Named the Best Management Book of 2021 by strategy+business Named one of "this month's top titles" in the Financial Times in September 2021 Named to the longlist for the 2021 Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award in the Management & Culture category A plan for conquering collaborative overload to drive performance and innovation, reduce burnout, and enhance well-being. Most organizations have created always-on work contexts that are burning people out and hurting performance rather than delivering productivity, innovation and engagement. Collaborative work consumes 85% of employees' time and is drifting earlier into the morning, later into the night, and deeper into the weekend. The dilemma is that we all need to collaborate more to create effective organizations and vibrant careers for ourselves. But conventional wisdom on teamwork and collaboration has created too much of the wrong kind of collaboration, which hurts our performance, health and overall well-being. In Beyond Collaboration Overload, Babson professor Rob Cross solves this paradox by showing how top performers who thrive at work collaborate in a more purposeful way that makes them 18-24% more efficient than their peers. Good collaborators are distinguished by the efficiency and intentionality of their collaboration—not the size of their network or the length of their workday. Through landmark research with more than 300 organizations, in-depth stories, and tools, Beyond Collaboration Overload will coach you to reclaim close to a day a week when you: Identify and challenge beliefs that lead you to collaborate too quickly Impose structure in your work to prevent unproductive collaboration Alter behaviors to create more efficient collaboration It then outlines how successful people invest this reclaimed time to: Cultivate a broad network—not a big one—for innovation and scale Energize others—a strong predictor of high performance Connect with others to reduce micro-stressors and enhance physical and mental well-being Cross' framework provides relief from the definitive problem of our age—dysfunctional collaboration at the expense of our performance, health and overall well-being.

NEW from the bestselling HBR’s 10 Must Reads series. Join forces with others inside and outside your organization to solve your toughest problems. If you read nothing else on collaborating effectively, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you work more productively with people on your team, in other departments, and in other organizations. Leading experts such as Daniel Goleman, Herminia Ibarra, and Morten Hansen provide the insights and advice you need to: • Forge strong relationships up, down, and across the organization • Build a collaborative culture • Bust silos • Harness informal knowledge sharing • Pick the right type of collaboration for your business • Manage conflict wisely • Know when not to collaborate Looking for more Must Read articles from Harvard Business Review? Check out these titles in the popular series: HBR’s 10 Must Reads: The Essentials HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Communication HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Innovation HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Leadership HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Making Smart Decisions HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams

What makes the difference between your collaboration's failure or success? Collaboration: What Makes It Work, Second Edition answers this question with an up-to-date and in-depth review of collaboration research. This new edition also includes The Wilder Collaboration Factors Inventory.

A Washington Post Bestseller Not all collaboration is smart. Make sure you do it right. Professional service firms face a serious challenge. Their clients increasingly need them to solve complex problems—everything from regulatory compliance to cybersecurity, the kinds of problems that only teams of multidisciplinary experts can tackle. Yet most firms have carved up their highly specialized, professional experts into narrowly defined practice areas, and collaborating across these silos is often messy, risky, and expensive. Unless you know why you’re collaborating and how to do it effectively, it may not be smart at all. That’s especially true for partners who have built their reputations and client rosters independently, not by working with peers. In Smart Collaboration, Heidi K. Gardner shows that firms earn higher margins, inspire greater client loyalty, attract and retain the best talent, and gain a competitive edge when specialists collaborate across functional boundaries. Gardner, a former McKinsey consultant and Harvard Business School professor now lecturing at Harvard Law School, has spent over a decade conducting in-depth studies of numerous global professional service firms. Her research with clients and the empirical results of her studies demonstrate clearly and convincingly that collaboration pays, for both professionals and their firms. But Gardner also offers powerful prescriptions for how leaders can foster collaboration, move to higher-margin work, increase client satisfaction, improve lateral hiring, decrease enterprise risk, engage workers to contribute their utmost, break down silos, and boost their bottom line. With case studies and real-world insights, Smart Collaboration delivers an authoritative case for the value of collaboration to today’s professionals, their firms, and their clients and shows you exactly how to achieve it.

Working Together...On Collaboration is a timely and practical collection of the best thinking on starting and maintaining successful collaborations, be they between two individuals or multiple large organizations.The entire arc of organizational and operational activity is covered in detail, helping readers find success in their collaborations.The book has 15 interviews with experienced and professional collaborators, and significant body text from C. William Keck. All share their experiences in great detail, both successes and failures, passing along their wisdom to you.It is an accessible and enjoyable source of mentoring.There are checklists, and a clear presentation of all ideas germane to collaboration.Given funding challenges worldwide, collaboration is one of the most effective methods of accomplishing great goals one could not reach alone. The book centers on the life experiences and advice from C. William Keck, M.D., a leading expert in the Public Health field and former President of the American Public Health Association.Working Together...On Collaboration is essential reading for anyone, be they lay person, student or professional, in any field.Visit the book's website with many articles, videos, and more is at WORKINGTOGETHERONCOLLABORATION.COM.There are over 40 videos posted on the Youtube Channel BILL KECKThe Facebook Group is WORKING TOGETHER ON COLLABORATION, and you'll find a discussion of various there relating to collaboration.

"I spend much time helping organizations capture requirements and even more time helping them recover from not capturing requirements. Many of them have gone through some motions regarding requirements as if they were sleepworking. It's time to wake up and do it right-and this book is going to be their alarm clock." - Jerry Weinberg, author of numerous books on productivity enhancement "In today's complex, fast-paced software development environment, collaboration-the intense peer-to-peer conversations that result in products, decisions, and knowledge sharing-is absolutely essential to success. But all too often, attempts to collaborate degenerate into agonizing meetings or ineffectual bull sessions. Ellen's wonderful book will help you bridge the gap-turning the agony of meetings into the ecstasy of effective collaboration." - Jim Highsmith, a pioneer in adaptive software development methods "Requirements by Collaboration presents a wealth of practical tools and techniques for facilitating requirements development workshops. It is suitable-no, essential reading-for requirements workshop facilitators. It will help both technical people and customer representatives participate in these critical contributions to software success." - Karl Wiegers, Principal Consultant, Process Impact, author of Software Requirements "The need for this particular book, at this particular time, is crystal clear. We have entered a new age where software development must be viewed as a form of business problem solving. That means direct user participation in developing 'requirements, ' or more accurately, in jointly working the business problem. That, in turn, means facilitated sessions. In this book, Ellen Gottesdiener provides a wealth of practical ideas for ensuring that you have exactly the right stuff for this all-important area of professional art." - Ronald G. Ross, Principal, Business Rule Solutions, LLC, Executive Editor, www.BRCommunity.com "Gottesdiener's years of software development experience coupled with her straight-forward writing style make her book a perfect choice for either a senior developer or a midlevel project manager. In addition to her technical experience, her knowledge of group dynamics balance the book by educating the reader on how to manage conflict and personality differences within a requirements team-something that is missing from most requirements textbooks...It is a required 'handbook' that will be referred to again and again." - Kay Christian, ebusiness Consultant, Conifer, Colorado "Requirements by Collaboration is a 'must read' for any system stakeholder. End users and system analysts will learn the significant value they can add to the systems development process. Management will learn the tremendous return they may receive from making a modest time/people investment in facilitated sessions. Facilitators will discover ways to glean an amazing amount of high-quality information in a relatively brief time." - Russ Schwartz, Computer System Quality Consultant, Global Biotechnology Firm "In addition to showing how requirements are identified, evaluated, and confirmed, Ellen provides important guidance based on her own real-world experience for creating and managing the workshop environment in which requirements are generated. This book is an engaging and invaluable resource for project teams and sponsors, both business and IT, who are committed to achieving results in the most productive manner possible." - Hal Thilmony, Senior Manager, Business Process Improvement (Finance), CiscoSystems, Inc. "Project managers should read this book for assistance with planning the requirements process. Experienced facilitators will enrich their knowledge. New facilitators can use this book to get them up to speed and become more effective in less time." - Rob Stroober, Competence Development Manager and Project Manager, Deloitte &Touche Consultdata, The Netherlands "While many books discuss the details of software requirement artifacts (for example, use cases), Ellen's new book zeros in on effective workshop techniques and tools used to gather the content of these artifacts. As a pioneer in requirements workshops, she shares her real-life experiences in a comprehensive and easy-to-read book with many helpful examples and diagrams." - Bill Bird, Aera Energy LLC "Requirements by Collaboration is absolutely full of guidance on the most effective ways to use workshops in requirements capture. This book will help workshop owners and facilitators to determine and gain agreement on a sound set of requirements, which will form a solid foundation for the development work that is to follow." - Jennifer Stapleton, Software Process Consultant and author of DSDM: The Methodin Practice "This book provides an array of techniques within a clear, structured process, along with excellent examples of how and when to use them. It's an excellent, practical, and really useful handbook written by a very experienced author!" - Jean-Anne Kirk, Director DSDM Consortium and IAF Professional Development "Ellen has written a detailed, comprehensive, and practical handbook for facilitating groups in gathering requirements. The processes she outlines give the facilitator tools to bring together very different perspectives from stakeholders elegantly and with practical, useable results." - Jo Nelson, Principal, ICA Associates, Inc., Chair, IAF (2001-2002) Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs focuses on the human side of software development--how well we work with our customers and teammates. Experience shows that the quality and degree of participation, communication, respect, and trust among all the stakeholders in a project can strongly influence its success or failure. Ellen Gottesdiener points out that such qualities are especially important when defining user requirements and she shows in this book exactly what to do about that fact. Gottesdiener shows specifically how to plan and conduct requirements workshops. These carefully organized and facilitated meetings bring business managers, technical staff, customers, and users into a setting where, together, they can discover, evolve, validate, verify, and agree upon their product needs. Not only are their requirements more effectively defined through this collaboration, but the foundation is laid for good teamwork throughout the entire project. Other books focus on how to build the product right. Requirements by Collaboration focuses instead on what must come first--the right product to build.

What is the true nature of thinking? Can it best be understood as a solitary activity of a lone individual? This book suggests that our grasp of creativity is impoverished because we fail to recognise the vital roles that partnerships, collaborations, friendships, and communities play in our thinking, learning, and understanding.