Great Group Collaboration

Posted on May 15, 2015 by AndrewPetrick

As we head into the long weekend for some R&R, I thought you might enjoy some inspirational thinking for our profession. Here is an excerpt of the thinking of Warren Bennis:

Organizing Genius by Bennis is one of my favourite business books. In the chapter “The End of the Great Man” he concludes by saying:

“In a Great Group you are liberated for a time from the prison of self. As part of the team, you are on leave from the mundane, (no questions asked), with its meager rewards and sometimes onerous obligations. [On such teams nobody] ever talks about the long days or who got credit for what. All they remember is the excitement of pushing back the boundaries of doing something superbly well that no one has ever done before. Genius is rare, and the chance to exercise it in a dance with others is rarer still…. In Great Groups, talents come alive.”

He starts the chapter by saying “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

“We all know that cooperation and collaboration grow more important every day….. Yet despite the rhetoric of collaboration, we continue to advocate it in a culture in which people strive to distinguish themselves as individuals.. We continue to live in a byline culture where recognition and status are accorded to individuals, not groups. … Throughout history, groups of people, often without conscious design, have successfully blended individual and collective effort to create something new and wonderful….. Great Groups have reshaped the world in very different and enduring ways. We have to recognize a new paradigm: not of great leaders alone, but of great leaders who exist in a fertile relationship with a Great Group. In these creative alliances the leader and the team are able to achieve something together that neither could achieve alone. The leader finds greatness in the group. And he or she helps members find it in themselves.”

Great Groups are “made up of greatly gifted people. Each achieved or produced something spectacular new and each was widely influential, often sparking creative collaboration everywhere.… Group seem to be most successful when undertaking tangible projects.… The project brings them together and brings out the collective best.… It is no surprise that we tend to underestimate just how much creative work is accomplished by groups. A Great Group can be a goad, a check, a sounding board, and a source of inspiration, support, and even love…. Great Groups are organizations fully engaged in the thrilling process of discovery.”

“The organizations of the future will increasingly depend on the creativity of their members to survive. And the leaders of those organizations will be those who find ways both to retain their talented and interdependent minded staffs and to set them free to do their best, most imaginative work…. In a truly creative collaboration, work is pleasure, and the only rules and procedures are those that advance the common cause…. Great groups rarely have morale problems. Intrinsically motivated, for the most part, the people in them are buoyed by the joy of problem-solving…. Imagine how much richer and happier our organization’s would be if, like Great Groups, they were filled with people working as hard and as intelligently as they can, to caught up for pettiness, their sense of self, grounded in the bedrock of talent and achievement..”

“Any participant would tell you that he or she would rather be here than anywhere else. The money doesn’t matter, career doesn’t matter, the project is all. In some cases, personal relationships have been interrupted or deferred. It’s hard to have a life when you’re up half the night in the lab working on your part of a compelling problem, often with one of your equally obsessed colleagues at your side. This is not a job. This is a mission, carried out by people with fire in their eyes.”

“Great Groups… all have extraordinary leaders, and, as a corollary, these groups tend to lose their way when they lose their leadership. Great Groups tend to be collegial and non-hierarchical, people by singularly competent individuals who often have an anti-authoritarian streak. Nonetheless, virtually every Great Group has a strong and visionary head. [Such leaders have] a keen eye for talent. Sometimes Great Groups just seem to grow. Some places and individuals become so identified with excellence and excitement that they become magnets for the talented…. But Great Groups are made as well. Recruiting the right genius for the job is the first step in building many great collaborations. Great Groups are inevitably forged by people unafraid of hiring people better than themselves. Such recruiters look for two things: excellence and the ability to work with others…. who play well in the sandbox with others.”

“Those who are brought on board saw themselves as an enviable elite, however overworked and underpaid.… [These leaders] sought to recruit only the best person, in the needed specially the project required. Each person was told why he had been chosen: He was the best one to be had….. Great Groups often tend to attract mavericks… If not out and out rebels; participants may lack traditional credentials or exist on the margins of their professions. .. With often delusional confidence… [their] lack of experience is an asset, not a liability, because these unseasoned recruits do not usually know what’s supposed to be impossible. Thus many Great Groups are fueled by an invigorating, completely unrealistic view of what they can accomplish. Not knowing what they can’t do puts everything in the realm of the possible.… “We didn’t know we couldn’t do it, so we did it.” In short, experience tends to make people more realistic, and that’s not necessarily a good thing…[leaving] an inability to act and the loss of self trust.”

“Curiosity fuels every Great Group. The members don’t simply solve problems. They are engaged in a process of discovery that it’s own reward…. They have another quality that allows them both to identify significant problems and define creative, boundary busting solutions rather than simplistic ones. They have hungry, urgent minds, expansive interests and encyclopedic knowledge…. People are able to make connections that others don’t see, in part because they have command of more data in the first place. Individual and collective achievements result from the interplay of distinguished minds.”

“Great Groups don’t have to be told what to do, although they need to be nudged back on task.Great groups are coordinated teams of original thinkers…. They are people who get things done, but there are people with immortal longings. Often, they are scientifically minded people with poetry in their souls……

Inspirational leaders can transform even mundane projects, turning them, too, into missions from God. They are always people with an original vision… promising a challenge worthy of a Crusader. Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream…. of doing something superbly well that no one had ever done before.”

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Collaboration & Teams

Posted on April 14, 2015 by AndrewPetrick

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Not everyone wants to change the world but most of us want to do something with our little tiny corner of it. An engaged workforce has dreams and a vivid purpose in which: they want to work on together, go forward together, collaborate together. Teamwork makes our common dream work. Such teams require both visionaries and the individual genius most of us have, for big thinking precedes great achievement.

Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for us to reach the heights of our capabilities or change our little corner of the world – - achieve that dream we want – - without becoming very good at it. We need to build into our teams a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another and a strength to be derived from unity and loyalty to each other and to our organization. Individual commitment to a group effort is what makes our team work, our company work, our community work, and indeed it is what allows for hope as we go about in this Internet connected global village we now find ourselves in.

We actively pursue becoming a member of a certain team and then we rely on the team, defer to it and sacrifice for it, because it is the team, not the individual, that is the ultimate champion who changes our world. At the same time the best teamwork comes from people who work independently towards that one common goal in unison. As team players we unite other people towards a shared destiny through sharing information and ideas with them, empowering them and developing trust in a very special growing bond. Ability alone is insufficient. Needed, also, are loyalty, sincerity, enthusiasm and team play. When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality. Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by an excellent team of people.

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. So we need to keep away from people who belittle our ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great visionaries make us feel that we, too, can become great. Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

Do we really understand that massive collaboration involving perhaps hundreds of people is what makes true innovation possible? The great thrill of this whole team experience is found in seeing humanity do what it’s best at, which ultimately is not competing but cooperating. Every team, every platform, every division, every component is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but rather so we can believe in each other and contribute to each other. In order to have our triumph, our team must have a feeling of unity; every player must put the team first ahead of personal glory.

Laszlo Bock, Sr VP of People Operations, at Google once said:

What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? It’s feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in, to try to solve any problem — and the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others. Your end goal, is what can we do together to problem-solve. I’ve contributed my piece, and then I step back.

Overcoming barriers to performance is how groups become teams. What is it that kills our ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives? If teams are so important, why do they so often foul up? Why do we use teams so little or so ineffectively? And, do we want to use teams for everything?

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Humility – The Key to Leadership

Posted on March 31, 2015 by AndrewPetrick

Author Jim Collins (Good to Great & How the Mighty Fall) has given us a useful leadership model in his July 2001 & 2005 Harvard Business Review article: “Level 5 Leadership -The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve”.

It is useful because it gives us both a chronological development sequence as well as outlining distinct and practical leadership attributes. Here is the progression:

Level 1: Achiever

Collins describes this individual as highly capable making productive contributions through individual talent, skills and know-how, as well as honed working habits.

Level 2: Cooperator

We see this leader as a team member who works effectively with others in group mode, jointly contributing to the team’s goals.

Level 3: Organizer

Now, the individual rises to learn management competencies, in organizing people and resources effectively to the pursuit of objectives from on high.

Level 4: Visionary

At this level we see a leader who has the ability to unite people to vigorously pursue a clear and compelling vision; stimulating the collective and catalyzing their commitment to high performance outputs in attaining the dream.

Level 5: Sculptor

This Is Collins key contribution: he discovered that some few business leaders could build “enduring greatness through a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will”.

Now we add what we see as two yet higher levels of leadership development:

Level 6: Humanitarian

This is the skill and attitude to transcend “self” and our personal empires (including the sculptor’s empire). Here we find the empathy and objectivity to see and feel from the perspective of other cultures and individualities’ needs, wants, burdens and hopes. The humanitarian is able to translate this learned “outgoing concern” into unifying words and subsequent movements, on scales both small and big.

Level 7: Liberator

This emancipator goes beyond support from followers to personally lead those followers to relieve the troubles and burdens of an oppressed group. Usually this leader can bust the compromises an industry or government imposes on people. Most often this is done through strategic innovation. Because innovation, at least at first, does not directly affect the status quo, it often begins quietly, going unnoticed until its impact begins to build momentum. At that point, the energy behind the innovation begins to change the world and its old burdensome ways – – people are liberated from the oppression. Liberators are leaders who have developed the know-how and attitudes to bust all sorts of imposed compromise.

Above we have, an outline, a thumbnail sketch of leadership development in the context of humility and vision.

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Hire Right, Because the Penalties of Hiring Wrong Are Huge

Posted on February 19, 2015 by AndrewPetrick

Learn more

Ray Dalio appeared on the annual Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. According to Forbes, he is the 30th richest person in America and the 69th richest person in the world with a net worth of $15.2 billion as of October 2014. He is the Founder and CEO, Bridgewater Associates, an American investment management firm.

Here is ten of his “Principles” of hiring:

1. Think through what values, abilities, and skills you are looking for.

2. Weigh values and abilities more heavily than skills in deciding whom to hire.

3. Write the profile of the person you are looking for into the job description.

4. Look for people who have lots of great questions.

5. Make sure candidates interview you and Bridgewater.

6. Don’t hire people just to fit the first job they will do at Bridgewater; hire people you want to share your life with.

7. Look for people who sparkle, not just “another one of those.”

8. Hear the click: Find the right fit between the role and the person.

9. Pay for the person, not for the job.

10. Recognize that no matter how good you are at hiring, there is a high probability that the person you hire will not be the great person you need for the job.

Here are seven more tips for hiring:

1. Remember that people tend to pick people like themselves, so pick interviewers who can identify what you are looking for.

2. Understand how to use and interpret personality.

3. Pay attention to people’s track records.

4. Dig deeply to discover why people did what they did.

5. Recognize that performance in school, while of some value in making assessments, doesn’t tell you much about whether the person has the values and abilities you are looking for.

6. Ask for past reviews.

7. Check references.

From Principles by Ray Dalio, CEO of Bridgewater

http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgewater-Associates-Ray-Dalio-Principles.pdf

Learn more about hiring at http://pe-trick.com/

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Innovation’s 80% Success Rate

Posted on January 30, 2015 by AndrewPetrick

Without a solid understanding of the true needs in the marketplace, innovation is a gamble. The scattershot approach is a hesitant one that allows no focus, no concentration of resources and people, no “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” It seems to be the pursuit of serendipity. No wonder for all the techniques, skill-sets and brilliance, so many innovation projects only have only a 10-20% chance of succeeding.

Chief among the gamble reduction has been the “Customer Driven Movement”, the attempt to understand what customers want before a company invests in the creation of a new product or service. But the sad results are – - after 30 years of this customer driven thinking – - that 50 to 90% of the products and services initiated end as failures. Yes, gaining inputs from the customer is important. But under this widely used methodology neither the innovator or the customer knows how to obtain the type of inputs they really need. The literal voice of the customer does not translate into meaningful inputs. Companies identify opportunities by segmenting markets, conducting competitive analysis, and brainstorming for customer wants, needs, benefits, solutions, ideas, desires, demands, specifications and so forth. None of these can be used predictably to ensure success.

The High Failure Rate

Despite a decade of heavy investment in innovation, and in chief innovation officers and their staff, failure rates for new products have hovered at 60 percent since the 1970’s. Two- out of three new product concepts don’t even launch. The 1950s and ’60s was a period of unprecedented economic growth characterized by a burgeoning middle class. Back then demand was often found by addressing an underserved segment.

Since the wake of the Great Recession (2008 to today) instead of demand we have picky customers and consumers dealing with limited financial resources. For them product choices tend to come down to trade-offs. Our markets are in slow growth mode in spite of the economic pick-up in the last few quarters.

Traditional new product innovation follows these four steps:

First, generate a high-level business growth strategy.

Second, develop a new idea/s based on consumer input.

Third, use quantitative business research to test and validate the new concept.

Fourth, use stage gating (progressively whittle down a number of new ideas to a very few that appear business model viable). The results are then rolled out, by a sequence of commercialization, retail execution and finally launch.

The problem is this tried-and-true process doesn’t work very well. Witness multiple headline-grabbing catastrophes with the big multinationals and the bankruptcies resulting from bet the farm approaches in small and medium-size enterprises. Are we stuck with these high failure rates if we want to innovate?

Better – Price-Product Architecture

Some are solving this innovation dilemma by using “Price-Product Architecture” (PPA). This means using sophisticated business mathematics to gain a clear grasp of which combinations of features, packaging, price, and even labeling will persuade consumers to make a purchase. They adopt dynamic modeling to gauge various combinations of features against benefits to yield a consumer “trade-off” grid analysis. This has shown significant fruit in more mature markets. The value proposition to the customer tends to become better than the competitions’ and market share is gained.

In effect they are developing a simulation model that can evaluate a wide range of scenarios by altering various elements and seeing how each factor affects the value proposition while the product is still in the development stage. This process can cut down time to market and gain first mover advantage as the industry “notices something” such as a new trend; for example the desire for more natural foodstuffs in the grocery store must be met with an appealing product that passes the trade-off test for the consumer. Getting it wrong can foul the waters for everybody. Getting it right means market expansion for the whole industry.

Core Competency Value-Added

Other companies are having greater innovation success because they are doing product development based on their capabilities and core competencies. They gain critical advantage because of their unique expertise. They outsource to (1)other experts where they have a lack and of course, (2) where the manufacturing process has been commoditized i.e. where there can be no unique “value-added”. Innovating outside of our skill set is the number one cause of expensive wild goose chases.

What Is Truly Critical For Success

What has been lost in these approaches to innovation is an in-depth understanding of “underserved markets” where consumers yearn for a solution to their deep frustrations, frustrations they may not even be aware of. Tapping into such underserved markets with our unique capabilities and expertise is the difference between modest, incremental growth (when successful) and dynamic industry-leading growth. Understanding consumer yearning is why Apple has just chalked up the biggest quarterly profits in corporate history.

Like Apple, we would do well to move beyond the customer – driven paradigm.

We can boost our innovation success rate to four out of five … or even higher over time! There are disciplines with identifiable core elements; these breakthrough innovation disciplines can be applied with an above 80% innovation success rate. This is a much better path to innovation. Success improves and the risk of failure is reduced as we become more certain about the critical unmet needs in our marketplace.

To learn more go to our website and read

    Market Targeting And Decision Making

http://pe-trick.com/specialty_practices/view/market-targeting-and-decision-making

For other useful information on Innovation see

http://pe-trick.com/

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Active and Passive Job Candidates

Posted on December 31, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

Is it possible to tap into the hidden but highly valued passive candidate marketplace? We all know that the best people, the people we would really love to have working with us and for us, are not out there actively seeking a new position. The passive marketplace is the domain of the professional search firm.

We differentiate between active and passive job candidates. There is a world of difference.

The candidate pool for a new hire can be broken down into about four categories. There is the:

(1) active type who is aggressively looking for a new position.

Passive candidates are either

(2) “discerning” or

(3) “dormant”.

Discerners are carefully and consciously open to the right opportunity.

Dormants are subconsciously open to the right opportunity but they have to be woken up to it.

The fourth category are the

(4) “Impenetrables”, non-candidates who are not open to any opportunity for a variety of reasons; overcoming the impenetrable’s obstacles is nearly always a futile waste of energy and time.

Active candidates are either unemployed, and hopefully for good reason, or else for a variety of reasons, they are simply looking for an upward or lateral move from their current job. We will often find a few gems; they can be precious beyond their skill level by nature of their character, leadership style and personality.

Tapping in

To tap into the passive marketplace we start by first mapping out the hiring company’s competitors and other companies who are potential sources of quality candidates. This is immediately followed by picking up the phone, discreetly cold-calling and entering into a meaningful dialogue with each of those top level prospects. Thus we can sometimes move from finding the best individual “out there” seeking a new opportunity to the best candidate in the entire marketplace. The difference can be a quantum leap, not always but sometimes.

Different Methods

This is a marked departure from the usual methods personnel departments use. It is the distinction between romance and bureaucracy. People really want to connect with people, not paper. They would rather be courted than be filling out application forms and jumping through bureaucratic and administrative hoops. Later on paperwork has a vital role to play but before the courting, paperwork is a genuine turn off and a nonstarter. As professional recruiters we know exactly how to start the romance and fight the roadblocks that could kill the relationship as everything progresses. One key to success in life seems to be to find and attract the right people to be around us … and then to keep them there.

Many times the well-honed skills and experience of a search professional go well beyond what can be found in a typical personnel department. It stands to reason that someone who spends 50 hours a week for many years will have a better aptitude for search than an executive who only recruits part-time. It is most surprising the difference in the number of critical contacts the outside recruiter has compared to the in-house personnel officer. In those ever-expanding contacts lay the richest soil for unearthing truly amazing people. Mapping out the competitive playing field and gaining access to hidden passive candidates takes time, money, and resources. But more importantly it is a skill not readily found in-house either by the senior executives or the personnel department.

Discovery

So we have to map out the hiring company’s competitors and other companies who are potential sources of quality candidates. We get out on the street and start talking to people about what’s going on in the industry generally, and more importantly, what individuals are thinking about doing. We involve the hiring manager, his colleagues and networks, as well as other executives he collaborates with. They are an immense source of wealth gone untapped. Then we start seeking out nominations for the position. Sometimes the nominators become the nominees themselves for this (or other) positions. The passive job market is combed for opportunity seekers.

As we uncover interested passive candidates we go through a different kind of relationship, almost like a courtship. Intimacy, understanding and opportunity thinking will develop. This will help both sides in the negotiations when it comes to demonstrating how they will do the job together. These type of negotiations are not about who can get the most out of the situation, but rather how everyone can work comfortably together.

Types of Search

The difference we make in an executive search, compared to other forms of recruiting, is we go out into the marketplace and actively solicit – - reach in, touch, turn around, and tempt – - the top talent from our client’s most successful competitors. We are able to produce candidates who would otherwise remain unavailable. By sifting and unsettling the very best people who are working for someone else in the industry, we can often deliver gifted professionals who have the capacity to impact our clients in unexpected ways.

Now there are two main types of search: Comprehensive and Covert. A
Comprehensive Search is thorough and will yield the best possible set of candidates for the job at hand. It also takes a huge load off the hiring company and pits it squarely on the back of the search firm. The benefits are multiple including increasing the quality of the talent pool, extra time as well as peace of mind for the hiring manager, and making the most efficient use of the recruiting budget. A Covert Search is a subset of a Comprehensive Search and can be very fast in yielding results. It’s like a rifle shot with a silencer compared to a shotgun blast.

We use a Comprehensive Search when we want to ensure that we hire the very best candidate available. We use a Covert Search when we want to take a quick targeted approach for an immediate need. The Covert Search is a little more expensive but easy to justify; the Comprehensive Search gives the best value for the investment.

Learn more at Pe-Trick.com

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Simple Works Best

Posted on November 30, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

We believe that in most cases there is no secret sauce that will produce untold success… rather it seems to us that success is found in doing the fundamentals very well. Success is a combination of (1) skill or know-how, (2) a wide base of understanding along with common sense, and (3) diligence motivated by vision. That’s wisdom. Wisdom is simple and straightforward. This stands in direct contrast to those who try to Wow us with stature and mystery. Too often, offering a secret sauce is nothing more than a grand tap dance that later turns out to have very little substance.

We do our very best to communicate in a clear, easy to understand manner – - the simpler the better. We don’t keep people in the dark; neither do we hide behind silence (“I am important and hard to reach”) or email or some other automated avoidance behaviour. We try to give context and reasons why we say what we say. We have a limited amount of time but we do make great effort to be on the phone with everyone who wants to talk to us – - even if we do have to be brief. In that way we focus on what’s important and what is a waste of time so we can all channel our energy to the right places.

Simplicity is sometimes found in complexity. Put things as simply as possible but no simpler we are told. Looking for simple cause and effect in human beings and their organizations just doesn’t work and we often don’t know why. To effect change there are often a number of factors at play and they all have to be dealt with at once. The dynamics of a situation like vector forces are interactive and mutually self-reinforcing (positively or destructively). Sorting out what influences what is often an exercise in futility but knowing what factors are in play is important. To effect human change all of the key factors have to be dealt at once, not sequentially or one at a time. Taking partial or incremental steps is often insufficient and therefore only leads to discouragement.

The simplicity in complexity comes from the actions we take. We need to be very explicit in the action steps that are necessary to solve a problem or challenge. Everybody needs to be extremely clear on the overall plan, what their role is in the plan and why. The vision and the solution steps need to be over communicated until clarity is reached. Clarity starts with “why” and finishes with what “obviously” needs to be done. It needs to be said over and over and over again until everyone understands. Leadership is about straightforward purpose and finding everyone “a place in the choir”.

Simplicity takes a great deal of effort but there is little that is more worthwhile.

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Disciplined Collaboration

Posted on October 2, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

Disciplined Collaboration stands on two fundamentals: (1) properly assessing when to collaborate and when not to, (2) instilling in our staff both the willingness and the ability to collaborate on the high-value projects we choose as worthy. There are three steps involved: evaluating opportunities for collaboration, identifying the relevant barriers, and tearing down those barriers.

In the first step we evaluate the worthiness of our opportunities. How great will our gain be as we choose one project or another? Collaborating for the sake of collaboration is a rabbit chase defocusing and frustrating everybody. We need to pick areas that will solve our customers’ (external and internal) deepest frustrations. Value needs to be created both qualitatively (improve functionality or usability) and quantitatively (increase cash flow).

Secondly we need to spot barriers to our collaboration. People don’t collaborate well for a number of reasons; there may be a lack of motivation or willingness and a large number of people simply lack the innate ability to collaborate easily. Four of the most common barriers are (1) an unwillingness to reach out to other people, often from a cultural not-invented-here syndrome; (2) staff are unwilling to provide help – they hoard their resources; (3) workers are not able to find what they are looking for, they don’t know how to search; (4) people are not able to work with others they don’t know well either because of social skills or attitudes. Rather than jumping too quickly into an assumption about what is interfering with collaboration, the barriers simply need to be identified and listed.

Then in the third step we tailor our solutions to turn down those barriers. Different barriers require different solutions. Often the solution is found in lifting workers into a state of unity by articulating the dream or vision, setting out common goals and preaching the strong value of cross organizational teamwork. That means moving our staff from their narrow interests towards our common mission. In most cases the high achievers have to be moved towards shared achievement, while the social butterflies have to be moved towards achieving measurable results. If employees cannot or will not learn to both make cross organizational contributions as well as focus on their own individual performance, then they probably need to be replaced. There are some who are naturally both collaborators and individual achievers but most require at least some skill acquisition. They might need to learn how to build nimble interpersonal networks across the company while others need to learn what the thrill of achievement is all about.

Good collaboration emphasizes both performance from decentralized work and performance from collaborative work. Everyone can grow to be more collaborative leaders from the example they set and the attitudes they transmit. Just a little guidance is needed in most cases. We need to cultivate collaboration around us by transforming ourselves, our organization and the people working with us. Collaboration or mutuality leads to everybody’s better performance. Our job is to unite together towards our common mission. We need to think about what Peter Drucker said:

“Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. …. Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals.”

Posted in Change, Innovation, Leadership | 1 Comment

Collaboration Defined

Posted on September 1, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

Collaboration can be defined as a cross functional meeting of the minds towards a common purpose and goal, and most importantly, towards a specific end result. By cross functional we mean people of different professions or disciplines, different departments or units or functions, different levels in the hierarchy of the organization, and different backgrounds in terms of neighborhood culture, ethnicity/race and gender; it means putting people together that have very different perspectives, ideas and desires.

One subset of collaboration is Great Collaboration, or as Warren Bennis calls it, Great Groups. Recruiting the right genius for the job is the first step in building great collaboration. Great groups are put together by leaders who are unafraid of hiring people better than themselves. In such recruiting they look for two things in particular: (1) industry excellence and (2) the ability to work with others.

A connoisseur of talent looks both for intellectual gifts and the ability to work collaboratively that it is people who “play well in the sandbox with others”. Such recruits may not be of high stature but they consider themselves to be some kind of “an enviable elite” however overworked and underpaid these greatly gifted people might happen to be. There are definitely the best person for the job at hand. Further they are usually young in their 20s or early 30s. Their enthusiasm, optimism and ignorance (or lack of experience) means they do what everyone thought couldn’t be done. Such unseasoned recruits “do not usually know what’s supposed to be impossible”.

Virtually every great group also has a strong visionary head along with a champion or two who can clear the obstacles of stifling bureaucracy and corporate politics. The “dream” is the engine that drives the group. The visionary details the task and its meaning; the champions keeps the recruits free to do their best most imaginative work. The focus is not on money or other tangible rewards but rather “the project is all” that matters. They fall in love with it. The thrilling process of discovery to bring new insights is everything. For the participants that process is its own ultimate reward. They live for the excitement of pushing back the boundaries, of doing something superbly well that no one has ever done before. Such genius is rare and the chance to exercise it in a dance with others is rarer still. These collaborating knowledge workers cannot be managed but can only be facilitated, guided and inspired. The leader finds greatness in the group and in turn helps members find it in themselves. Together they are able to achieve something that no one could achieve alone. “None of us is as smart as all of us.” These great groups reshape our world in very different and enduring ways.

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The First Step to Collaboration

Posted on August 31, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

What Happens to Collaboration?

If only we could cooperate together better at work, it just might be a better place to have fun and be more productive. But as we all know collaboration doesn’t come easy anywhere, anytime. Do you understand why?

To understand we have to look at corporate culture. Some workplaces encourage cooperation but perhaps many more promote a spirit of competition. A classic example of this was the two cultures at Sony and Apple, when the iPod was being developed. At Apple there was a clear goal in mind with each division devotedly focused on that single goal. Information sharing was high and there was clarity of purpose as each group went about their business. At Apple collaboration pre-existed their products and in fact flourished as they went about their work. By contrast each of Sony’s divisions had its own ideas about what to do on its product Connect It was as if they were contraindicated (to borrow a medical term) to each other; they were so conflicted in how to develop the product they seemed to work against each other. Sony’s mess turned into a market disaster whereas the iPod became one of the success stories of the decade. The iPod’s progression transformed Apple from an average company to an amazing story. The fruit of their collaboration became a world changing product that has become an ordinary part of everyday life for so many around the globe. Sony’s people worked against each other; Apple’s people energized each other and have been producing amazing products ever since then.

The first lesson about collaboration is that it occurs in a corporate culture that is by design operated in a spirit of cooperation – - an environment where people want to work together, take pride in what they do together and celebrate in big and small ways at each progressive inch of their successes.

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