Net-work, not more teamwork (1)

This is the title of one of the chapters of my new book DISRUPTIVE IDEAS which builds upon Viral Change. Disruptive ideas will be available by the end of this month, May 2008.

Organisations have become proficient in team management and teams have become the natural structure for collaboration, the default position. But in these days of inter-dependence between roles and jobs, many collaboration solutions can be found in informal networks, not in designed, cohesive teams.
Let me inject another contrarian idea: you don’t need any more teams. I know, I know, teamocracies rule the waves. We all talk about teams and how to make them stronger, more effective, etc. Teams are at the centre of organisational development and somehow we have equated them to ‘collaboration’ or people working together.
Teams are here to stay and I’m not going to waste any more space justifying their existence. But what we really need to do is not to refine the team machinery, but to exploit the net-work one. The organisation is composed of a number of collaborative spaces. Some of them are relatively rigid and designed - teams, task forces - while others are composed of looser connections between individuals, with different degrees and nuances of the word ‘looser’. Some communities (of practice or interest) are semi-loose, with a more or less defined membership. There are other networks of connections of a much looser nature, represented by people who sometimes know very little about each other and/or only communicate from time to time. There is a wide spectrum of connections available, but traditional management has only focused on one end; the one where structures are designed and borders given: the teams.
In recent years, people of different disciplines interested in organisational life have begun to suspect that the structure of teams may not be as universally desirable as we first thought, particularly when the organisation needs to tap into intellectual capital wherever it is. We need more and more people who are able to navigate, to ride the looser informal connections where many answers to innovation lie. Teams are too predictable in their capability to answer questions such as, “is there a different way?” Even if the answer is yes, chances are ‘that way’ is to be found within the confines of the team.
We need to favour looser network structures, even if we won’t have the same command and control capacity as we do with teams and taskforces. This is the price to pay. It is from those sometimes un-structured conversations that true innovation originates; it is there that many answers to questions can be found. What can you do? Next post!

Redesigning Sales Forces

Redesigning pharmaceutical sales operations is probably one of the most strategically important things on the table of senior commercial executives in an operating company today. And this redesigning doesn’t only involve the field forces, but also their connections with other HQ functions such as Marketing, Medical or Sales Force Effectiveness groups.

Leandro Herrero has published a new white paper describing the methodology his company, The Chalfont Project, has used for years in their client work. This methodology combines strategy with group decision analysis, creating a shared common understanding amongst stakeholders, a common sense of purpose and shared commitment to action. This proven method will enable companies to find their most preferred option that will work.

Although the white paper is focussed on the pharmaceutical industry, the methodology equally applies to all industries when looking to redesign their sales forces.

You can read the full white paper here.

Legacy traps

The best legacy is always a beyond-me leadership. A great period led by a leader followed by the absence of new leaders tells you a lot about the leader’s view of himself. Succession is as important as tenure. Great tenures followed by bad successions always make me very suspicious of the greatness of the tenure.

For many years, Max De Pree was the CEO of Herman Miller, a pioneering furniture company that, at times, went through difficult periods. During those, De Pree led firmly with a mixture of deeply rooted Christian values, extraordinary personal commitment and closeness to every employee, and a professed ‘servant ethos’. It paid off. Loyalty was very high, both in bad times and better times.

I am told that he was deeply involved in the finding of his successor. You would have thought that whoever went to sit on De Pree’s chair (and the company creators of the Aeron chair know a thing or two about sitting!) would have exhibited similar values and behaviours. The reality was that the first post-De Pree CEO was fired by the Herman Miller family and the second in command resigned. Although I don’t claim to know the whole story, there was something there about an incredible legacy-fiasco that makes you think about the mechanisms that some leaders use to establish their own succession. I always draw people’s attention to a De Pree syndrome!

There is also a form of prostituted legacy that is very toxic. It happens when the leader projects himself above the judgement of the current organisation (followers), dismissing that judgement as less relevant than the one that ‘history’ will provide. The ‘history-will-judge-me’ type of leader exhibits a great deal of arrogance by assuming that his greatness can only be understood by people in the distance. This assumption of man-or-woman-of-history, a history-maker, de facto closes the doors to a rational scrutiny today. Many political leaders see themselves in that way; some clearly articulate it, like British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. At least this has the benefit of honesty with the consequent transparency of the dimensions of the ego.

Leadership legacy

A leader can certainly be judged by his legacy. I usually ask people in my seminars to describe how they would prefer to be remembered as leaders. I do that as part of something broader that I call ‘The Pub Test’ (living in England, I simply must refer to this pillar of social intercourse.) Ten years from now there is a reunion of this leadership team. Most of them left the organisation a while ago. What would be the language, the theme of conver-sation and the description of what was left behind? Here is a typical output example of this exercise:

The 2016 Reunion – Pub Test

The company itself There were ‘opportunities’… Learning experience Innovation, chance to influence Progressive environment	Our divisions, our own teams Winning attitudes High expectations, high rewards Opportunities for people’s development Influencing corporate Risk taking Source of knowledge to our customers Cross-functionality as way of life
We as management Action and decisions Influencing beyond our own R&D function Flexible, driving on change Diversity paid off Acknowledged stretch Great opportunities for personal and professional development	Me/You Trying Achiever Flexible ‘changed something’ Created a work environment

It doesn’t have to be a very sophisticated output, but when you start asking people about legacy and questions about ‘ten years from now’, what starts as a light exercise usually ends up giving a solid view of the current values and beliefs. It definitely says a lot about (the visions of leadership in) a particular group. Indeed, the ‘proof’ of the values is the legacy. The legacy becomes the inexcusable window to what leadership was about.

You can lead an organisation and leave behind an increase in market share of 4.5% and a P/E ratio the joy of stock analysts. You can lead an organisation and leave behind a great behavioural fabric that attracts talent. You can lead an organisation and leave behind significant collective eldership capabilities. You can also lead an organisation and leave behind the shadow of your ego as big as a cathedral. You can leave nothing. You can lead misery. You can lead joy. Or combinations thereof!

Bowling regardless?

Putman’s work made me think that perhaps many corporations these days have a single objective: bowling. That is: keep moving, reaching targets and objectives, increasing the return on investment and pleasing shareholders, whatever it takes, whether their people do so bowling alone or in a league. Don’t get me wrong, for many this is what companies are for. But it is precisely this ‘bowling, regardless’ - whether alone, in groups, in teams or otherwise - that should worry leaders who are interested in the building of social capital.

If Putman is right and his findings could be extrapolated to the nine-to-five world, then, companies that truly profess a ‘bowling regardless’ philosophy should be in trouble in the long run. They risk losing the precious wealth of ‘associability’, the voluntary association of individuals in order to obtain a collective gain above the individual gain. A corporation of loners would be the equivalent of Putman’s ‘nation of loners’ and it would be equally dangerous because of its false appearance of ‘league-bowling’. As leader-builder you need to decide what kind of bowling you want!

The third component of the organisation’s I.Q. assets is architectural capital. This has to do with ‘ways of doing’ and ‘ways of being organised’. I explore some of these aspects in my book The Leader with Seven Faces in the face ’How you do it’.

The leader-builder-architect creates environments where collective I.Q. grows. He is a leader of tangible and intangible assets and the houses he built can be seen as his legacy. Which I will talk about in my next post.