Agility at the Point of Execution

What does it take to lead agile, high-functioning teams that collaborate effectively? That’s the question Rob Cross has been exploring with his research group. Cross, a professor at Babson College, explained how to identify collaborative dysfunction — and then improve it — as a guest at MIT Sloan Management Review’s recent Work/22 virtual symposium on the challenges leaders can expect to face in the year ahead. Collaboration increasingly happens through networks, and these networks have startling characteristics when you look at them closely. Hierarchies have collapsed thanks to employees’ instantaneous access to one another. Many people live in a state of collaborative intensity. Cross said that 3% to 5% of people tend to account for 20% to 30% of value-added collaborations — and these are the people who really matter in any collaborative mix. But they are dramatically overwhelmed, and they sometimes create pinch points that slow down work and impede their own ability to get work done and be innovative.