Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos

Argues for the benefits of interdisciplinary teamwork in corporations, drawing upon millions of data points to posit that collaboration can be a positive for employees, firms, and ultimately, their customers.
Many professional service firms today face a serious dilemma. Clients are demanding more sophisticated service for complex problems that can only be delivered by interdisciplinary teams of experts. No one consultant or lawyer--or even one functional group--can guide a client through today's challenges, which often span technological, regulatory, economic, and environmental issues on an increasingly global scale. The problem is, most firms have narrowly defined practice areas and partners with specializedexpertise. These siloed experts are often "stars" who have built their reputations and client rosters independently, not by working with peers. What's more, most firms have grown so large and so fast that their members can't even know--let alone trust--their colleagues around the world. In Smart Collaboration, Heidi Gardner shows that a much more profitable--albeit difficult--path is to push the firm toward cross-partner collaboration. Gardner, a former McKinsey consultant and Harvard Business School professor, now a fellow at Harvard Law School, has spent over a decade conducting an in-depth study of more than a dozen global professional service firms. In a research tour de force, she brings together time sheet records, financial information, and personnel records--literally millions of data points--to uncover the effect of interdisciplinary teamwork in the professional services field. The result: conclusive proof that collaboration pays, both for employees and for their firms. Moving group by group through the ranks of a typical firm, she offers powerful prescriptions for how leaders can foster collaboration, move to higher-end and higher-margin work, increase client satisfaction, attract and retain top-caliber talent, and improve their bottom line.--
Garner cites that today’s problems demand that specialists in the context of professional service firms work together to integrate their separate knowledge bases and skill sets to forge coherent, unified solutions. They have to collaborate in efficient and effective ways, which he calls “smart collaboration.” Smart collaboration is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself: knowledge workers integrate their individuals and specialized expertise in order to deliver high-quality, customized outcomes on complex issues; or they team up to develop an innovative approach to a thorny issue; or they rely on an expert from a different domain who can efficiently transport a best practice across industries rather than reinventing a solution from scratch. These relations typically extend over time and discrete projects. They offer up expertise and help, advise, stimulate and counterbalance each other. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
Many professional service firms today face a serious dilemma. Clients are demanding more sophisticated service for complex problems that can only be delivered by interdisciplinary teams of experts. No one consultant or lawyer?or even one functional group?can guide a client through today’s challenges, which often span technological, regulatory, economic, and environmental issues on an increasingly global scale.The problem is, most firms have narrowly defined practice areas and partners with specialized expertise. These siloed experts are often ?stars” who have built their reputations and client rosters independently, not by working with peers. What’s more, most firms have grown so large and so fast that their members can’t even know?let alone trust?their colleagues around the world.In Smart Collaboration, Heidi Gardner shows that a much more profitable?albeit difficult?path is to push the firm toward cross-partner collaboration. Gardner, a former McKinsey consultant and Harvard Business School professor, now a fellow at Harvard Law School, has spent over a decade conducting an in-depth study of more than a dozen global professional service firms. In a research tour de force, she brings together time sheet records, financial information, and personnel records?literally millions of data points?to uncover the effect of interdisciplinary teamwork in the professional services field. The result: conclusive proof that collaboration pays, both for employees and for their firms.But Gardner doesn’t stop with analysis. Moving group by group through the ranks of a typical firm, she offers powerful prescriptions for how leaders can foster collaboration, move to higher-end and higher-margin work, increase client satisfaction, attract and retain top-caliber talent, and improve their bottom line.