Episode 77: How Can You Reduce Collaborative Overload? (Interview with Rob Cross)

In this episode of the podcast, my guest is Rob Cross, Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College and author of a brilliant new book “Beyond Collaboration Overload”. In this episode, Rob talks about the number one predictor of performance. It's not actually about how smart you are, but how you act as an energiser across your network.

Throughout the episode. Rob and I discuss:

• How to reclaim 18% to 24% of your time or about one full day per week by reducing collaborative overload

• What it means to be an energiser and how to use organisational network analysis or ONA to measure energisers and their impact across the organisation

• How to use active and passive ONA to tackle pressing business challenges such as designing successful hybrid work and diversity and inclusion initiatives

You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Techwolf. To learn more, visit techwolf.ai.

Interview Transcript

David Green: Today, I am delighted to welcome Rob Cross the Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership, at Babson college, and author of a brilliant new book "Beyond Collaboration Overload." And in my view, the world's leading authority in organisational network analysis to the Digital HR Leaders podcast, a bit of a mouthful to get started there.

Rob, It is great to have you on the show. Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to yourself. and your work?

Rob Cross: Yeah, absolutely. And it's such a treat to be here with everybody. I think I bring an angle or a lens into the people analytics world that is looking at, ways that relationships have impact in different ways.

And so this is such an opportunity to just get, to share some thoughts and ideas, and I'm super appreciative of all you do to kind of bring those ideas into this conversation, David, very much. But my focus is I teach at Babson and I also, on the side, I run a group called the Connected Commons.

That is a group of about 110 organisations now that are very focused in just taking analytical views into how networks and collaboration have impact on different things in organisations. I use the term things, lightly because, sometimes we are focusing at very large macro levels of looking at ways to drive cultural change more effectively or very heavily right now, the whole return to work idea. And how do you think about, keeping networks together that need to be together in different ways has become interesting, all the way down to the focus of this book, which is very much more at the individual level, and understanding how individuals are connecting or collaborating in ways that yield outcomes, but the real thread throughout in almost everything we're doing is using analytic insights around what kinds of connections matter, how much, what should people be doing to get scale in their collaborations and really try to bring that perspective to bear and providing guidance on what organisations should be thinking about, what levers they have to pull to either reduce or increase connectivity as has impact for them.

David Green: It is interesting, as I’m sure we will explore in our conversation that this study of networks and collaboration there was already lots of talk about it and lots of companies doing it, and obviously lots of more technology coming in place to support some of that work as well. And then the pandemic happened. And everyone is talking about collaboration in different work modes as well at the moment. So I think we will explore lots in our conversation, pack a lot in for listeners. Now, obviously the first thing that I need to mention, and I will stick it up in case it is on the video because I have an advanced copy here.

Is the new book, the timing is fantastic, I guess, but obviously as I know, writing a book takes time and a lot of effort as well. It is released on September 14th. So I know that it is available for pre-order now. Can you give listeners a brief overview or an introduction to the book? What will they find if they decide to pick it up?

Rob Cross: Absolutely, it is always great to see that because I haven't got a copy myself. I just know it goes out to influencers like yourself and they get to read it. But I am dying for my wife to see the endorsement for her in it and see what her reaction is. So you'll have to take a look at that. The book is in many ways, it's interesting what you mentioned about the pandemic, because I think there is a lot of people whose fields of research were dramatically negatively impacted, by what happened and how innovation may be emerging or space is used or things like that. For me, it has actually put this probably on a five-year trajectory of advancing the ideas and people really thinking about how do we, either within teams, we care about manage connectivity and collaboration, more intentionally, or as individuals, especially at that level how we are going to go into some form of work going forward, where we have fewer structures around us, dictating the patterns of connectivity, even if it is just physical space and the amount of time we are spending in a given context together. So it has been interesting in that it has actually accelerated in many ways, the need for people to be very intentional about how they are managing their own connectivity.

So the title, Beyond Collaborative Overload, came about with just the initial step of what we see the high performers doing, but at the heart of it, the book is really geared on understanding work that we have been doing for almost 20 years now in the consortium where we would map these network analytics, across hundreds of organisations now, and then go in and see what are the patterns of connectivity that are distinguishing the high performers.

So those people that actively stay in the upwardly mobile category. We have done that for about 20 years and then over the past 10, the members of the consortium were really interested in saying, well, we love the performance angle, but could you also broaden your definition of success to think about people that are just, god forbid happy in their work. And so we have looked at ideas. We have looked at performance and then also measures around thriving wellbeing, career satisfaction, all sorts of different measures. You will hear me reference them as the happy people, but I mean, that kind of tongue in cheek, there has been a lot of analytics behind that.

That is the heart of the book, to understand those people that are out performing and sustainable in what they are doing, really investigating the way they are collaborating that enables them to be successful. And what we see in it, the heart of the book is on this infinity loop model, where we see the people that are doing better, they tend to be more efficient, collaboratively than their peers. So we can go out and plot these analytics and see who are the people that give the greatest impact and take the least amount of time in these groups. I then went out and interviewed a hundred women, a hundred men, and we just did a whole suite of things to understand behaviourally, what are you doing that's enabling you to be about 18 to 24% more efficient than your peers. And so that is one side of the loop is talking about some of the strategies there. And then the question that was really important to me to build into this book is not just how do you buy back time? that was the initial thing I was getting asked for from everybody, but, then also to say, okay, once you buy that time. What are the more successful people doing with it?

Because if you just buy the time back and then go back to faster meetings, I mean, that is what's killing us from the pandemic, right? We have gone from having meetings that are an hour long to 30 minutes. People have a ton more of them, and they are just more overwhelmed by the end of the day. They are not doing things differently.

And so the right side of this loop the latter part of the book is very much geared around how are these people engaging in collaboration in ways that enable them to scale differently? It is a very different view of how collaboration is creating scale and innovation, for these people, that, kind of ties together there.

So that is it in a nutshell.

David Green: I think that is a really great overview. And I'm not surprised that the field has had a trajectory forward five years, because from what you have just talked about is everything I am hearing when talking to organisations, people working as people analytics leaders in those organisations and what they are being asked to look at.

And you are right, people analytics as a field has definitely seen an upward trajectory since the start of the pandemic, over a multitude of things. It is interesting as you said that some fields have really, been hit and some people's areas of research have been hit by the pandemic and others have been accelerated.

What I would love to hear, without giving too much away from the book, but perhaps tempting people, how do people succeed in a hyper-connected world? Because, I love the fact that you said it is not just about how to buy back time, but, it is what do the successful people do with that time. So how do they succeed in this hyper-connected world?

Rob Cross: Yeah. So I can touch on either side a little bit and maybe put out some ideas there. Because I think, what has been really important in this work is understanding first how are people buying the time back? And what they can actually do that they have more control over than sometimes we think, at the heart of it. You know yourself or any audience that you go into, if you just go back to people and say, you need to connect with these five people in a different way, they would roll their eyes at us. Right? I mean, none of us have a spare second to, barely just get through the days and be healthy anymore.

And so if you are not starting with this notion of how do you reclaim that time, you are just tending to fall on deaf ears. So at the heart of it, what we could see in all these interviews that I did is there are three broad categories of things and then a whole set of behaviours under each of these that we see in the more efficient collaborators. It's not just about a technology, if anything, that is exacerbating the problem. Most leaders I would talk to would say we are managing across nine different kinds of collaborative tools these days, because they are just inexpensive and we have engaged in too much. It is more about the norms of use, that I would say email isn't really killing us as much as we think sometimes it's the culture of use with a lot of persist around it and you find that the more efficient collaborators they would just be persistent, they can't control all email. That's the knee jerk reaction that people say, well, I can't control all emails, so it's not worth trying, but if you do, you can oftentimes influence the use of email with the people that you are most connected with.

So you get about 60% of it, which, on the margin can add up to quite a bit if you agree on norms of when we're going to use it, how we're going to use it, write it in bullet formats, not five paragraphs where you're hiding what you want. in the fourth, all sorts of easy conventions to kind of build in. So at the heart of it, we find that the more efficient collaborators, they're putting structure into their work differently. Now they are more likely to strategically calendar block reflective time to manage role under dependencies ahead of the demands coming at them, but they don't just play defence, their play on offence and kind of structuring their work.

Number two is that they are really aware of what I call these identity triggers, our tendencies as human beings to jump in when we shouldn't. And that was my biggest surprise in all this work. I started this game convinced that the enemy was out there, it was time zones, emails, nasty bosses, demanding clients, and came out the other end, after many, many years looking at this, hundreds and hundreds of interviews, completely convinced that 50% or more of the problem is us and how we tend to jump in. We all have different drivers that drive it, but we tend to jump in because we like accomplishment, we like status we are servant based leaders, which is great. But it only works up to a certain extent where you get overwhelmed.

So there is nine of these triggers, that people, who are successful in this game, they learn to guard against the one that drives them to jump in. And it really, really matters, to be thinking about the structural piece, the identity piece. And in that small moment where you have a tendency to jump in, to kind of pull back for a second and say, no. And then the tactical piece, it is emails, it is meetings. There are a lot of very specific things that people do there. So that is on the, buy your time back side of it. And then, what we see with the more successful people is they are much more likely to do two things. One is when an opportunity passes by if you have eight things on your plate, and a ninth opportunity passes by there is one category of person that just hunkers down and tries to get it done. They also are using the people that they're using all the time and they are probably burning those people out as well. And then there is a second that has bought back just enough time, they have done just enough of this, that they have a little bit more space in their lives that tends to either take that request or see the possibility.

And they reach more broadly into the network to say, is there a different way to do this? Should I be involving others? Can I accomplish something greater? And they are the ones that win. We can see it is the second biggest predictor of a high performer, nothing nefarious or political or other things like that. It is just ultimately at the heart of it, they are producing things of greater substance and impact, and they are building their own reputational capital in the way they are doing it, and so things flow to them over time. There is one more, I will come back to in a minute. I want to pause here for a second, but I can tell you the biggest predictor, after that, but, you get the synergy of it, right?

The first thing that we all stop doing when we are overloaded, if we allow that to happen is we don't look at those small moments expansively, we either pass them by, or we say, how do I just get this done quickly? And it just starts this kind of narrowing process for people that derails them over time.

So that is one way the ideas kind of fit together there.

David Green: Yeah. Well, and interesting that you say that you reach more broadly into your network to think about if there is a different way that we could look at this or, to, get it done. It is fascinating. I was smiling when you were talking about some of those things, with email 60% is from the same people.

So if you agree on some quick rules of engagement. If you want to call it that, via email, that is a great way of doing it. And I see people that send great emails who probably get better responses are the ones that put up front what they want. As you said, they don't hide it in the fourth or fifth bullet down because they are too afraid or they can't get to the point quick enough, like me some times with my questions, but yeah, it is really, really interesting, I think. And I guess what the book does is it helps guide people and it is the same in anything, when you learn the tricks of some of the best performers, then you feel more able to apply them to yourself.

Rob Cross: And that is the intent. What I was hearing in this, of course, every time I write for wall street journal, Harvard business review, or other places they are always looking for what's that one seductive principle, you know that one thing we can build a book around, and this is just not that game.

I've done so much of this in groups where we'll talk about each of these ideas, structure, identity and tactics and say, which do you most need to do? And we will poll on it. And there is never one thing that gets picked in these polls, and these polls can be thousands of people, it's almost always a pretty even distribution. And so, the nature of the challenge is to guide yourself down to the three things that you are going to be dogmatically persistent on, and you fight on the margin. You know, I equate this to people as, it's not a ballet, right?

It's not an elegant solution. it is a brawl where you are kind of on it on the margin every day. And that is what these people do that get back a day a week. So it is a significant return, but you have got to be on it. And it always seems to be in those small things.

Another one I will hear constantly is groups will agree on no email after 10 o'clock at night. If you have to write it, write it, but then send it on delay the next morning. so you propagate that 10.01 response or 10.02, 10.05 and further that always on culture and that is a small thing, right. A small agreement, but it can stem a lot of behaviour that is not that helpful. Especially as people that are new to groups coming in, they don't quite know what the norms are in different ways.

David Green: Yeah. A trick I have learned is when there is multiple people on an email chain, resisting that temptation to jump in and sometimes seeing how it plays out.

And then by the time it gets to the end, sometimes the problem has been resolved or you only have to actually add one line or a couple of lines. And if you have got involved earlier, you just would have been involved in even more and caused everyone else more work as well.

Rob Cross: Yeah. The thing that is fascinating about that to me is people typically look at my big analytics and they see these people that are overwhelmed and they are like that person is a hoarder. The micromanager. And what you are describing is you create a reliance on yourself there. If you jumped in, and if you did it, you have created a reliance on yourself, but you are not hoarding. You just want to show presence, or you want to help. So it is driven by all sorts of tendencies. When I talk about these triggers, it is not just the control freaks that get into this trouble.

You are as likely to see these high servant based mindset leaders that are very well-intended. But if they create themselves as the path of least resistance or they see helping as helping directly versus allowing a capability to solve a problem to be built, then they hit these points. And what you are describing is funny.

It is the opening story in the first chapters, this leader that was faltering significantly. And that was on a bigger scale, one of the tendencies, was to jump at a certain point. So it it kind of eye opening when you really dissect it and start seeing the degree to which that is a form of overloading, again, that is not out there that is us.

David Green: Obviously I have been reading some of the book, and when you say that 50% of it is us and you think, yeah it is, it really is. And the good thing about that, those are the sorts of things you can control, and train yourself better to do. I mean, in a way it is good that 50% is us because hopefully that means we can try and do something about it. It’s just hard.

Rob Cross: I know for me, it is the accomplishment. if I see a five minutes slither, I will jam an hour of stuff into that and find a way to involve others if I'm not careful and, six/eight weeks out, I am wondering how did I get here again?

And yeah, it was me that started it. So it is an interesting kind of challenge with it all.

David Green: You mentioned the second biggest predictor of success, i’m glad I remembered, what is the second biggest predictor of success?

Rob Cross: I was wondering if you were going to mention that. And so this is, again, a separate chapter in there, but what we found is doing Network analytic work. And this started, over 20 years ago, I was in one of the blue chip consulting firms and they were saying, well, I don't think what distinguishes our high performers is a couple of points of IQ because we get really bright people. And this one partner in particular was saying to me that I think the thing that is distinguishing our high-performers is that they create an energy or buzz around them in their interactions.

And they get other people. engaged in what they are up to the partners, help them out. Their peers give greater effort. The team is more innovative. The client wants to buy more. And he said that has everything to do with the way they create energy in the network and not how smart they are, slightly higher IQ or whatever.

And sure enough, we have mapped it there. And over 23 years now, actually, we have been applying that energy idea and these network analytics and statistically, it is usually four times the predictor of a high performer. We find that kind of broad, diverse network, early stage problem solving tends to out predict after a certain point, it out predicts human capital measures, at a certain point, you start to propagate with people that are similarly smart and willing to work hard and it becomes the network that distinguishes people if they are scaling. And then that energy idea tends to be four times the predictor of the beta weights. I love being able to say that because most audiences I can’t go in and say that.

David Green: So how do you measure that energy because that would be really great to hear.

Rob Cross: Well, so for me, it is just a basic question. You know, it is when you interact with some people you walk away more enthused and we can ask it in a couple of different ways.

And this is one of the reasons that I still, despite also being able to use all sorts of passive analytics that we do use, the predictive abilities of both the positive and the negative emotional interactions are far beyond the informational ones every time. So, I can look at the positive side of energy, just who are those people that you walk away from and you are just a little bit more enthused about what you are up to, not all the time, but typically, and you count the number of incoming nominations and you find your energisers that way. You find that it is very behavioural, that is the interesting thing. I have had people on my team or myself go back and we interview the energisers, the people that create it, and then the energised, in these networks to see what is going on.

And it is nine pretty specific behaviours. It is not sometimes what we think of in the sense that you are likely to see, for example, a low-key person being an energiser as somebody that is traditionally charismatic. It is not built up in the flamboyance or extroversion. but they are much more likely for example, to stay fully present in a conversation they are not checking their texts constantly, or they are much more likely to see realistic possibilities that connect with what others care about, not just their stuff, but what others care about.

So, that has helped so consistently across hundreds of organisations, all sorts of industries, that the bigger predictor is, again, it is not having that big network, but rather being somebody that creates pull to you, they get better talent around them. We can see they stay longer, ideas flow their way. And just like I was describing with the infinity loop, the downside is the first thing that, you stop doing when you get collaboratively overloaded is you stop coming into interactions in ways that inspire other people's energy.

You come in like, how do I get this done and you maybe are a nice person, but you are focused, you are going to narrow down on what has to happen. And so again, that is the insidious nature of this is like, if you are not taking care of the overload piece, then you just don't tend to engage in ways that help you get scale. And get things flowing to you in different ways over time.

David Green: And I guess that is the danger, because if you are one of these energisers, people naturally gravitate towards you, and the likelihood is that you could be one of the people that is most at risk of burnout because you do get the collaborative overload.

Rob Cross: Right. And these analytics we run. One of the really fascinating things about collaborative overload and I love the way you said it, because I think that is what drives it is collaborative overload feels really good right up until it doesn't, you are in the thick of things, people rely on you it is high energy stuff is going. And then, right until it is that last project that gets dumped on you, your significant other says no more through the weekend or health problem, whatever it is. Right. And then it just starts this quick decline there, if you are not thinking about it, but that is the insidious nature, you have got to be thinking about in those situations, do I engage directly or do I help create capability? Do I connect people under me? And see that, happening over time.

David Green: When we come back in just a moment, more of the conversation between Rob and I, as I ask Rob his views on why the use of passive organisational network analysis is accelerating so rapidly, this series of the digital HR leaders podcast is sponsored by TechWolf. 
TechWolf uses AI to identify skills. Why? Because companies who know their workforces skills data are better equipped to face change. The best insight and skills wins, but how. Getting skills data. used to be a long administrative process, not anymore. Thanks to TechWolf’s breakthrough use of AI and natural language processing in particular skills can now automatically be extracted from HR and non HR data sources like HRIS, learning platforms, or project management tools, With TechWolf's connected skills API. You can get a fully automated and continuous overview of your people's evolving skills in less than eight weeks. To learn more, visit techwolf.ai Welcome back to this episode of the digital HR leaders podcast with Rob cross. Now, back to the conversation,

I'm going to ask one more you mentioned that you have been doing network analysis for 23 years on this particular study maybe even longer, recently we have seen passive network analysis come in, which certainly helps in terms of doing things at scale, and helps you do things on a continuous basis. You mentioned you use both, how has the acceleration of passive network analytics supported the work that you have been doing long term and in active.

Rob Cross: Yeah, I mean on the acceleration the gas pedal side of it, just the number of possibilities have exploded. It used to be just email and now it is all the different channels and things like that. So on the acceleration side, that is like a gold mine if anything, it is a little bit overwhelming because every organisation has a different culture. Whether they rely on, IM more than email or phone, and you are trying to dissect, what is the right link that actually has impact there. The break in this whole game, this has been fascinating to me to watch because I would have thought 10 years ago, we were leaning more into passive and starting to move away from active.

But what we and most people have found is that the privacy regulations they put a real damper on it. And the level you can get to and the actionable insights you can get out if you don't have opt in or other elements like that. For me, it is never, that one is better than the other it is usually, what is the thing that we are trying to accomplish. And typically if I find that it's a large cultural transformation, we may be using active approaches because we get sentiment better in that. And there is nobody in there that I am aware of right now, outside of maybe some of the litigation issues that pull the content of the emails, for sentiment that way, that could technically, but it just doesn't go socially.

And so you need different ways for people to be reacting to things, on that level. On the other side, like you said, the continuous measurement, and even that is one of the challenges, how often do you need to be doing and taking action on the measures. I have worked with some of the collaboration, the big companies, that is a really interesting question because the, continuous nature is great, but then it also can just flood you with data that you don't quite know, how, and when should I be taking an action on it? So it is a real challenge, but things that I see and we are working with different companies on right now are things like attrition. You can start to see, people coming in are they are getting connected enough do they have the right sets of connections that correlate or predict retention or departure? Looking at, D&I, in a more novel way. That has been a huge area of interest of mine for 20 plus years, and I could never get the attorneys to agree to give ethnicity data over until recently with the social unrest, suddenly everybody said, oh, this is something we are missing. And you get tremendously different insights right around what you can do to speed inclusion. And the fact that it is not one population against all the others, it is these islands that you start to see, it is those kinds of insights to be able to track that maybe week to week or month to month, large-scale mergers, things like that are fantastic passive applications.

The problem with those is usually the aggregation up, you are not oftentimes able to go down to the individual and see them. You are looking at aggregations of three or five or teams or things. And there can be times that works, but there can be other times if you are worried about wellbeing where you really know need to know about the individual. And so that is the heart of the trade-off, for me is, what is the nature and the biggest impact you are trying to have with the project. And that starts to dictate a selection, sometimes one or the other sometimes hybrid approaches that work for pulling things together.

David Green: That leads us on to the next question, actually, one of the conversations is if you are going to do analytics of any type, people analytics of any type, whether it is using network analysis or other techniques, if you can provide value to the individual whose data you are analysing, like the employee. So for example, if it is linked to well-being or burnout you can create actions that benefit that individual, then hopefully that solves some of the privacy and legal challenges that you get.

Rob Cross: Yes, totally. That is how we get by the works councils all the time in this game, all the softwares we built in the consortium, they not only run the analytics at a dashboard level, but each person has a report generated for themselves or website. And so it is not showing that gosh, David doesn't like Rob or doesn't come to Rob, it is not at that level. It is just saying, look, your network is more or less insular than your peer group. And here is some things you can do about it. I found, over all the years we have done this where we have used every trick possible when using surveys to get the surveys back. Giving away raffles to vacations or iPads or whatever. And the thing that worked immediately like that was when each individual got a value add, back for them, then it was suddenly not a problem at all to get the response rates up.

I would like to see, and I don't want to mention vendors names but I have git got five in my mind. I would like to see them doing more with the actual network data, in creating these individual reports, I know some of them have time spent and a meeting management mechanisms, but there is a tremendous strength if those organisations would, would do it in helping people start to understand how is bias creeping into my network? So for example, one of the things we know is that when people rise in an organisation and continue to hold the 60/70% of their trusted ties back where they came from, it is a natural tendency and it tends to derail people in ways that aren’t visible, to them. They just don't see what is happening, that they should have been paying attention to. You should easily be able to see that with email, and easily be able to create these venn diagrams, whatever it is that helps somebody see, well, I need to lean into this area or that area. And de-prioritise some of these interactions.

So there is a lot like that, that I really would love to see the organisations do that is basing on understanding what the high performers are doing. And helping to feed that back to individuals in a productive way. I hope we get there more and more.

David Green: I agree. I mean, I have seen tools out there and again, I won't mention any names that let you know who some of your top connections are that you haven't spoken to for a while, and that is quite good. But if you think about sales, if you have got the aggregated level of what high performers in sales are doing, in terms of that combination of contacts or connections in and outside of the organisation and what teams within the organisation they have got strong connections with, what a great learning tool that is for all the people that are aspiring to be high-performing salespeople. And then obviously there is the benefits to them and there is a huge benefit to the organisation as well.

Rob Cross: In that same idea we looked at, for example, onboarding it has evolved really, it is a different program of work, the program around the book is very much focused on high performing, successful people, high performer. A different one that we had a ton of companies involved with and this has become even more important right now are looking at transitions in groups.

So it used to be, they just want to know about onboarding, but then it became about promotions or lateral transitions with agile work. And what we could see in that, just as another example, is that in general strong culture companies that would take people about three to five years to come in and replicate the connectivity of a high performer. That didn't mean they weren't talking to people and that they hadn't built the same constellation of bridging ties, trust, reputation, that sort of thing that enabled people to scale. And yet we would see some people do it in nine months. And so, again we interviewed the heck out of them and said, okay, here is how you can shift some of the things you are doing in these transition states, to kind of get that. I mean, that is a really big deal today. If anything, the network and the relationships are going to be more important as we go back into return to work context.

And so, giving evidence of that to your point back, just like the salespeople or the high performer, understanding those people that move seamlessly across groups, one of the studies, and maybe you would know about this. I would love to ask you this. Actually, if I can turn the questions back for a second, I have been fascinated by this thing I see on LinkedIn.

And I don't know if it's just me observing it and seeing it, what I want to in this situation. But one of the things that I see is when people would enter into organisations, and we looked at this carefully, if they were really good at creating pull versus push. So push for me is when you come in and you sit down and you have your meet and greets and people say, well, David, tell me what you do.

And you fall into the trap of telling them, And really most people don't care unless they know exactly how what you do helps them. And so we will find that the real fast movers, they would not answer the question they would say, well, I will tell you what I do, but let me just understand quickly, what are your big priorities right now? Or one or two pain points. And they would, morph what they knew to that person's needs, give status, generate energy, and create a win. And this was one of nine pretty specific behaviours that distinguished the fast movers. But what was fascinating is the people that pushed and said, here is what I do. And they are not arrogant, they are just doing what they have been taught. What you would find is that they would start to struggle around the nine month mark. That was the point where they just didn't have that well of support around them. And so initiatives that took the pull person, one meeting to get through was taking them five.

And, so they would leave, but the leaving may not happen for 18 to 24 months. You could see in this, over time I have been fascinated by what I see on LinkedIn, again, this a lot of times trickle effect where you see somebody that has a 10/12/14 year career in someplace. And then they go on these two year runs. And I have been wondering, or trying to find a way to design a study, to see if that is not what is happening. I think most of these people that ended up leaving, they're just going why don't these guys get me? Or why isn't this working? Like it just worked in other places.

They are not equating what they did in the first six months to the problems they are having, 18-24 months after.

David Green: It is interesting and I suppose it makes sense. If you ask people what they need, rather than tell people what you are there to do, and then you service those needs, then that is going to help.

Rob Cross: It’s crazy, it is so simple. But I will teach that in classes...

David Green: Of course people are new in a company and if people ask what are you here to do, then you are just going to repeat verbatim what you have agreed you will be doing.

Rob Cross: I mean, it makes sense. you are under pressure, right? You are trying to impress you are new and everything else. When I do this in my classes or executive programs, everybody would have the same reaction.

Oh yeah. It makes so much sense. And then I would pull two executives down in the room and say, okay, play this out. And they immediately go in to pushing, they immediately fall back into here is what I have done or whatever it is. And I think it is conditioned from grade school on, in us to show we are smart in the moment and we have just created unfortunately a bad set up for people.

David Green: We hope you are enjoying this episode of the digital HR leaders podcast. If you are looking to continue your learning. Head over to myHR future.com and take a look at the, my HR future academy.

It is a learning experience platform, supporting HR professionals to become more data-driven more business focused and more experience led by taking our short assessment. you will see how you stack up against the HR skills of the future. Them our recommended learning journeys, guide you every step of the way, helping you to close your skills gaps, deepen your knowledge and press play on your career. Now, let's go back to the conversation with Rob cross, where we are going to explore more about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted collaborations.

We talked a little bit about hybrid working and I would be really interested to get your views on how you see collaboration changing if it will change in a hybrid work environment?

Rob Cross: Yeah, what I am seeing and I would be curious about what you see too as you see a broader spectrum of all this than I do. But some of the reports I have been looking at were showing that people, as they went into COVID were working 5-8 hours more a week, deeper into the night earlier into the morning on all sorts of, either instant or email or other things like that.

And the troubling thing for me that I have been hearing about in all the interview work that I have been doing is the meetings have gone from as an example an hour down to half an hour, if you are working an eight hour day, it moves from 8 meetings to 16. I am making that number up, but it is just, to show the volume. That does a number of things that are really hard for people, it creates a greater intensity in that 30 minute block, you have got to be on just a little bit more and focused. It creates switching costs as you are moving from one point to the other. And then it creates a longer to do list at the end of the day.

You have not got 8 things, but 16 now that you have got to follow up on so I think the overload and the things that, again, I am talking about in the book or other things we are doing in the consortium is a really big deal for people to be paying attention to.

And I think part of the reason, that we are experiencing so much stress through COVID, is that in part there have been more of these demands placed on, and then in part it has happened, right as we have been pulled out of the external groups that kept us sane because of social distancing. So the book clubs, the athletic groups, other things like that really play a role in the wellbeing side of us all and that kind of got taken away. And so I think, at the heart of it, the people that are going to do better, they are going to be more intentional at finding ways to push these collaborative demands down. There will be professional connections that are important, but I also hope they invest in some of the wellbeing side too.

That is at the individual level, at the organisational level on the return to work, we have run a ton of studies recently for companies that are thinking about how do we think about hybrid work? And who do we bring back for what periods of time? And then what constellation? Network analytics are really well-suited for that, because you can come in and say, okay, it is not so much this role, this role, this role, because of the nature of the work, it is actually these sets of four or five roles because of the interactions between them that we want to preserve, traditional, pure human capital analytics don't see those webs in the same way. So it is a really nice way to think about how you are bringing people back. But I think the biggest insight to me that has been intriguing is when we would ask all these people in the analytics what do you need to be turning to other people for face-to-face versus remote? At the heart of it we would hear on the face to face interactions it was, innovation, it was growth in my work and it was getting a sense of energy or purpose from others. That will be one of the biggest challenges, I think for companies as they think about how do they equip their leaders to use that face to face time better. You don't want people to just come back and use the two days to default them to doing work as they did in the past. You really want people to be using that time to create an energy and purpose, growth opportunities and innovation. It means a very different thing or approach for groups that are successful.

A lot of companies that I have described that are working with these ideas, they are building guides and other things like that to transition back differently.

David Green: I guess it is very much, an experiment in many respects. Whatever cadence people will come and what interactions we think we need to do face to face versus remotely. And I guess we are going to have to measure that. And then, learn from it.

Rob Cross: And hopefully be able to have some of the network analytics too. What is fascinating to me is we went into COVID, I tagged a couple of questions onto these massive surveys, for the big vendors that were putting it out there.

And I just said, just give me an open-ended question that says, what are you learning from this experience? Normally this goes out to a thousand people or a thousand companies you get a page of open-ended responses back. Nobody has the time for it. We are getting hundreds of pages back, of people’s deeply thoughtful comments because it was such a shock to the system.

An experiment like you were saying just happened so quickly, but it was really amazing. I would read down these things and the first bulk of them would be. Oh, my gosh, this has been the best thing ever, I've, learned that there is a different way to live my life. I am talking to my significant other, my children like me, I am healthier, all these things, but then the amazing thing is I would see the exact reverse just as impassioned. It would be, oh my gosh, where did my commute go? I can't believe that has gone. That was the only time I had and, for the second category, it is not really the commute it is that they gave up control of the situation. And, they let you know the system to define versus playing offence and kind of shaping it.

And I think that's like to me, and related to this book, that is one of the core ideas that I think we have all got to be paying more attention to it, there is nobody else paying attention to it. There is no overload officers. There are no analytics that are really targeting it just yet.

Anyway, that people have to make their own way and experiment at a personal level too.

David Green: A lot of what you said and I have heard from others is this importance of being intentional. What tips would you give to people to help them be more intentional, they can obviously read the book, but seriously what are the tips and tricks for people to be more intentional?

Rob Cross: I will rattle off a handful of them, blocking off some reflective time, that is an easy one. Everybody says, oh yeah, that makes sense. And then they give it up immediately. We know that that two hour block is associated with productivity in certain kinds of work. But what I would hear is actually a little bit deeper in all the interviews I was doing. I would get on the phone with somebody and they would say, well, the first thing I do is email and get that out of the way.

And then I try to go on to other forms of work, then I would get on the next call and I would say, do you email first? They would say some variant of, are you crazy? If I start with email, it never stops. What they had learned was that they did their creative work early. They blocked email in 30 minute intervals, they communicated this to their team. So people knew when to expect to hear from them. And it is amazing how, when you do that, life adjusts to you in ways that surprises people an awful lot so there are all sorts of tricks like that, with reflective time all sorts of ways that people would think about their own wellbeing through the day.

And that could take the form of just having, a Fitbit competition or a 15 minute meditation point that some people loved, or just texts joking with other people. And kind of get off task, but there was a greater intentionality, on that side. I think the other thing that if I had one really critical piece of advice, and this is coming from the wellbeing work and stuff that we have just finished there, I have been in, 200 interviews, a hundred women, a hundred men.

The first 10 minutes are all great, everybody is professional and polished and poised and laughing. But by, 45, 60, 75 minutes, you are getting a sense of how real people's struggles are today, And how hard it is. And I think the people that I can see that are doing better about 1 in 10 in all my interviews, the real core thing they have done is to keep at least two or three groups that they are engaged with outside of work alive.

And they just have a little more dimensionality in their life, whether it's around athletics, music, spiritual, poetry, it comes from all sorts of walks of life, but those people that are engaging with other people that care about that thing. So they show up for it and they keep in it and it becomes a part of their identity.

But what people often don't think about is suddenly you are surrounded by a bunch of people that come at life from very different perspectives. It is not all just, the investment banks or the consulting firms or whatever. And you just get a different framing of what matters and what doesn't in these things.

And it just makes people healthier. If I had one idea for everybody, if I had to force it to one, that is, seemingly to me, the biggest, most consistent thing we can do to put structure into our lives that keeps us showing up in different ways and more broadly. As you can tell I am a little passionate about that after all these interviews.

David Green: Oh no, I agree. I know on a personal perspective, I find the days where I do a 15 hour day and don't do anything else. If I do that maybe two, three days in a row, then I am quite grumpy and irritable. But if I am Intentional about getting time to do some sport, either individually or in a group I play cricket, don’t worry I won’t talk about cricket, or I guess even if I take the dog out with my wife at lunchtime, when the kids are at school, it enables you to compartmentalise work a little bit and get that variety, which I think is so important.

Rob Cross: I think that is the trick, and I will be quick with this, but what I found is there is a set of spheres that create a sense of purpose for people in terms of the interactions the trick of the people that are really happy and really showing up differently it is not that they are doing one massive thing in terms of purpose, they are not hiking the Himalayas or sailing the ocean. It is that they craft the small moments to create a greater sense of purpose. So you walking the dog with your Wife. Suddenly that is creating a connection there and you may extend it to say, gosh, why don't we take the neighbour and one other group. It is those little shifts in what you are already doing that pull you into more kinds of spheres. That really seem to be the magic of the people that are doing better today. From what I can see anyway,

David Green: I have a couple more questions. I know we are running out of time. First one, I am going to combine two of them actually.

What are the biggest opportunities do you think for companies and perhaps in particular, our people analytics leaders to collect and analyse network data, you might include D&I as part of that as I know that is something you are passionate about. So we can combine those two.

Rob Cross: I think to me, there are two ways to solve this problem of overload and people getting burned out, stressed out.

Falling innovation, things like that, that will start to happen if we don't figure this out. One is this individual route that I am talking about and just taking control of it individually, but undeniably the other problem is as we have gone through, the past 10, 15, 20 years, we have had all these technologies deployed on organisations. Every single consulting firm comes in with a new spin of the week, but at the heart of it, they are taking layers consistently out of the hierarchy. They are largely focusing on how do we become more agile, more nimble in significant parts by just focusing on the decision making interactions and not seeing the way inefficiencies happen with overload, either around core roles, core experts other things like that. So there is a whole host of drivers that we have seen the collaborative intensity of work rise, pre pandemic. We were seeing about 85% of most people's time in any given week spent on the phone, on email and in meetings.

And we know that has risen, depending on which study you look at. So the really big thing from an organisational standpoint is people aren't leveraging that data enough right now, and I see that formal structure decisions being made or role design decisions being made, where you can look at role A and role B the work demands of those roles are seemingly the same.

But you find with role A, it is just coordinating between two groups that have liked each other and then role B gets stuck with three time zones, two leaders that hate each other and misaligned incentives. And it is a totally different game. And so until we get a sense, in my mind what I call it, is the collaborative footprint of the work we are going to run into trouble. I think that that holds for a lot of things from a performance standpoint, same idea with the D&I.

If you start looking at these relationships and start understanding that there are different challenges for different subgroups and then understanding the novel ways that they break in has been fascinating. From some of the work we are doing, for example, we could see what exemplars were doing in those categories, the people that managed to break in more quickly. One of the key things they did is they interacted in a way that created trust in them quickly. And they did it in very specific ways. They did this pull versus push thing first, they situated their capabilities against other's needs. Then they created competence-based trust by delivering against that quickly. And then they would create benevolence based trust by getting off task. They would ratchet in very quickly, and not have a problem in getting connected.

And so to me, that is really hopeful because a lot of places are focusing on implicit bias training, which undoubtedly exists, but it is very hard to train out of any of us. We all have that knee-jerk reaction and we are also left with the impression in the implicit bias studies that because they are cognitive in nature we are left with the impression that we never change our mind, that once you and I have locked in it is that way forever. And it is just not true. you see all sorts of interactions happening. And so being able to learn from those people that accelerate that trust and think about maybe there is a different way to influence this on both sides.

The behaviour on both sides has been super cool. I am really enthused about some of the pilots that we are seeing. But I think in general that the heart of it all starts with getting better measurement, and seeing what does this all look like and taking action that way.

David Green: Last question, before we round up, and this is a question we are asking everyone on this series. So you might think about the collaboration element of this, how can HR as a function help the business identify the critical skills for the future?

Rob Cross: I think it is a couple of layers for me.

If I were looking at that and then thinking about that, I think one is at the organisational level that can be, through people analytics roles, many, many places in the people analytics space that has been the biggest increase in my consortium over the last couple of years. The key is not the analytics, but the key is the actionable insights. Getting really good at that. Unfortunately the analytics for network analysis they have evolved for probably close to a hundred years now, but it has been a very scholarly set of analytics that are very good for scientific proofs, but not for actionable insights. So I think, at the organisational level, you really want to ID what is the actionable insights and help them be applied.

At the team level there is ways that we are building out that are a part of a commons right now, very focused on looking at team success as a product of how networks are forming inside and outside. And then, at the individual level, I think that is a lot of what I was focused on in this book.

There is not a company out there that I'm aware of, that doesn't have a leadership capability in one form or the other that is around collaboration. They may call it one firm or matrix mindset or all these other terms, but the heart of it is around collaboration in getting greater results that way.

Yet most of them are throwing things like Myers-Briggs training or things that are tangential to collaboration. And what we have really tried to do with the book is to say, look, here is what these people are doing, in ways to work. So I am hoping that that has an impact there, and It helps them in a couple of different levels as we go. We will see as it comes out.

David Green: Well, Rob, I was enjoying the conversation so much I completely lost track of the time

Rob Cross: Me as well. And I apologise for that, I get carried away.

David Green: Thank you for being a guest on the digital HR leaders podcast. How can people stay in touch with you, find out more about your work and also find out more about Beyond Collaboration Overload as well?

Rob Cross: Yeah, absolutely. So, obviously on LinkedIn. A great way to connect there, but probably the most prominent area for me is my website. We have put up a website that mentions the book, but also a lot of these other programs of work. And that is where we are featuring a lot of the white papers coming from the consortium and kind of evolving ideas.

So that is https://www.robcross.org/ always would welcome to have people out there looking and also telling me what people are up to. I thrive on that. And so we would love to hear from people at that level too.

David Green: I will put some links in the material that we put out around the episode so people can go and dig into some stuff.

I'll put some examples of some of Rob’s articles there as well. So people can dive in. Rob, thanks so much. I really enjoyed the conversation. It is a great end to my day. I know it is in the middle of your day, so thank you very much.