How To Collaborate Better By Collaborating Less
November 19, 2019Stay in the know with exclusive industry news, click here and subscribe to our eNewsletter today!
“Hypercollaboration” is the latest iteration of team-building, slack-laden workplaces. Depending on who you ask, this might mean companies who gather various specialists to innovate new products. It might also mean company departments reaching out to other departments to improve their existing products. Either way, it means more and bigger teams.
These hypercollaborative efforts tend to run on digital platforms—whether it be Slack messages, Google calendars, or Trello Boards. But perhaps the answer to the burnout of all the different project management tools and team message boards isn’t to combine them all. You see, burnout doesn’t come from the inability to click around to access another app. Burnout occurs when an employee is overwhelmed by work demands. The movement toward connectivity and collaboration means more and more people are spending more time in meetings and answering messages than doing the actual work.
Collaborative overload has been quantified, studied, and found to be often wasteful—even sexist. So perhaps it’s time to find methods of optimizing collaboration, leading to less burnout and turnover for employees and better results for the business. Here are some ideas on how to do just that.