Greenlight Research Institute
Mission: To radically transform work as we know it and co-create an exponentially better future.
We’ve continued to pioneer high-performing hybrid team insights to help you address the behaviors that block teams from reaching strategic goals. In addition, they actively transform teams with new habits that increase shareholder value. Ferrazzi Greenlight has created a vast research dataset from teams who have gone on the journey of transformation from mediocre to high-impact hybrid teams.
the Future of Work
Diagnostic Assessments
in Research
Research Initiatives
Our global research initiatives continue to challenge industry experts, thought leaders, and changemakers after more than 20 years. Each initiative embraces and seeks to understand disruption in service of revolutionizing work as we know it and supercharging high-impact teams poised to drive towards an exponentially better future.
High Impact Teams
More than twenty years of serving and coaching teams to become High Impact Teams (HIT), and this soon-to-be-released study covers decades of quantitative data that first began in 2000 and is still ongoing. We hypothesize that by focusing so heavily on what it means to be a great leader, we’ve often lost sight of what it means to be a great team and a great team member. Leadership and Teamship are needed for extraordinary outcomes.
Through this research and our work with clients, we have cracked the code of team performance and seen seismic shifts in candor, collaboration, innovation, peer-to-peer accountability, energy, relationships, and business outcomes within Fortune 500 companies and unicorn startups.
Competing in the New World of Work
A seminal research study published by Harvard Business School Press focused on the organization and the teams that drive them forward. Specifically, the research dove into what we learned from the pandemic that we wanted to carry forward. We uncovered what it takes to sustain high-performing teams in the new world of work with more than 2,000 Fortune 500 executives, thought leaders and Unicorn CEOs. It revealed practices around workforce redesign and business model redesign we call Radical Adaptability™ that organizations are using to leapfrog traditional obstacles to growth and realize transformational outcomes.
The study became codified in a book titled Competing in the New World of Work in partnership with Harvard Business Press, released in 2022.
World Class Hybrid & New People Rules in a Virtual Word
Our research started in 2010 in Partnership with Harvard Business Review, where over a dozen published articles followed. The study specifically dove into high-performing remote and hybrid team and leader practices.
The switch to remote and hybrid work in 2020 and 2021 proved to be the best laboratory for our longitudinal comparative research. We identified interventions that remote and hybrid teams could adopt to fundamentally shift the performance of their organizations before and after adopting world-class hybrid practices. Teams that adopt these interventions – which redefine collaborative problem-solving, radically increase trust and candor, and move from traditional hierarchy to peer-to-peer accountability – often see a three-to-four times improvement in the key indicators of team performance.
Co-Elevation®
Over a decade of research set out to answer the often overlooked question: how can we all turn our colleagues and partners into teammates and truly reboot the way we work together? The study focused on non-hierarchical working relationships and how to achieve greater productivity among peers by breaking down silos, matrixed organizations, and how to work in networked, cross-functional teams.
The subsequent published work in both Who’s Got Your Back and Leading Without Authority focused on the role of the individual contributor in navigating peer relationships for better outcomes, rather than relying on the traditional organization chart and its role in defining the team. This work, referred to as Co-Elevation®, expands the definition of a team to be those we work with to achieve success; both a direct report and a networked team.
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Featured Team Research Insights
![[Photo: Sashkin/Adobe Stock]](https://ferrazzigreenlight.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/p-1-91377530-dells-ai-re-invention-is-a-wake-up-call-for-every-enterprise-ai-reinvention.webp)
Dell’s AI reinvention is a model for every company
Dell’s AI journey shows what’s possible when enterprises apply rigor instead of hype. By tying AI directly to the P&L, focusing only on high-value areas, reengineering processes before automation, and scaling with governance, Dell drove $10B in new revenue while lowering costs—proof that AI maturity begins with people and process discipline, not technology alone....
How Elite Organizations Transform Good Teams Into Extraordinary Ones
“Most organizations don’t fail from lack of talent or strategy—they fail because they’re stuck in outdated leadership models.”
Teamship flips the script: shifting from hierarchical leadership to peer-to-peer co-elevation where teams share the load, challenge with candor, and build trust through deliberate practices. The result? Faster decisions, higher accountability, and breakthrough performance that traditional leadership simply can’t deliver....
AI transformation: 4 ways to build human-centered movements that deliver results
Organizations are bleeding capital on investments in artificial intelligence (AI), with often little to show for it. As executives throw cash at expensive tools and chaotic pilot projects, the promise of AI-driven transformation remains elusive. The problem isn’t the technology. Too many leaders rely on traditional change management thinking and old-school training methodologies. Plus, many...
Culture change isn’t about flowery rhetoric—it can be turned into a simple assignment, why the future of work is peer-to-peer collaboration
Organizations often talk about the types of culture they want to see—a candid culture, a collaborative culture, an accountable culture, a customer-centric culture, an agile culture, an inclusive culture, a resilient culture, or a culture with a growth mindset. But they miss that it all can simply boil down to the execution of simple practices...
A New Social Contract for Teams
Starkloff’s journey highlights a broader lesson: organizations often focus too much on individual leadership competencies and too little on team behaviors. True transformation begins with teams committing to a new social contract—embracing candor, collaboration, and accountability as the foundation for innovation and growth....
Our Research Partners
Recent Teams Research Insights
The Smart CIO’s Guide To Choosing The Right AI Tech Stack
AI is the new electricity, but for CIOs, the real power lies not just in plugging into it, but in understanding the grid. Vendors will say they’re “powered by AI.” But ask a few deeper questions, and you’ll uncover a wide range of capabilities. Some built for lightweight automation, others trained to solve complex industry-specific...
Reindeer Says AI Isn’t One-And-Done. It’s A Living System.
Over the past several months, I’ve been chasing a question that feels central to our time: What does it really mean to be an AI-first company? Not the buzzword version, but the lived reality. What do these organizations see that others don’t? How do they operate differently? Not simply because they use AI, but because AI...
Are The Next Great CEOs Today’s CTOs And CIOs?
When I look at the leaders best equipped to guide companies through the turbulence of AI transformation, one question keeps surfacing: Could tomorrow’s most successful CEOs come from today’s CTO and CIO ranks? Certainly not every future CEO will come directly from the CTO or CIO’s chair. But every successful CEO will need the qualities of...
Turning 80,000 Employees Into AI-Driven Innovators
In the race to turn artificial intelligence from buzzword to bottom-line impact, Cisco has built one of the most comprehensive internal enablement programs in the corporate world. Its mission: to make 80,000 employees confident, capable, and eager to apply AI in their daily work. “AI is a team sport,” says Gianpaolo Barozzi, Cisco’s 3P Chief...
From Adoption To Transformation: Four Critical Shifts For AI Success
“Most companies are failing at AI—not because of weak tech, but because they’re stuck in old-school leadership.”
The winners aren’t just buying tools, they’re re-engineering workflows, unleashing peer-led super users, and building team resilience. The real AI revolution isn’t about machines—it’s about how humans work together....
Dell’s AI reinvention is a model for every company
Dell’s AI journey shows what’s possible when enterprises apply rigor instead of hype. By tying AI directly to the P&L, focusing only on high-value areas, reengineering processes before automation, and scaling with governance, Dell drove $10B in new revenue while lowering costs—proof that AI maturity begins with people and process discipline, not technology alone....
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