Collaboration has long been touted as a maxim to be followed in business. Great business leaders such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Virgin’s Richard Branson and Larry Ellison of Oracle make up a small part of those advocating for this policy. Yet, the modern business scenario is struggling as a result of excessive collaboration. While earlier, a professional could grudge working under a single boss, now one receives work requests from different verticals, often with very limited relation. These requests may even be from overseas territory with different time zones. Matrix based organizations were begun to encourage innovations as opposed to hierarchical ones, but have instead forged dual lines of reporting with professionals answerable to both functional and product managers. A statistic claims that knowledge workers are now spending a staggering eighty-five percent of their office hours performing unproductive tasks such as attending meetings, responding to emails or spending time on the work phone. This “collective overload” also undoes all talent management initiatives as inevitably it is the top tier of employees who are the most in demand thus their time gets most stretched. In order to survive these tendencies, such employees must start strategically calendaring to ensure they have blocked time towards top priorities. Source: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/much-togetherness-downside-workplace-collaboration/

Uploaded Date:28 November 2017