HBR's 10 Must Reads on Collaboration (with featured article "Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership," by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis)

When Internal Collaboration Is Bad for Your Company

by Morten T. Hansen

INTERNAL COLLABORATION IS ALMOST universally viewed as good for an organization. Leaders routinely challenge employees to tear down silos, transcend boundaries, and work together in cross-unit teams. And although such initiatives often meet with resistance because they place an extra burden on individuals, the potential benefits of collaboration are significant: innovative cross-unit product development, increased sales through cross-selling, the transfer of best practices that reduce costs.

But the conventional wisdom rests on the false assumption that the more employees collaborate, the better off the company will be. In fact, collaboration can just as easily undermine ...