Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results

INTRODUCTION

The Perils of Collaboration—In Good Times and Bad

BAD COLLABORATION is worse than no collaboration. People scuttle from meeting to meeting to coordinate work and share ideas, but far too little gets done. Employees from different units in a company squabble over who should do what on a common project and infighting consumes their work.

This is a terrible way of working in the best of times: resources are wasted while better players pull away. It’s downright reckless in tough times, such as in an economic crisis, where the ability to pull together can make the difference between great and lousy performance.

Poor collaboration is a disease afflicting even the best companies. I learned this sobering lesson in the 1990s when I studied ...