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....

Is There A Rainbow Behind This Cloud?

As some of you may have noticed I posted a question on LinkedIn about our focus on leadership as opposed to management last week. More specifically I asked whether or not we were focused on leadership to the exclusion or minimization of management. Needless to say I got pretty good response to my inquiry.

A few people "educated" me as to the difference between leadership and management. Although I feel I recognize the differences between the two I appreciate the insight and feedback that people provided to me. Others challenged my assertion that we needed to focus on management as opposed to leadership and discussed the "leadership" void we find ourselves in in some many elements of our society, but especially it would appear in government and industry.

In candor I wasn't taking a position that we need management rather than leadership. My point is that both sets of skills are essential in a high functioning organization.

Marcus Buckingham has said that the most critical role of leadership is to create and reinforce organizational clarity. I agree with him. He states that clarity is the most important attribute of leadership; not charisma, technical ability, presence, or any of those other ethereal qualities we ascribe to and pine for in our leaders.

Richard Rumelt of UCLA says that the most important role of management is to remove ambiguity for employees. To create a direct personal connection of the tasks and activities we expect them to perform in support of the organizational mission. The CEO does that at a very high level for the whole organization, managers do that for their employees.

As a practicing human resources professional and consultant for almost 30 years I can tell you that both the "vision" and the removal of ambiguity are critical. People need clear expectations, constructive feedback, and ongoing coaching on a personal level. Charismatic leadership will not replace that.

There is some potential good news. Harvard Business School professor Bill George says that our current economic crisis may be both the wake up call and the catalyst for creating a new generation of leaders. He states, "... this new group will build organizations that produces long lasting value for employees and customers, not short sighted strategies focused on 'shareholder' value. Rewards will be for performance, not transactions."

Maybe I am reading into it too much , but that sounds a lot like engagement to me. If you look at where we are in the financial crisis I would submit that much of it derives from that focus on transactions not performance.

A colleague of mine who is focusing her energies in the criticality of trust in creating high performance cultures has been somewhat a victim of the "transactional" mindset. Her potential clients want to see statistical "evidence" of the link between trust and performance. They want a transaction process, not a relationship. I defy anyone to show me an organization with long term sustained high performance that has not created true engagement and didn't build that on a foundation of trust!

I recognize that there are organizations that have enjoyed a level of "transactional" success through the utilization of down sizing, outsourcing, and other "cost" based tactics; but now that we have run out of emerging economies to exploit and operate in a global economy how is that working for them?

I see questions on LinkedIn and other sites seeking the "technological" solution to creating engagement; guess what, there isn't one!

As my colleagues in LinkedIn pointed out to me we desperately need a new "leadership" model that has elements of both those ethereal qualities and heroes that we seek, but also the competencies of effective management. We also need a new value proposition based on relationship, not transactions. We need that between employee and employer, supplier and customer, and citizen and community. Transactions; creating short term value at the expense of others, is what got us here. The old solutions aren't relevant and simply won't work. So what do I suggest:

• Respect
• Personal responsibility
• Shared information
• Equitable rewards
• Mutual loyalty

Hmmm, sounds a lot like relationships based on trust on mutual benefit doesn't it. Who knows, maybe it will catch on.

The Importance of Reflection

I read a lot. I guess I also think a lot and write a lot. I have found that time to be important to me and to the both the businesses I have worked for and those I supported as a consultant.

I am surprised sometimes when I talk with colleagues who spend almost no time in reflection, reading books or articles, and scoff at the idea of social networking sites like LinkedIn , FaceBook, or others and God forbid they would either write a blog or contribute to one. They bustle about "running the business". In many cases these are the same people who can't find time to coach and mentor their staff.

I read a couple of interesting articles this morning. One was on three leaders- Abraham Lincoln, Bill Gates, and Joe Paterno and how each made a commitment to reflection. Lincoln read Shakespeare and other classics, Gates scheduled a bi-annual trip to a cabin to read and think, and Paterno often coaches from the press box in order to get above the field and see things from a different perspective.

I read another article on leadership failures. It talked about some of the main reasons that leaders, especially new leaders fail. Some of the most consistent reasons were micro-management, and wanting to be the key decision maker in the majority if not all cases. They didn't trust their staff to make the "right" decision, they end up training staff not to make decisions at all.

My friend and colleague, Boom Daniel talked about the concept of a "bucket" as a fighter pilot and managing all the competing elements in your bucket. I think one way is to manage what you put in it.

How many of us spend thirty hours a week running from one meeting to another? In many of those meetings we don't even contribute directly. We are there as a function of CYA or "supporting the team". Is that always a good use of our time? I wonder sometimes.

I also feel that our society has come to really prize activity and the "hero" syndrome. The person who dashes about "solving" problems is the person we value and idolize. What about the person who thinks through the issue and doesn't let it become a crisis? Or the person who develops a team capable of making good decisions so they don't need to constantly step in with the "right" answer.

The first question I like to ask is "Why"? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing it this way? Do we have the right people involved? Does this decision need to be made at this level?

I don't know. Maybe I have too much time to "reflect", but I think that if we looked at the how and what of situations and the motivation we created maybe we would be more inclined to make better decisions.

What do you think?