The Harvard Business Review recently published a very interesting article on collaboration overload – https://hbr.org/2016/01/collaborative-overload The article states that 25-30% of value-added collaboration comes from only 3-5% of employees. These top-collaborators often experience burn-out as they receive more and more requests for their time in collaboration.
Product Managers can easily find themselves as these hubs of collaboration. It’s natural given the role of Product Management as we must be experts not only in our product functionality but also in how our products are used by customers. For a new Product Manager, it’s powerful to acknowledge that collaboration is not always a good thing. Often collaboration and helping others is presented as a virtue, and it’s very hard to say ‘no’ to requests for help. However, a Product Manager needs to understand that burnout from collaboration is real, and that collaboration can be distributed throughout an organization instead of only focused on Product Managers. Inefficient collaboration can be a major time cost for a new Product Manager, resulting in less time spent on critical activities.
I recommend you read the article and see if the issue of collaboration overload is familiar to you. If so, the article provides several tips and strategies to keep effective collaboration without overloading key players, like Product Managers.