I was intrigued with the title: “The collaboration curse”. I wondered, how could collaboration ever be a curse? Published in a recent edition of The Economist under the op-ed pen name Schumpeter —named for Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter who argued that innovation is the key driver of economic progress — the column questions the ever increasing focus by business leaders to instill cultures of collaboration in modern day workplaces. While it does feel like we all spend a lot of our time “collaborating”, The Economist, or more precisely their editor typing away behind Schumpeter’s name, misses the mark on why collaboration’s crucial in companies today.
First, a quick summary why The Economist sees evil in a business world that overemphasizes teamwork. Specifically, their Op-Ed argues that:
collaboration leads to interruptions, such that “…even short ones, increase the total time required to complete a task by a significant amount.” Further, The Economist argues, academic researcher Sophie Leroy claims that jumping from one project to the next — what many of us think of as multi-tasking — further erodes productivity “…because of something she calls ‘attention residue’. The mind continues to think about the old task even as it jumps to a new one.”
collaboration’s costs are never fully quantified. The Economist cites researchers from the University of Virginia who “…estimate that knowledge workers spend 70–85% of their time attending meetings (virtual or face-to-face), dealing with e-mail, talking on the phone or otherwise dealing with an avalanche of requests for input or advice”. Slack channel overload anyone?
collaboration detracts from an employee’s ability to engage in what scientists call “deep work”. Indeed, The Economist describes deep work as “…the killer app of the knowledge economy: it is only by concentrating intensely that you can master a difficult discipline or solve a demanding problem.”
Well, there you have it. A body full of academic research, none of which appears to be clearly applied to a broad array of company settings, summarized by a writer who themself need not collaborate with a cross-functional team of colleagues to deliver on collective goals, and who then argues the case against collaboration by citing the experiences of similar solo practitioners such as computer scientists and physicists who succeed by not collaborating. Perhaps The Economist should channel a modern day economist — or real-life business strategist — when penning a piece about what really happens in a company, and the central reasons collaboration is a must in today’s workplace:
The fallacy of applying the solo worker framework to a business — especially a startup — environment. Last I checked, at Remind we don’t have any authors writing idly in a corner office cubicle, nor do we have any scientists toiling on their own in a lab we’ve set up. Even our “computer scientists” as The Economist calls them, or “engineers” as we refer to them, are connected to other engineers, as well as to product managers, designers, marketers, and even sales and finance team members from time to time. Yes there’s a time for “deep work”, but it never happens without “stand ups”, constant communication flow via Slack, and recurring in-person meetings where everyone comes together to iterate and ensure alignment towards our broader goals and priorities.
The fallacy that sum of parts solo efforts yield greater results than collaborative efforts. Even if we could set up Remind in such a way that everyone might slip on their headphones and stare deeply into their laptop screens, there’s no way that approach would set us up for success. The probability of failure would be too high. Communication and knowledge sharing across an organization creates more value than adding up the individual efforts of all involved. This is especially true in environments where rapid testing and learning takes place — either due to the rate of technological change or to the continual evolution of the startup from a single product organization to a full stack business defining its path to generate its first $100 million in revenue — or both.
The fallacy that collaboration detracts from the value of deep work. In fact, this is quite the opposite in a startup setting. Only by bringing together the brilliance of those from different functional perspectives — and diverse backgrounds — can we all engage in deep work with the most valuable context. The productivity of our engineers to our sales team members increases the more they understand the product development and customer lifecycle paths that we are pursuing as a company. When these engineers, sales professionals, and every other team member at Remind capture the big picture through ongoing collaboration, their deep work windows yield richer, more impactful results for the entire company. In fact, whatever the perceived “costs of collaboration” as defined by The Economist, these are surely more than offset by the true long-term value that real and focused companywide collaboration delivers.
Clearly modern work environments create challenges — and distractions — for all of us. It’s easy to imagine that a more optimal approach to building value in a startup could come from turning off Slack, banning all in-person meetings, and allowing everyone to work from home in isolation. Yet the reality is that we are social beings and our brains are wired to collaborate — and more specifically we’re built to benefit from this collaboration. I suspect that today even Schumpeter would acknowledge that the returns from collaborative workplaces supersede those work environments in which knowledge workers toil in isolation, even though he’d be amazed at how cool headphones look these days!
Originally published on Medium on April 14, 2018. This Substack version is maintained as the canonical archive.