The Office Amenity That Actually Improves Teamwork
Harvard Business Review · July 2026
Most leaders think better teamwork starts with more collaboration. Our research found the opposite.
Read the Original in Harvard Business Review
The Key Finding
Organizations spend billions of dollars designing workplaces that encourage collaboration. But our research suggests they may be investing in the wrong things.
After studying more than 6,000 knowledge workers, we found that the strongest predictor of high-performing teams wasn't open offices, collaboration spaces, or even where employees worked. It was whether people had access to a quiet place where they could do focused work without interruption.
The finding challenges one of the most common assumptions about teamwork: that more interaction automatically produces better collaboration. Instead, exceptional teams consistently create environments that balance collaboration with uninterrupted focus.
Why It Matters
For years, leaders have tried to improve teamwork by creating more opportunities for people to work together. But collaboration is only one half of the equation.
High-performing teams know that great ideas rarely emerge from back-to-back meetings or constant interaction. They emerge when individuals have the time to think deeply before bringing their best thinking back to the group.
This insight has become one of the central themes of my research on high-performing teams and appears throughout my books and keynote presentations. It also illustrates a broader principle that runs through much of my work: organizations perform better when they stop assuming that more collaboration is always better and start designing workplaces that support both focused work and effective teamwork.
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Note from Aia: We can have this automated by going back and categorizing articles with tags and adjust/personalize the featured articles per post. It’ll be more efficient in the long run. However, we need a photo per article so it comes out this way rather than just the HBR logos.
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See These Ideas in Action
This research is one example of the behavioral science behind Ron Friedman's keynote presentations. Drawing on one of the largest studies ever conducted on high-performing teams, his keynotes help leaders build teams that get more done, collaborate more effectively, and continue improving over time.
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