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Rob Cross is the founder and research director of the Connected Commons, a consortium of over 100 leading organizations accelerating network research and practice.

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Rob Cross logo

Speaker, Educator, Consultant.

  • Home
  • About
  • Network Strategies
    • Elevate Personal Performance and Well-being
    • Accelerate Role Transitions
    • Execute Critical Work through Networks
    • Propel Organizational Agility and Alignment
    • Promote Rapid Innovation
  • Speaking
  • Work With Rob
  • Courses and Tools
    • Resources: Elevate Personal Performance and Well-being
    • Resources: Accelerate Role Transitions
    • Resources: Execute Critical Work through Networks
    • Resources: Propel Organizational Agility and Alignment
    • Resources: Promote Rapid Innovation
  • Resources
    • Blog
    • White Papers
    • Books
      • The Microstress Effect
      • Beyond Collaboration Overload
    • Media
  • Contact
  • Search

The Microstress Effect

Build resilience against microstress, find purpose, and cultivate relationships that enable you to thrive both at work and in life.

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The Microstress Effect by Rob Cross and Karen Dillion

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Harvard Business Review
The Economist
Wall Street Journal
The New York Times
Inc.
MIT Sloan Management Review
Bloomberg Businessweek
Forbes
Financial Times
Fast Company
Fortune
The Washington Post
Investor’s Business Daily
Time
Beyond Collaboration Overload by Rob Cross
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Beyond Collaboration Overload

Collaborate smarter to reclaim 18-24% of your time, restore your well-being, and succeed in work and life.

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TED Talk

How to be a team player — without burning out

Collaboration in the workplace is more important than ever — but it’s making us less productive in some ways. Here’s what Rob Cross has to say on what drives us to take on way too much — and how we can reclaim our time and our peace of mind.

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Explore Core Ideas in Beyond Collaboration Overload

Click on the titles below to explore the headlines and watch a brief video

Performance and Well-Being in a Hyper-Connected World
Personal networks are critical to performance and happiness in today’s always on world. But it is not large networks that win the day. Rather, successful people excel by cultivating efficient networks with specific kinds of connections that matter for performance and well-being.
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A Brawl Not a Ballet
Successful people are typically 18-24% more efficient in collaborations than their peers. They reclaim this time – almost a day a week – by structuring their work differently, managing personal biases to collaborative work and engaging efficiently across collaboration platforms.
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Creating Kevin Bacon's Network
High performers cultivate and tap networks to produce more innovative and substantive solutions than their less-connected peers. They win not by tapping an invisible power structure but by producing more impactful work while simultaneously building a network and reputation that brings opportunities to them over time.
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Being an Energizer
People that create energy in networks are four times as likely to become and stay high performers. Energizers win because opportunities flow to them and other high performers want to work with them. Engaging consistently in specific behaviors – even when under stress or pressure – wins the day for these people.
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The Secret of Ten Percenters
People that score higher on measures of career satisfaction, well-being and resilience develop specific connections inside and outside of their work. Proactively cultivating these relationships pays off in the form of physical health as well as experiencing greater growth, purpose and resilience in life.
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Reducing Micro-Stresses
Stress assaults us today in small moments that in aggregate come at us at volume and velocity never experienced before. We end each day exhausted but can’t quite point to what is draining us. Happier people tend to be more proactive in altering stress-inducing interactions and initiating ones that help them rise above the sea of stress.
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Network Strategies for Individuals, Teams and Organizations

Explore five powerful applications of network science that drive individual, team and organizational success.

Elevate Personal Performance and Well-being

Elevate Personal Performance and Well-being

Reduce collaborative overload and re-invest in connections with the greatest impact.

Accelerate Role Transitions

Accelerate Role Transitions

Replicate network practices of fast movers to speed productivity and success in new roles.

Execute Critical Work through Networks

Execute Critical Work through Networks

Manage connectivity inside and outside groups for top performance.

Propel Organizational Agility and Alignment

Propel Organizational Agility and Alignment

Drive change and cultural transformation with targeted network interventions.

Promote Rapid Innovation

Promote Rapid Innovation

Tap into invisible employee networks to fuel creativity and speed time-to-market of new ideas.

What future-focused leaders say about Rob …

Rob is a true pioneer in taking organizational network analysis and in seeing its possibilities for leadership, innovation and talent management. His work on Collaborative Overload has been very helpful to us as we have sought to help leaders navigate the increasingly hyper-connected, always-on world of work. His commitment to us over the years as a thought partner and practitioner has been invaluable.

Kevin Engholm
Managing Director
ICG Learning and Development

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Rob and I have partnered over several years, first at Ford and now at DICKS Sporting Goods, focused primarily on Collaboration Overload and Wellbeing.  He has a unique ability to bring rich, credible research to light in a digestible way… he humanizes the science, and uses his expertise to help us all lead, work, and live better together.

Julie Lodge-Jarrett
Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer

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Rob Cross has distilled a significant body of scientific evidence and research on network analysis and made it practical and impactful for leaders at all levels. This impact is often within days, and it improves their own performance and well-being and allows the entire organization to operate with speed to drive (and scale) innovation through high-quality collaboration. I have seen this impact first-hand as we have partnered with Rob over the last 2 years.

Mike Benson
Vice President
Talent & Organization Capabilities

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Rob’s work has ushered in a whole new management science domain to help organizations better understand critical business issues and drive bottom-line impact through the lens of social capital evaluation. He has the rare ability of being able to conduct complex studies and then express his findings in a crisp, compelling and practical manner. His research has significantly influenced my personal views of how to position talent for optimal success.

Michael Arena
Vice President
Talent and Development

Amazon Web Services

Cigna’s emphasis on organizational and personal leadership networks has resulted in improved business operations, leadership pipeline development and talent effectiveness. These results have been amplified by the expertise and corporate acumen of Rob Cross, an essential element of our work in this space. Whether working with new Cigna leaders or executives working to establish ever-better business and workplace efficiencies, Rob has distinguished himself as a “must have” member of the conversation and team.

Karen Kocher
Chief Learning Officer

Rob’s twenty-plus years of academically rigorous research makes him the unmatched leader in understanding the personal and organizational strategies required to succeed in the emerging Connected Economy. Over my career, I have seen his presentation style and counter-intuitive insights mesmerize and energize the most executive C-suite teams.

Greg Pryor
Senior Vice President

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The Network Insights Blog

Big network

It’s Not A Big Network that Matters

Contrary to popular belief, an effective network is not usually a big one. Success doesn’t come from having the most connections. Creating and engaging targeted relationships is the key to personal performance.

It’s Not A Big Network that MattersRead More

new role

New Role? Learn What Top Performers Do

Most people know that building their network is important for success in a new role. But the advice they get about how to do it is probably wrong.

New Role? Learn What Top Performers DoRead More

Managing network

Manage the Network, Not Just the Team or Unit

Traditional team principles and common methods for collaboration are ineffective today when people are staffed across so many teams with increasingly short lifecycles. Managing networks inside and outside of teams is critical create effective agile groups…

Manage the Network, Not Just the Team or UnitRead More

Drive organizational change

Drive Organizational Change Through Network Influencers

Identifying and working through informal opinion leaders—before a restructuring, strategic reorientation or launching a significant change initiative—can improve uptake of a change and increase the odds of success.

Drive Organizational Change Through Network InfluencersRead More

Overloaded? Stop blaming your boss.

Overloaded? Stop Blaming Your Boss

Always-on work cultures, encroaching technology, demanding bosses, difficult clients and inefficient coworkers do create collaborative overload. But there is another enemy: your own mindsets and habits.

Overloaded? Stop Blaming Your BossRead More

Collaborative Dyfunction

6 Types of Collaborative Disfunction—and How Teams Can Do Better

Groups morph into predictable patterns of collaboration that undermine performance if collaboration is not purposefully managed. More successful teams avoid or correct 6 common network patterns that cause lackluster performance or failure.

6 Types of Collaborative Disfunction—and How Teams Can Do BetterRead More

Organizational Network Analysis (ONA)

Employ Organizational Network Analysis for Better Org Design

With organizational network analysis, leaders can analyze economic costs and benefits of collaboration and use these insights to redefine hierarchical structures and craft roles and processes to deliver agility and efficiency.

Employ Organizational Network Analysis for Better Org DesignRead More

Propel innovation

Activate a Purpose-Built Network to Propel Innovation

Innovations of substance almost always occur through creative friction and re-combinations of existing ideas in networks. More successful organizations drive innovation through critical network roles and processes to generate ideas and get the best ones into…

Activate a Purpose-Built Network to Propel InnovationRead More

path for success

Finding the Path for Success in Any New Role

The right network leads to higher productivity and early wins, which help people build a solid reputation and position themselves for future success. But the path is different for different types of role transitions.

Finding the Path for Success in Any New RoleRead More

high performance

Want High Performance? Take Action on Trust, Purpose and Energy

Developing high-quality relationships is critical to team success in dynamic times. When employees experience trust, purpose and a sense of energy in their network, they are more likely to be high performers, give greater effort, report…

Want High Performance? Take Action on Trust, Purpose and EnergyRead More

cultural changes

Surprising Ways Organizational Network Analysis Enables Cultural Change

Most culture transformations begin top-down, but culture is experienced locally in networks. More successful culture-change efforts use organizational network analysis to drive diffusion of desired values and behaviors deep into an organization.

Surprising Ways Organizational Network Analysis Enables Cultural ChangeRead More

Spark networks of innovation

Spark Networks of Innovation with a Culture of Trust

For innovation to happen, people need to feel safe to speak up, ask questions, admit they don’t know and contribute ideas. More effective leaders create cultures of trust to promote the collaboration and risk-taking needed to…

Spark Networks of Innovation with a Culture of TrustRead More

3 ways to thrive at work

3 Ways to Thrive at Work

Happier people tend to define how they want to live, then create networks that support their choices. They are proactive to clarify what they want to include in their lives and invest in those activities with…

3 Ways to Thrive at WorkRead More

Network Tips for Women in New Roles

Network Tips for Women in New Roles

Four critical networking practices distinguish high-performing women. Women can adapt their own networks to accelerate transitions into new roles and thrive their careers.

Network Tips for Women in New RolesRead More

ecosystem

Shape the Ecosystem to Improve Team Performance

Team success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Leaders who proactively shape the organizational ecosystem in 6 ways are likely to have an engaged team, a better work product and smoother implementation of ideas.

Shape the Ecosystem to Improve Team PerformanceRead More

Organizational Network Analysis (ONA)

What is Organizational Network Analysis (ONA)?

Organizational network analysis (ONA) is a tool to measure and graph connections and patterns of collaboration between people within and across organizations. Leading companies use ONA to amplify people analytics and make data-driven decisions to enact…

What is Organizational Network Analysis (ONA)?Read More

top performer

How to be a Top Performer—And Have a Life

High performance and personal well-being don’t have to be at odds. By making a few small changes, you can gain back 18-24% of your collaborative time and then connect in ways that enable you to thrive…

How to be a Top Performer—And Have a LifeRead More

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About Rob Cross

Rob CrossRob Cross has studied the underlying network dynamics of effective organizations and the collaborative practices of high performers for more than 20 years. Through research and writing, speaking and consulting, and courses and tools, Rob’s network strategies are transforming the way people lead, work and live in a hyper-connected world.

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About Connected Commons

Connected Commons logoRob Cross is the research director and a co-founder of Connected Commons, a consortium of leading organizations accelerating network research and practice.

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Visit Connected Commons Store

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