by Alia Crocker, Rob Cross, and Heidi K. Gardner
Increasing volatility, uncertainty, growing complexity, and ambiguous information (VUCA) have created a business environment in which agile collaboration is more critical than ever. Organizations need to be continually on the lookout for new market developments and competitive threats, identifying essential experts and nimbly forming and disbanding teams to help tackle those issues quickly. However, these cross-functional groups often bump up against misaligned incentives, hierarchical decision making, and cultural rigidities, causing progress to stall or action to not be taken at all.
Consider the case of an organization in our consortium, the Connected Commons, that uncovered a groundbreaking audiovisual technology that would differentiate the organization in existing channels but also had the potential to open up entirely new markets. The CEO heralded it as a pivot point in growth and formed a cross-functional initiative of 100-plus top employees to bring it to new commercial channels. Yet, unfortunately, progress did not match expectations. Employees assigned to the effort struggled to make time for the work. They often did not understand the expertise or values of different functions and advocated too aggressively for their own solutions. The group was surprised several times by the demands of external stakeholders. Despite this project’s visibility, critical mandate, and groundbreaking technology, the organization was ultimately hindered when it came to agile collaboration. This story is not unique.
A significant part of the problem is that work occurs through collaboration in networks of relationships that often do not mirror formal reporting structures or standard work processes. Intuitively, we know that the collaborative intensity of work has skyrocketed, and that collaborations are central to agility. Yet most organizations don’t manage internal collaboration productively and assume that technology or formal org charts can yield agility. These efforts often fail because they lack informal networks—for example, employees who share an interest in a technological innovation like artificial intelligence or a passion for environmental sustainability, and who can bridge the organization’s entrepreneurial and operational systems by bringing cutting-edge ideas to people who have the resources to begin experimenting and implementing them.
Our research focuses on agility not as a broad ideal but, rather, on where agility matters most—at the point of execution, where teams are working on new products, strategic initiatives, or with top clients. All of these points of execution are essential for organizations, yet all encounter inefficiencies unless they’re managed as a network. We assessed these strategically important groups in a wide range of global organizations via network surveys, which were completed by more than 30,000 employees. We also conducted hundreds of interviews with both workers and leaders in these companies. We found that agility at the point of execution is typically created through group-level networks such as account or new product development teams formed with employees drawn from the whole organization, lateral networks across core work processes, temporary teams and task forces formed to drive a critical organizational change or respond to a strategic threat, and communities of practice that enabled organizations to enjoy true benefits of scale. These and other lateral networks provide agility when they are nurtured along four dimensions—managing the center of the network, engaging the fringe, bridging select silos, and leveraging boundary spanners. Leaders who nurture their internal networks in this way produce better outcomes—financial, strategic, and talent-related. Figure 3-1 shows how.
When agility is viewed through a network lens, it becomes apparent that collaboration is never equally distributed. We typically see that 20%–35% of valuable collaborations come from only 3%–5% of employees. Through no fault of their own, these people become overly relied upon and tend to slow group responsiveness, despite working to their wits’ end. They are more likely to burn out and leave the company, creating network gaps, which then become another barrier to agility. Senior leaders need to consider where overload on the network’s center might preclude agile collaboration and:
Agility requires the integration of different capabilities and perspectives to understand VUCA issues and figure out what kinds of experts are needed to tackle them. But those who see the world differently or who are new to a group often languish at the network edges. Whereas those in the center may be overrelied on, those on the fringes are often not tapped in a way that allows for agile collaboration. For example, our research shows that it can take three to five years for a newcomer to replicate the connectivity of a high performer.3 Few organizations provide such luxury of time, however: our research also shows that if an experienced hire doesn’t get integrated into substantive projects within the first year, they are seriously at risk of leaving before they reach the three-year mark.
Getting others to trust fringe employees is essential for drawing them into agile collaboration. Their competence isn’t usually in question if you have rigorous hiring and merit-based promotion processes; the trick is getting others to trust their motives (“Will he take undue credit?” or “Will she walk away with my clients?”) if few colleagues can vouch for their character. Senior management can help by taking the following actions:
Every organization we studied struggled with silos across functions, expertise, geography, level, and cultures—whether occupational or national. The network lens can help uncover specific points that, if crossed, could yield agility benefits, rather than inefficiently bridging all silos. Often, this means connecting people across units or geographies doing similar work to yield benefits of scale or identifying points where integrating different perspectives yields agile innovation. This type of multidisciplinary collaboration produces higher revenues and profits because it tackles higher-value problems. Motivating experts to engage in agile collaboration requires them not only to identify and appreciate knowledge from other silos but also to be willing to give up some control and autonomy over a project’s direction. Senior leaders can help motivate experts with the following actions:
Agility thrives when employees understand their organization within the broader ecosystem and continually scan for market developments that pose either threats or opportunities. Doing so requires dynamic knowledge of external bodies such as competitors, customers, regulators, and expertise communities or associations. Those who span the boundary between internal and external actors can solve problems in unique ways, because they can access knowledge from these different worlds. They can also facilitate agile collaboration by efficiently integrating disparate viewpoints and creating multistakeholder solutions, but they need to be properly empowered, managed, and resourced in order to do so. Senior managers can facilitate this by doing the following:
Managing these collaborative players as part of a network can help organizations be more agile. Although agile collaboration requires continual reassessment of complex problems, it is possible for firms to combine and recombine essential expertise from across points in the network to address VUCA issues. By steadily nurturing agile collaboration, senior management can more effectively and more efficiently access the necessary depth of expertise of key collaborators within the organization.
TAKEAWAYS
Collaboration is central to agility, yet most work is done by combinations of colleagues that don’t report up the same formal ladder or share standard processes. To enjoy true benefits of scale, networks drawn from employees across core work and temporary teams should nurture themselves by:
✓ Mapping interdependencies between teams to understand and plan for potential risks
✓ Drawing in fringe players by creating a “hidden gems” program to help unearth high-potential but overlooked experts; matching capabilities to needs across the network; pairing newcomers and network influencers through staffing or mentoring; and creating inclusive and trusting environments
✓ Connecting people doing similar work by setting specific goals and rewarding collaboration; using data and analytics to understand where silos exist; and establishing communities of practice to share expertise and resources
✓ Staying vigilant about overload, considering where it might hinder collaboration and redistributing work accordingly
✓ Understanding your organization within the broader ecosystem and scanning for market developments that pose threats or opportunities
1. Institute for Corporate Productivity, “Purposeful Collaboration: The Essential Components of Collaborative Cultures,” 2017, http://
2. Network Assessments, “Understanding Collaborative Overload,” 2018, https://
3. Connected Commons, “Connect and Adapt—Improving Retention and Engagement in First Five Years,” video, 2019, https://
4. Institute for Corporate Productivity, “Purposeful Collaboration: The Essential Components of Collaborative Cultures.”
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, May 15, 2018 (product #H04BXH).
3.12.163.175