Studies show us that companies earn higher margins, inspire greater client loyalty, attract and retain the best talent, and gain a competitive edge when their people collaborate across functional boundaries. Yet most firms have carved up their highly specialized, professional experts into narrowly defined practice areas, and collaborating across these silos is often messy, risky, and expensive. These are just some of the challenges addressed by Harvard University Professor Heidi K. Gardner in her Washington Post bestseller Smart Collaboration - How Professionals And Their Firms Succeed By Breaking Down Silos.
Heidi K. Gardner, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession and Faculty Chair of the school’s Accelerated Leadership Program and Sector Leadership Masterclass. Previously she was a professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School and has been named by Thinkers 50 as a Next-Generation Business Guru.
Today we talk about the power of smart collaboration, complex problem solving, diversity and inclusion and the two types of trust.