John Le Carre would love this. Buried deep within every company is a spontaneous and subversive digital network that’s working nearly 24 X 7 in the corporate cyber shadows. Nobody knows exactly how many employees have tacitly joined these stealthy operations – it could be tens of thousands of people – but we do know that their constant connectivity and always-on communication is sabotaging productivity and forward-thrusting business objectives.

We also understand the role information technology plays in undermining the goals and achievement of the private sector. Recent studies indicate that whether they’re working in offices, cubes or mobile venues, employees devote nearly one-third of their time to email, text messages, instant messages, blogs, wikis and cell-phone calls – instead of collaborating constructively and accomplishing the hard work of getting things done, which is the way companies deliver profitability.

The problem is that these proliferating ad hoc corporate networks aren’t visible and can’t be managed. Even worse, they spend most of their time in discussion or brainstorming mode with no real end point, goal or ability to move to the next phase of a project. But their dysfunctional impact certainly can be felt when it comes to the top- and bottom lines. McKinsey research shows that nearly half the interactions taking place within these networks aren’t central to corporate decision-making – whether they occur during creative development, which constitutes 5 percent of the work process, or execution and development, which represents the remaining 95 percent.

This lack of productive decision-making has led to a Culture of Lackluster Assertiveness in so many companies today. The culture is supported by technology tools like email, which have enabled an entire class of non-accountable employees to look busy by chattering online. These Email Jockeys, as they are called, are faking productivity and mimicking purposefulness. The net result is that their quick but vapid email responses, meandering online conversations and repetition of other people’s valuable digital input add little value – and actually cost companies dearly. Dilbert would be proud.

It’s easy to blame technology for this dissipation of productivity. But we also need to look in the mirror because this is very much a behavioral issue involving corporate leaders and followers. Managers have a responsibility for getting the most out of employees, yet too often they feed the Culture of Lackluster Assertiveness by permitting Email Jockeys to simply make noise so they look busy or operate with a false sense of online accomplishment that really doesn’t translate into productivity.

Without increased accountability and better IT tools that help managers track and understand what each employee is truly contributing to team efforts, we run the risk of having more and more workers become digital stragglers. Managers also have a very difficult time giving constructive feedback to these lackluster employees who need to become more productive. And the high performers, the “A” players, who are driving business results, become discouraged and demoralized as they watch their excellence diluted and see the Email Jockeys praised for responding quickly but emptily.

Why are so many managers struggling to come to terms with the legions of online laggards in their corporate midst?

There have been thousands of books and articles, a slew of consultants and countless courses at business schools that have tried to explain group dynamics in the workplace, the delicate calibrations of constructive collaboration in factories, and the necessity of individual and team accountability in offices.

One reason may be that many companies confuse their employees with passive-aggressive mixed messages about collaboration. Too often, management’s words encourage substantive cooperation, but the reality governing the workplace – the standard and accepted operating behavior – is unproductive connectivity between colleagues.

Another factor may be management’s inability to understand what actually motivates employees to collaborate meaningfully. In other words, what does it take to get constructive interpersonal interaction in the workplace so that we don’t have to constantly default to the digital sleight of hand and ineffective and unproductive pseudo-conversations that Email Jockeys engage in?

Corporate leaders who are both realists and humanists know they can stimulate greater and more genuine interactive engagement on the part of employees by first acknowledging the fact that most people in the workplace really and truly want to share – and share substantively. The second step is showing employees the way, modeling constructive collaboration. Once the advantages of meaningful and dynamic group communication have been made clear to employees, then technology can assume its rightful – but bracketed – place in the collaborative work process.

There are three case studies worth discussing here, each from a world-class company that has successfully found ways of bringing employees together using a combination of high-touch sensitivity and hard-drive technology.

Let’s start with Toyota. So much has been written about the Japanese auto maker, but it understands better than almost any other company how to form, engage and empower small teams of collaborative employees. Toyota managers really get the fact that bringing people into close-knit groups in the workplace means respecting each individual’s need for control over his or her destiny; this nuanced insight is called “linked autonomy.”

Toyota managers have been unfairly stereotyped as rah-rah cheerleaders for teamwork, but the truth is more subtle and rich than this caricature would have us believe. Indeed, the auto maker’s leaders tap into each team member’s need for pride of authorship; we’re writing a book together, goes the Toyota line of reasoning, so everybody can craft a chapter. Again, it’s all about venerating the individual and the contribution each person can make to the group effort.

Toyota’s leaders have also learned that better and more honest collaboration takes place when team members are encouraged to formally question each other if there is doubt or concern about a project’s direction. By structuring these Q & A sessions – called “The Why-Whys” – and regularly building them into the work flow and process, Toyota forces employees to interact openly and transparently. There is no wasteful and unproductive email back-channeling and a minimum of destructive digital politics; to put it simply, the BCC is rarely utilized at Toyota.

Finally, to facilitate focused collaboration, Toyota breaks every project down into modular units so small teams of people clearly understand their roles and mission and can map specific tasks to objectives; this means that things actually get done versus just talking about end goals. Taking a page from the “Cluetrain Manifesto,” the auto maker believes that “small pieces loosely joined” forces workers to be direct, granular and productive in their interactions with colleagues; there aren’t any vague and vacuous meetings at Toyota.

For its part, Goldman Sachs believes that if you want meaningful collaboration in your business, you have to hire collaborative people for 100 percent of the work process, which includes both the creative development phase as well as the execution and implementation phase. And that’s what Goldman does. When it’s recruiting, the investment bank makes potential hires talk with 60 senior members of the firm; each Goldman interviewer screens recruits for cooperation potential. If a recruit is deemed collaborative and brought on board, he or she immediately knows 60 people at the firm and can quickly begin substantive interactions. Nokia follows the same line of thinking as Goldman when it comes to boosting collaboration; the telecommunications company requires managers to introduce new hires to 12 colleagues at the company during the first week of employment.

The real question, though, is how to root out the subversive digital networks that are using technology wastefully and sapping productivity from small, medium and large companies in the process. The answer, according to McKinsey, is to aggressively develop formal new corporate networks that are designed to get people collaborating in earnest on a variety of innovative and needed projects. These non-hierarchical networks, which should stretch across the company and consist of 50 to 100 people each, must be explicit about their tasks and clearly map them to well-defined objectives from the start; hopefully, employees would opt in and choose to become part of these interactive groups as a way of expanding their business knowledge and overall corporate contribution.

Organizing and managing for collaboration is essential in the global quest for 21st century productivity gains. And the key here is self-awareness and self-reliance; we can’t abdicate our responsibility for effective corporate interaction and allow a Culture of Lackluster Assertiveness to take hold in companies if we are serious about improving productivity growth. To really bring groups of employees together in constructive, purposeful and profitable ways, we must remain accountable and develop better IT tools that show us who’s truly delivering results for the team.