When cooperation flourishes at times and places in a company--in "hot spots"--great energy, innovation, productivity, and excitement are the results, says Lynda Gratton in her new book, Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy--and Others Don't (February 2007, Berrett-Kohler).

Hot spots can be workplaces, teams, departments, companies, factories, hallways, lunchrooms, meetings, conferences--anywhere people are working together in collaborative ways.

Gratton, associate professor of management practice and director of the executive management program at the London Business School, emphasizes that cooperation is something that cannot be mandated, but can be encouraged. Unfortunately, some traditional organizations have natural boundaries that become barriers to progress and cooperation.

Gratton talked to hundreds of employees, managers, and executives in North America, Europe, and Asia to derive ideas and insights into how "hot spots" of creativity, energy, and cooperation arise in companies and how they can be cultivated to proliferate and thrive to create innovation and add value.

Here are six practices that Gratton says are crucial to developing a cooperative mindset in employees that can spark the "agile, unfettered collaboration vital for solving difficult problems, developing better products, and delivering superior service in this ultra-competitive world."

Practice 1: Relational Selection

Selection plays a crucial role when it is designed to attract and retain a high proportion of people who are naturally cooperative and shield the company from too many naturally uncooperative and highly competitive people.

Practice 2: Relational Induction

Induction practices can be important because within the first 6 weeks of joining a company or starting a job, the socialization process is well under way, and norms of behavior are beginning to emerge. Where a cooperative mindset emerges, induction focusing on building strong, positive relationships is crucial.

Practice 3: Mentoring

Cooperative executive behavior provides a role model for cooperative working. Perhaps the most obvious cooperative role an executive can model is actively mentoring others. Research shows that executive mentoring has a profoundly positive impact on the emergence of a cooperative mindset.

Practice 4: Collective Rewards

Individualized, highly competitive rewards act as a strong disincentive to the emergency of a cooperative mindset. It is clear from research that team-based collective rewards do not of themselves encourage cooperative. However, they do have the effect of removing the barrier erected by individualized rewards. In a sense, they are neutral rather than positive.

Practice 5: Peer-to-Peer Working

A mindset of cooperation emergences when there is a sense of mutuality; when people realize that only through working with others will they flourish. Organizational structures that encourage peer-to-peer working serve to support the emergency of this sense of mutuality by developing the habits of working with others.

Practice 6: Social Responsibility

This sense of mutuality and of being part of something big and important emerges through the practice of social responsibility. By developing the habit of giving freely and cultivating the joy of giving one's time, people can begin to appreciate the immense potential in cooperative working.

Other chapters in the book address "boundary spanning," "igniting purpose," expanding productive capacity, and the leader's role in creating hot spots, as well as background on Gratton's research and methodology. For more information on the book, go to http://www.bkconnection.com.