It Takes A Village

I had a chance to read several different articles recently that at least to me reinforced something I have always intuitively believed, collaboration is more powerful than individual excellence in an organizational setting.

In many of the presentations that I do I use the illustration of the Nigerian soccer team in the Olympics a few years back. The team was composed of a group of people who were committed to the game and committed to each other. There were no "superstars" that would be recognized internationally. The interesting thing is that this group of committed individuals went on to defeat the "best" teams in the world and win the gold medal.

I think many cultures, at least western ones love the concept of the hero or all star. The individual who will ensure victory. The interesting thing is that these are usually individual contributors. I differentiate these individual contributors, even "superstars" from leaders. I think it is two different skill sets.

Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford is one of my favorite organizational development "gurus". He has written a short article on BNET about so called "stars" in the financial industry and the practice of large players to recruit such "stars" and pay them fabulous sums of money. He decided to do some research on the ROI of such investments. He found they typically fell flat, the "stars" performance rarely approached their previous performance much less exceeded it. He points out similar correlations in professional sports. A great recent example is soccer star David Beckham. The LA franchise that acquired him has yet to see the benefits of the dollars they invested in winning matches. They have seen gate receipts go up because fans will pay to see him play.

Pfeffer points out that it would seem that environment and coaching play a huge role in performance. Having supportive colleagues, access to resources, and good management and coaching seem to matter quite a lot. I think Malcolm Gladwell makes a similar point in Outliers, people who excelled had great innate ability, but they also had access to resources and a highly supportive environment.

The other interview clip I saw on BNET included industry leaders including the VP of Innovation for Google. She was asked about the impact of the recession and other factors leading to innovation or the lack there of. Interestingly she posited that once again the key differential in high performing companies is the human capital and creating and nurturing an environment that allows them to contribute. Pretty interesting coming from a technology firm. She also pointed out that many great companies had their genesis in recessionary times, the people at the firms collectively rose to the challenge and innovated and over came the obstacles.

As a student and advocate of engagement I am a big believer in this model. Statistics show that organizations with high engagement increase per capita 21% higher than their peers and outperform their peers and competitors on every critical metric. The key is that this is collective performance and per capita. The approach is collaborative rather than reliant upon "superstars".

In my previous post Dr. Dolan of the University of Michigan talks about a key attribute of leadership being the creation of an environment that attracts talent and its development. The role of the leader is to attract and develop, not to "perform" tasks as an individual.

So where am I going with this? I am not suggesting that you discard efforts to hire the "best and the brightest", but rather than suggesting that you not rely on hiring somebody else's superstar to increase your organizational performance as an exclusive strategy. Creating engagement and raising the collective talents and performance of your organization would seem to be a much more effective long term strategy.

Leadership should be evaluated in terms of their ability to build and create strong teams and develop talent rather than on the basis of individual accomplishments and talents. Being an excellent "coach" is more valuable than being the best "player" for those we put in management and leadership roles.

Just something to think about....

So You Want To Be A Leader?

This is actually the topic of a presentation that I used to do for our local Chamber of Commerce leadership development program as the last chapter of an eight month development program. Our intent was to send them out with both a sense of empowerment and accountability to something larger than themselves and their companies.

I among others have had the opportunity to discuss and debate what differentiates leadership and management on the "pages" of this blog, linkedin, and a number of other venues as have thousands of others smarter than me.

I ran across a summary of an interview with Robert Dolan, Dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, on BNET that I think summarized it it more succinctly than I have ever seen or heard before. He stated, "a manager maintains the status quo and delivers profitability, a leader performs three essential functions-

• they develop and encourage great talent merely with their presence
• they see new opportunities and innovations and push the organization to pursue them
• they act as a moral compass for the organization and role model the appropriate adoption of the organizational values and principles."

We can argue for decades about all of the other characteristics and attributes, but what I really like about Dolan's point is that they describe action and doing rather than passivity.

I found this summary especially timely because I hear the media and others starting to declare that the recession is "over". It is over because the stock market is moving up and large corporations are starting to declare profits again. I guess the fact that they expect unemployment to remain in double digits for the foreseeable future and that we have a health care crisis represents a rounding error. Not to me.

I like to think of myself as a realistic optimist. I was hoping that the recession would serve as kind of a national wake up call on a number of key societal issues. As anyone who has read my blog, my book, or other publications knows I am a big fan of engagement, true engagement. That is a system where stakeholders align in a common purpose. Studies show that organizations who adopt and maintain engagement strategies outperform their competitors in every key dimension. I was hoping the recession would cause more organizations to recognize that engagement is not only necessary, it is good for business.

I still remain hopeful that the "end" of the recession doesn't mean we think we have solved the health care issue. We have a very expensive system that delivers health care inefficiently and with pretty poor outcomes.

I am also a fan of personal competency. Getting away from the corporate and governmental codependency that has dominated our economic model for the last several generations. Employees need to be given an opportunity to engage and in return they need to be educated and expected to play a role in decisions about their health, their long term economic security, and generally be financially literate.

Much of the debate around leadership is whether leaders are born or "taught". Is it a series of characteristics or traits or is it behavior? I kind of like the behavior model. If you have capacity and you don't do anything with it are you really a leader? I think that is similar to the point Malcolm Gladwell made in Outliers, a high IQ in and of itself is no guarantee of spectacular success either personally or professionally, you must apply it.

When I look at where we got to and how we got there I have to tell you I see a lot more people in business and government who are managers- protecting the status quo and profitability; than leaders, individuals who develop deep talent, challenge their organizations to innovate, and act as moral compasses and role models not only internally, but externally.

Even the debate over health care represents an interesting model; we recognize it is compromised, but we seem (at least our "leadership") to embrace significant change in a model that doesn't work in delivering against key performance measurements.

I heard earlier this week that the performance bonuses paid out by the major financial institutions exceeded their recorded profits. Am I the only one who missed the logic of that decision?

How can we declare the recession is ending with record unemployment?

So for me I like Professor Dolan's definition of leadership. To his three characteristics I would add two more of my own:

• Come to work every day prepared to be fired for doing the right thing.
• Think about your "legacy", what you leave behind more than your "career", what you take with you.

It would appear to me that if you choose leadership rather than management as defined by Dr. Dolan you might not find the field nearly as crowded. What do you think?