Collaborative overload

There is another side of the coin when it comes to collaboration: it seems like time spent in collaborative activities such as meetings, calls, and emails has risen by 50% or more in recent decades, often consuming up to 80% of a typical workweek and leaving little time for individual tasks.

That’s why, while collaboration can enhance organizational success, it can also overwhelm employees, leading to stress, burnout, and decreased performance.

The burden of collaboration is unevenly distributed: about 3% to 5% of employees contribute to 20% to 35% of value-added collaborations. These high contributors, often known for being helpful, become bottlenecks as their workload escalates, and their effectiveness diminishes. Their contributions often go unnoticed due to the dispersed nature of their work across various teams and locations.

Employees invest three types of collaborative resources: informational (knowledge and skills), social (network access), and personal (time and energy). Unlike informational and social resources, personal resources are finite and often overused. Requests that could be met with informational or social support frequently demand personal engagement, unnecessarily draining time and energy.

To address these challenges, organizations can streamline collaborative efforts and recognize valuable contributions:

1. Redistribute Collaborative Work: Use surveys, communication tracking, and network analysis to identify overloaded employees. Encourage behavioral changes by teaching employees to filter requests, set boundaries, and prioritize value-adding tasks. Technology and strategic office layouts can make informational and social resources more accessible, reducing personal demands on key contributors. Structural changes, such as delegating decision rights and creating roles dedicated to managing collaboration requests, can further alleviate pressure.

2. Reward Effective Collaboration: Recognize both individual achievement and collaborative contributions through performance reviews, peer recognition, and metrics that value teamwork. Ensuring fair acknowledgment of collaborative efforts is particularly important for women, who often bear a disproportionate share of collaborative work but receive less recognition.

Leaders must promote balanced and efficient collaboration to prevent key employees from becoming overwhelmed. Establishing roles like chief collaboration officers could help organizations manage teamwork strategically, ensuring that the collaborative efforts enhance rather than hinder overall performance.

The evolution of collaboration in an increasingly digital world

How much human collaboration has been affected from the from the ever-increasing expansion of remote working? Well, a lot. Thanks to the article  "The Profound Influence of Small Choices in Digital Collaboration" we delve into how remote work has increased reliance on digital collaboration tools. How do features of these tools—specifically, privacy versus transparency—steer the direction of creativity, and how can managers leverage these tools to drive the most productive forms of collaboration?

The study emphasizes two important dynamics that impact creativity: transparency and privacy. Transparent collaborations engage with a broader organizational community, facilitating diverse, spontaneous connections that can spark creativity through varied perspectives. Private collaborations, on the other hand, create intimate, trust-based environments where team members can take risks, challenge norms, and develop novel ideas. Both transparency and privacy have their own advantages, but they foster distinct types of creativity.

Drawing parallels from physical workplace design, where open-plan offices have their pros and cons, digital platforms offer greater flexibility. They allow teams to choose between public channels (transparent) and private channels (closed), depending on the needs of a specific project.

Two Distinct Creative Paths

The research distinguishes between developmental creativity and disruptive creativity. Developmental creativity, which emerges from transparent settings, involves expanding on existing ideas by collaborating with a wide network of individuals. Disruptive creativity, fostered in private settings, centers around challenging and reframing problems, often leading to groundbreaking innovations.

Managers can facilitate both paths by aligning the right communication structure with the specific needs of a project. For instance, a public forum may be more suitable when expanding on existing knowledge, while a private space may nurture creative breakthroughs by encouraging risk-taking.

Practical Examples

In a transparent setting, an employee solving a problem regarding recycling methods reached out in a public forum. This led to unexpected, valuable input from a colleague in another region, showcasing how transparency bridges diverse knowledge sources. Conversely, a private group working on reimagining organizational processes was able to engage in deep, candid discussions, fostering a level of trust and creativity not possible in public settings.

Designing for Creativity

To maximize creativity in digital environments, managers should consider three key points:

1. Select tools that allow both public and private spaces: Different projects require different types of creativity, so offering both transparent and private channels is essential.

2. Support private groups, even without oversight: Trusting teams to operate in private and finding ways to share insights from these spaces with the wider organization without undermining their creative safety is crucial.

3. Combine different groups to support varied creative paths: Using a mix of transparent and private settings in sequence or simultaneously can lead to both incremental improvements and groundbreaking innovations. Teams may start privately to develop risky, disruptive ideas, and later shift to a public channel for broader development.By making thoughtful decisions about when to use transparency or privacy, leaders can guide their teams toward the type of creativity—whether developmental or disruptive—that best suits their goals. Understanding these nuances enables organizations to fully unlock the creative potential of their digital workforce.