The Best Teams Know When to Work Alone

The Insider is a weekly, subscriber-only newsletter, where our managing editor curates HBR stories, research, and ideas that senior leaders shouldn’t miss. Take a moment to consider your most recent workday. How much time did you spend collaborating with colleagues or employees in-person or via Slack, video, or email? How much time were you able to block out to really dig into solo work? And were you proactive about considering when your team could do each? A few months ago, we shared new research from psychologist Ron Friedman on “superteams” that build a culture of continuous improvement by learning quickly. In his latest article, he finds that one workplace amenity makes an outside difference for these groups: “a quiet place to do focused work.” This finding holds true among the remote, hybrid, and in-person superteams he studied, suggesting that how work is designed is just as important as where it takes place. Why? “Effective collaboration requires more than constant togetherness,” he writes. “Teams need opportunities to discuss ideas, coordinate their efforts, and make decisions. But they need individual members to think critically, solve problems, and execute those decisions. That work requires uninterrupted concentration, and a quiet workspace makes it possible.” To achieve this balance, he suggests working a few key elements into your organization’s operating principles: Treat focused work as an essential part of collaboration. “Effective collaboration isn’t just about bringing people together,” Friedman argues. “It’s also about creating opportunities for people to think independently before contributing to the group. The best leaders recognize that effective teamwork depends on both individual contribution and collective improvement.” Experiment with practices that protect time for sustained concentration. The superteams in Friedman’s work are much more likely to proactively “establish focus blocks and meeting-free days that allow employees to work without the expectation of immediate responses.” This points to a key insight that their leaders understand: “Every meeting and message imposes a cost.” Give employees greater control over where they do different kinds of work. “Many organizations assume that everyone should work in the same environment throughout the day. But different tasks require different conditions,” Friedman says. When your team needs uninterrupted concentration, it can be as simple as “reserv[ing] conference rooms for quiet work during certain hours, establish[ing] low-distraction zones, or explicitly encourag[ing] employees to choose workspaces that match the demands of the task at hand.” Underlying all these recommendations is a question companies should be continuously asking: “Have we created conditions that allow people to do their best thinking?” How AI Changes Performance Management Inspiring, transparent, and fair employee performance management has long been a challenge for organizations. AI adds new questions to the mix. “What does ‘good performance’ look like when outputs are produced by people working with AI? And how can leaders ensure that speed and efficiency don’t come at the expense of judgment and accountability?” ask AI expert Randy Bean, ESCP Business School professor Erik Strauss, and ESCP PhD student Randeep Singh in a new article. Bean, Strauss, and Singh propose that you need to explicitly measure and govern agents and humans differently, and recommend a three-part framework that combines human contribution metrics, AI system and agent metrics, and human-AI system metrics. The trio also suggests piloting their method with workflows that involve AI more prominently, like “customer support, sales proposals, policy drafting, software delivery, or finance reporting,” and offer a blueprint for doing so. “The organizations that will win,” they predict, “are those that redesign performance management to make the invisible visible—boundary judgment, human-AI collaboration quality, and accountable outcomes.” Related: We also have a new subscriber-only reading list on hiring and developing talent in the age of AI you can check out. To Hire for Creativity, Use the Right Language Speaking of hiring: Every organization wants creative employees, but new research suggests that a common way job postings are written may not be attracting these workers. According to a new piece by associate professors George E. Newman and Rachel L. Ruttan and PhD candidate Grusha Agarwal, all from the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, using words like “genius,” “visionary,” and “unique” in job postings is much more common than words like “curious,” “observant,” and “experimental” (the latter is what they call “explorer language”). They also asked over 300 hiring managers to write job descriptions for a creative role, and most used “genius” language as well. But when they conducted follow-up research, the academics learned that “applicants are significantly more likely to apply for postings that used explorer (versus genius) language.” They also found that “the applicants who responded especially well to the explorer language score higher on measures of past creative achievement, openness to experience, and agreeableness. They also tended to identify more with being a creative.” So, when you’re writing your next job description for a creative role, consider “reframing creativity as something people do rather than something they are.” More Must-Reads and Listens How to ensure your company acts on your new strategy. If you want workers to reskill, show them who they can become. The case for performance-first management. New research on navigating the business risks of changing pro-America sentiment. How AI is changing how customers choose your business. Mattel’s CEO on driving consumer engagement and cultural impact. (An IdeaCast episode from our recent Leadership Summit.)

The Best Teams Know When to Work Alone

Summary.

Partner Center