I’ve been thinking a lot about the burden that a stated corporate value around collaboration can help and hinder.
Adam Grant has written before about Generosity Burnout.
Here are some key quotes from an article on Collaborative Overload:
20% to 35% of value-added collaborations come from only 3% to 5% of employees.
A single “extra miler”—an employee who frequently contributes beyond the scope of his or her role—can drive team performance more than all the other members combined.
Soon helpful employees become institutional bottlenecks: Work doesn’t progress until they’ve weighed in. Worse, they are so overtaxed that they’re no longer personally effective. And more often than not, the volume and diversity of work they do to benefit others goes unnoticed, because the requests are coming from other units, varied offices… informational, social, and personal. [Personal is costly, takes time but people request a meeting for the other 2 making it personal]
Do.com monitors calendars and provides daily and weekly reports to both individual employees and managers about time spent in meetings versus on solo work
those seen as the best sources of information and in highest demand as collaborators in their companies… have the lowest engagement and career satisfaction scores,
An exchange that might have taken five minutes or less turns into a 30-minute calendar invite that strains personal resources on both sides of the request
Links nicely with saying no nicely
