In the summer and fall of 2016, Salesforce interviewed dozens of business leaders from around the world to discover the most pressing topics being discussed in the C-suite across industries.

In a series of posts, of which this is the second, we will share those findings and explore what they mean. The first article, “Confronting the Dangers of Legacy Attitudes,” also outlines the research we conducted.

There is intense pressure to get fast.

Almost every executive we interviewed is feeling the pressure of speed. They must move quickly to keep up with their competitors, customers, and CEOs. For them, speed isn't just about doing the same old things in less time; in business today, speed means pivoting, piloting, and experimenting quickly. Even the most traditionally risk-averse leaders — CIOs and VPs of Service — are under pressure to get fast.

On top of this, these same executives acknowledged that despite their seniority, they rarely make strategic decisions alone. Most meaningful decisions today are made with leaders in other disciplines. We know from the CEB's excellent work on the Challenger Sale that 5.4 decision-makers are involved in the average B2B purchase. That means 5.4 people need to reach consensus on any single choice. Leaders trying to make change need the buy-in of their peers, and it can be very messy when so many senior opinions collide.

Thus, many of these execs are engaging in what one called “extreme collaboration” — processes or structures that force people in different silos to work together. It can be painful at first and requires new ways of thinking.

If you're someone who feels like you have too many meetings, conference calls, and daily check-ins, you may find this insight a little counterintuitive. But the results apparently make the effort worthwhile: Leaders experimenting with extreme collaboration find they are better equipped to move at the higher speeds required. This isn't a buzzword yet, but given the realities of business today, I can imagine it becoming one.

Extreme collaboration comes in many forms.

We found the strongest advocates for extreme collaboration in the CIOs we interviewed. That's not so surprising — most thoughtful CIOs now organize their IT departments as service providers, and need to keep the pace of their internal clients. Take these representative examples:

One CIO empowers IT deputies that he designates. These deputy CIOs are assigned to a business unit outside IT (like sales or HR, for example) and given the budget and authority to make quick decisions without the CIO's approval. These deputies spend far more time with their “clients” than with their IT colleagues, and that keeps them moving at the speed of business.

Another CIO insists that every department that might have an IT need send a representative to the grueling budget planning sessions he leads every year. That CIO then facilitates the hard work of hashing out a prioritized plan that is collectively owned by these department leaders. It's a long, intense workshop, but at the end, every business unit knows the IT investment plan for the year, and IT can get to work delivering results.

Methods of extreme collaboration are not limited to CIOs. For example:

Service leaders are the executives that hear every customer concern and complaint. But VPs of Service often have less clout than their counterparts, like CMO or VPs of Sales. So many of these service executives stated that they have become adept diplomats. They join every committee, attend every meeting, and take every opportunity to work with their colleagues to make change at the speed their customers expect. Their form of extreme collaboration is really taking every excuse to share customer experience concerns and work with groups to improve that customer experience.

CMOs lamented that marketing budgets are becoming decentralized. Many business units are getting control of a portion of the budget that was once controlled by the CMO. As a result, many CMOs now have to manage their company's marketing through influence rather than directive and are spending far more time with leaders outside marketing than they did even a few years ago. Their extreme collaboration ensures that good marketing choices are made quickly, without time-consuming debates or last-minute changes.

Collaboration is a requirement.

Collaboration has historically been treated as a nice-to-have soft skill, but wasn't considered a requirement for executive leadership. It certainly has never been considered a tool for accelerating the pace of an organization. But that has changed for these leaders. All the executives we interviewed are being pressed to move at speed. Most were given a mandate for change when they first took their jobs. Yet none of them can make decisions, move quickly, or mandate change alone.

Extreme collaboration has become a critical, even urgent tool for faster management, career, and business success. Leaders that use extreme forms of collaboration to address the inherent challenges in their roles are finding they are better able to keep up with the demands of their customers and the moves of their competitors. This type of collaboration isn’t easy, but it seems likely to become a requirement for success.

Evan Mager is Senior Director of Creative Strategy at Salesforce. The research featured here was led by Salesforce’s Customer & Market Insights team and conducted by the research firm Usability Sciences, in partnership with the Creative Strategy team.