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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
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      • The Microstress Effect
      • Beyond Collaboration Overload
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Beyond Collaboration Overload

What Readers are Saying…

If you’re drowning in emails and meetings, look no further than this book. Drawing on a wealth of evidence and experience, Rob Cross has written an unusually practical guide to help you make your collaborations more efficient and effective.

—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author, Think Again; host, TED podcast WorkLife

Rob Cross has produced a genuine marvel. He shows why collaboration is often overused and underwhelming—and how we can enlist its power more humanely and strategically. This is an essential book on an essential topic by an essential mind.

—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author, When, Drive, and To Sell Is Human

Every leader needs to study this book, carefully. It’s loaded with insights about how to scale up your leadership and help others to do more while maximizing your time in the process!

—Tom Rath, former Senior Scientist, Gallup; author, Eat, Move, Sleep and Well Being

Beyond Collaboration Overload is a powerful leadership tool for us all as we move into a postpandemic, hyperconnected world of work.

—Jacqueline Williams-Roll, Chief Human Resources Officer, General Mills

OK, you’re really busy. Why should you take the time to read this book? Only because it will save your work life and your home life. Only because if you follow its prescriptions you’ll be both happier and more effective. Only because it’s based on solid evidence from leading firms and leaders. Do it!

—Thomas H. Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management, Babson College; Visiting Professor, Oxford’s Saïd Business School; Visiting Scholar, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

Most readers will immediately recognize the profound truth of collaborative overload, which haunts organizations and people in every vital modern industry. In compelling stories that bring each chapter to life, Rob Cross documents the emotional toll and productivity drain of collaborative overload and offers a way out—with the concept of essential collaboration. Practical and wise, this book is a game changer.

—Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School; author, The Fearless Organization

Beyond Collaborative Overload is the most positively disruptive book I have read in years. Grounded in two decades of research, the book brilliantly conveys how high performers are able to reclaim 18–24 percent of their time by intentionally cultivating their most essential connections. The results are profound: greater innovation, performance, and well-being. Contrary to conventual wisdom, when it comes to your network, more is not always better.

—Michael J. Arena, Vice President, Talent & Development, AWS; author, Adaptive Space

This must-read book is a practical, evidence-based recipe for thriving in today’s hyperconnected organizations. Get ready to confront common fallacies, like the conventional advice to build large networks and collaborate rapidly. Replace them with proven ways to actually reduce unnecessary collaboration and cultivate the pivotal connections that support both performance and well-being. Beyond Collaboration Overload provides a much-needed foundation to thrive in, rather than endure, the new world of work.

—John Boudreau, Professor of Management, Emeritus, and Senior Research Scientist, Center for Effective Organizations and Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California; author, Beyond HR, Retooling HR, Lead the Work, and Reinventing Jobs

Never in history have we had greater ability to shape our work and who we collaborate with. Why do we so quickly give up that control and choose to endure careers in a stressed-out and reactive posture? Beyond Collaboration Overload provides the insights and resources for us all to proactively manage collaborative demands and invest in connections that help us thrive in both work and life.

—Herminia Ibarra, Charles Handy Chair in Organizational Behavior, London Business School

Effective leadership and management both begin at home. And Rob Cross, a respected thought leader, brings it to your doorstep. To help you lead in an often dizzying environment of accelerating demands, Cross has compiled a set of best practices on how to make ourselves more effective leaders for our organizations, and happier at the same time. Only read this if you want to accomplish more, but with less stress.

—General Stan McChrystal, US Army Retired; author, Team of Teams and Leaders

Employees are not simply bundles of skills that we can bring together in the latest future-of-work scenario to work as seamlessly as we think. They are embedded in networks of connections that when intentionally cultivated can be the difference between an overwhelmed, stressed-out workforce and one that is thriving—both on screen and in person. Cross’s two decades of research in Beyond Collaboration Overload provides this much-needed road map, especially in times of evolution and change.

—Dean Carter, Chief Human Resources Officer, Patagonia; former Chief Human Resources Officer, Sears

Beyond Collaboration Overload presents compelling studies and stories that show how too much of a good thing can be terrible. Rob Cross’s masterpiece is packed with proven advice to help you, and those you lead, streamline your networks, meetings, emails, and webinars so that, rather than feeling frazzled and exhausted day after day, you will feel energized and be more productive and creative.

—Robert I. Sutton, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford School of Business; bestselling author, The No Asshole Rule and coauthor, Scaling Up Excellence

Ensuring workforce performance and well-being in today’s networked economy has quickly become an organizational and societal imperative. Cross’s research and resources provide practical and easy-to-apply strategies to help us all.”

—Ashley Goldsmith, Chief People Officer, Workday

The future of work will require people to manage networks and collaboration more intentionally. Beyond Collaborative Overload provides a recipe for doing that. It’s a must-read for high-growth organizations and provides a blueprint of what will be required of us all for the foreseeable future.

—Stuart Hockridge, Senior Vice President, Global Human Resources, Align

Collaboration is critical to individual performance and well-being today. Based on two decades of research, Beyond Collaboration Overload shows how people can succeed in today’s hyperconnected economy by streamlining collaborative demands and investing in connections that enable scale and innovation.

—Trudy Stein, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, IQVIA

Work is geometrically more interdependent and complex in a post-Covid world. This makes the volume, diversity, and friction of collaborative demand overwhelming. We know that more meetings, faster, is not the answer, which makes this book centrally important today. Cross’s writing and research are always powerful, and this is no exception—compelling, reality-based storytelling of leaders figuring out what works, right now!

—Dennis Baltzley, Global Solution Leader, Leadership Development, Korn Ferry

Academic research has provided very powerful insights to understand the link between peoples’ networks and their success at work, at home, and in life. Cross’s Beyond Collaboration Overload adds to this body of work through interviews with hundreds of successful leaders. The insights, tools, and practical applications throughout this book make it a critical resource in today’s collaboratively intense work.

—Nancy Vitale, cofounder and Managing Partner, Partners for Wellbeing; former Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Genentech

Beyond Collaboration Overload by Rob Cross
Order Now!

Available at:

Indiebound logo

Beyond Collaboration Overload is based on over a decade of research studying successful people and how they collaborate. The book reveals how these high performers collaborate in ways that enable them to be 18-24% more efficient than their peers. It then proceeds to show how successful people invest this time in ways that promote performance and well-being in today’s hyper-connected world.

Through in depth stories, coaching breaks and tools Beyond Collaboration Overload will show you how to break your work addiction and reclaim close to a day a week by:

  • Identifying and challenging beliefs that lead us to jump into collaborative work too quickly
  • Imposing structure in our work to shield from unproductive collaboration and
  • Altering behaviors to create efficiencies in collaborations

Infinity Loop

The book then proceeds to the right side of the infinity loop to show how more successful people invest this new time to collaborate in ways that generate performance and well-being by:

  • Cultivating and then mobilizing a broad network – not a big one – for innovation and scale
  • Collaborating in ways that energize others – typically a 4x predictor of high performance and
  • Connecting with others in ways that reduce micro-stressors and enhance physical and mental well-being

Throughout the book shows people how to play offense in this hyper-connected world and not fall prey to work addictions that will undermine success.

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.
Watch Video
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.
Watch Video
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.
Watch Video
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.
Watch Video
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.
Watch Video
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.
Watch Video

Select Media

Collaboration Overload Is Sinking Productivity

Harvard Business Review

Collaboration Overload is Sinking Productivity

Collaborative Overload

Harvard Business Review

Collaborate Overload

For an Agile Transformation Choose the Right People

Harvard Business Review

For an Agile Transformation, Choose the Right People

Collaborate Without Burnout

Harvard Business Review

Collaborate Without Burnout

A Smarter Way to Network

Harvard Business Review

A Smarter Way to Network

The Secrets of Successful Female Networkers

Harvard Business Review

The Secrets of Successful Female Networkers

To Be Happier at Work, Invest More in Your Relationships

Harvard Business Review

To Be Happier at Work Invest in Relationships

Harvard Business Review Article titled Don’t Let Micro-Stresses Burn You Out

Harvard Business Review

Don’t Let Micro-Stresses Burn You Out

Harvard Business Review article titled

Harvard Business Review

The Secret to Building Resilience

Do You Have a Life Outside of Work?

Harvard Business Review

Do You Have a Life Outside of Work?

Strategies to Get Through the Rest of the Year Without Burning Out

Time Magazine

Strategies to Get Through the Rest of the Year Without Burning Out

Losing Your Spark? Do Less Across Your Network

Forbes

Losing Your Spark? Do Less Across Your Network

Working together is great, but it’s possible to have collaboration overload

The Globe and Mail

Working together is great, but it’s possible to have collaboration overload

3 Ways to Collaborate More Efficiently and Avoid Burnout

INC.

3 Ways to Collaborate More Efficiently and Avoid Burnout

Are you suffering from collaboration overload? 9 beliefs and fears that help drive it

TED Ideas

Are You Suffering From Collaboration Overload?

Easing the Invisible Burdens of Collaboration

MIT Sloan Management Review

Easing the Invisible Burdens of Collaboration

The 9 skills that will help you ‘get promoted faster and receive top performance reviews,’ according to a career expert

CNBC

The 9 Skills That Will Help You ‘Get Promoted Faster and Receive Top Performance Reviews,’ According to a Career Expert

Financial Times Business Books September 2021 Edition

Financial Times

FT Business Books: September Edition

Work Life Balance Excessive Collaboration is Burning Out Workers

Bloomberg Businessweek

Excessive Collaboration Is Fueling Pandemic Burnout

Optimizing Return to Office Strategies with Organizational Network Analysis

MIT Sloan Management Review

Optimizing Return-to-Office Strategies With Organizational Network Analysis

The Pain of the Never-Ending Work Check-In

The Wall Street Journal

The Pain of the Never-Ending Work Check-In

Cultivating an Inclusive Culture through Personal Networks

MIT Sloan Management Review

Cultivating an Inclusive Culture Through Personal Networks

People Analytics & Future of Work Live Session

Beyond Collaboration Overload: How to Work Smarter, Get Ahead, and Restore Your Well Being

Priority overload: how to avoid it and how to relieve it

Financial Times

Priority Overload: How to Avoid It and How to Relieve It

When Collaboration Fails and How to Fix It

MIT Sloan Management Review

When Collaboration Fails and How to Fix It

A Noble Purpose Won't Transform Your Company

MIT Sloan Management Review

A Noble Purpose Alone Won’t Transform Your Company

Collaborate Smarter Not Harder

MIT Sloan Management Review

Collaborate Smarter, Not Harder

You Could Be Too Much of a Team Player

Wall Street Journal

You Could Be Too Much of a Team Player

So Busy at Work No Time to Do the Job

Wall Street Journal

So Busy at Work, No Time to Do the Job

View All

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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.

Explore Connected Commons

Visit Connected Commons Store

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