many movie genres—and less like Hugh Grant during hisFour Weddings, Love Actually, Notting Hill romcom extravaganza.

As my husband put it when I read this bit out to him, ‘I get it… if you want to design a new generation Formula One car, you’d do better to talk to experts in aviation, high-speed trains, ballistics, nano-technology, material science, rocket technology and AI—rather than just 20 other racing engineers’.

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So this week, clawback your time, tell me about your micro-stressors and remember to network as early and widely as possible.

There is so much more in this book, that for the first time ever, having been sent a press PDF, I have also bought the hardback. You should too.

Next Friday:

I hope we will be talking money to understand what the heck is going on with rewards and benefits at the moment. It’s crazy out there: if anyone’s offered you a dazzling pay rise recently, I need to know about it!

Christine