Dan Erwin

A Hitman and a Saint

A questionable ethic?
A few years ago, after developing a relationship with the CIO of a major American corporation and successfully working with a number of his subordinates, I was faced with a challenge. Another consultant, call him John, was edging into my info tech territory from corporate marketing. As soon as I saw what was happening, I set up an appointment with the CIO. I assassinated John with truthful rhetoric and precise data. It was a barrage of sophisticated, critical, agitating rhetoric by which I intended to maintain control. By no stretch of the imagination did I wear my usual nice-guy hat. The next day, the CIO canned John’s ass.

While hard to accept and admit, on occasion it’s necessary to become hitmen because of threats to our career by others. Indeed, plenty of people go into business unprepared for a larger reality that can be supportive, constructive and fun, but occasionally requires them to work with somebody who is dangerous to their career. They may be highly deceptive rivals, indifferent and lazy assholes who won’t carry their weight on a project, or clueless incompetents who need to be brought to their senses.

Religiously ethical?
But my consulting experience reveals that a surprising majority of people hold an ethical and/or religious commitment to life that plays havoc with their feelings. Feelings that certainly would keep them from becoming the mean and calculating hitman depicted above.

As an ordained minister, a former parish pastor and seminary professor, it’s imperative to point out that these quaint religious ideas often sabotage not only your career, but also your life. And even more significantly, these “nice guy” feelings lack a rich understanding of what it means to be fully human. In short, the baseline of normalcy in the “religious” reality structure is often profoundly dysfunctional and false. A serious confusion exists between what people think they should be and what actually is. And it’s understandable that many haven’t come to terms with those differences given the predominant, though skewed, religious perspective.

In stark contrast to much I hear today about organizational “nice guys,” the biblical text paints the person of faith as a mix of saint, sinner and hitman (and, yes, hitwomen) taking on the competition. They are not lily-white, idealistic or naïve nice guys. They work in the same human, screwed-up organizations we work in today. Joseph, he of the “amazing technicolor coat,” engages in deception, manipulation and trickery. He frames his younger brother, tossing him (temporarily) in jail to demonstrate his cruel power. But Joseph also rescues his entire dysfunctional family, including his jealous older brothers who conspired to have him murdered. King David screws his general’s wife and has him murdered to cover his behavior, and engages in trickery and political skullduggery throughout his reign. But he also guides, loves and protects his people. Neither David nor Joseph could ever be considered innocent or naïve. David is punished for his murder, yet the biblical text affirms the godly faithfulness of both Joseph and David. Intriguingly, those ethics differ significantly from the religiosity I hear from many. These characters know how and when to become hitmen, willing to take on others to achieve their objectives.

The biblical ethic is about what business folk would call big picture stuff: radical justice, the common good and food for all, including the outsider, the poor, the widow, the foreigner and the sick and homeless. Its devil word is “oppression.” And the text doesn’t fool around with small potatoes. There’s little to nothing about such things as my trickery of another edgy consultant. Fact of the matter, the biblical text confirms trickery as the action of a person with entre to the establishment, a person who’s both fully human and powerful. I suspect, therefore, that Yahweh got a good laugh out of the whole comedy. And I laughed all the way to the bank, knowing full well that I’ll still win some and lose some.

Shifting the paradigm
At the heart of this blog is an attempt to shift the paradigm regarding business relationships and personal success. As my experience revealed, the reality is far larger and more complex than many are willing to admit. Talk about the current fad of servant leadership all you wish, but reality is not just about nice guys. So I emphasized the biblical reality, not because I’m especially religious, but because it provides a phenomenally valid reality structure: a perspective that can lead to mastery of one’s career, but more significantly one’s life.

In short, reality demands that if we intend to succeed in business and life, we must be willing to use our human power. Stanford’s Jeff Pfeffer has dealt directly with this issue in his classrooms and his consulting for many years. In his latest book, Power, he analyzes the resistance of many folk to even try to become powerful. His analysis is worth its weight in gold. Even in his Stanford MBA classrooms, students find the necessity of power tactics and strategies phenomenally difficult to accept. Why is that? Both Pfeffer and I think it’s because of the wacko reality structure subscribed to by most of the population. Most accurately, he writes that we

conspire in (our) own deception about the organizational world in which (we) live. That’s because people prefer to believe that the world is a just and fair place and that everyone gets what he or she deserves. And since people tend to think they themselves are deserving, they come to think that if they just do a good job and behave appropriately, things will take care of themselves. Moreover, when they observe others doing things they consider to be inappropriate, self-aggrandizing, or “pushing the envelope,” most people do not see anything to be learned, believing that even if those people are successful at the moment, in the end they will be brought down.

Pfeffer goes on to reveal that this naiveté keeps people from learning from difficult situations and especially from people whom we don’t like or respect. Furthermore, it anesthetizes us from the need to be proactive in building a power base and dealing with the inevitable competition. Pfeffer summarizes the research, and concludes that reality is far different than we thought. It demands that we engage in power-building activities, without which we are seriously limiting our potential for both survival and success.

The messy deed
Stanford’s Bob Sutton is another of those writers who takes on a full-orbed reality. But he narrows his focus to organizational assholes in his book, The No Asshole Theory. Toward the end he devotes a chapter to the realistic, but painful task of becoming a “temporary, strategic asshole.” Sutton writes that his book “would be naïve and incomplete if I didn’t talk about the upside of acting like an asshole.”

Unfortunately, even if you aren’t a certified asshole, and even if you despise people who deserve the label and avoid them like the plague, there are times when it is useful to play the part of a temporary asshole to get something that you need or deserve. Polite people who never complain or argue are delightful to be around, but these doormats are often victims of nasty, indifferent, or greedy people. There is much (research-based) evidence that the squeaky wheel does get the grease.

The victim, who Sutton calls a doormat, completely ignores reality.

Hitman activity
What this means is that at least 98% of the time my colleagues can be trusted not to knife me. I can be a nice guy working with other nice guys. But I’m also aware that there are times when I fuck up and when my colleagues fuck up and given half the chance, may fuck me, forcing me to become a hitman. Significantly, I’ve found that my lack of innocence about reality relieves me of all kinds of life and career anxieties. When you know what you’re going to be dealing with, you’ve got a leg up on the situation. But note also, that full-orbed, biblical reality of life and organizations inevitably keeps me from being jaundiced and terribly cynical.

The ethics of my decision to occasionally take on the activity of a hitman are not black and white, but gray. And this is highly reflective of reality. It demands of me that I stay alert for the sociopath while not becoming one. It reminds me also that sociopaths screw themselves over because people won’t want to work with them. So, when faced with a jerk, an asshole or an untrustworthy competitor, stand your ground. Draw several lines in the sand about work expectations, responsibilities and scope of authority and take him on. Don’t be afraid of rhetorical trickery. Otherwise, without those rather sophisticated activities, your rise in the ranks will come to a halt. That’s not only smart power politics, but it’s also appropriate ethically and religiously.

Picture fm flickr.com: by emorse04

If You Need a Mentor, Forget the Expert

Be very, very careful whom you target for your mentors. Especially if you’re in the early years of your career, there’s a tendency to go for the real expert, those people with a depth of experience. But that can be a serious mistake.

As a general rule, always add a slightly more experienced peer into your mentor and coaching network. If you’re a new manager and want management coaching, be sure to use at least one person no more than a single level above you.  

Why forget the expert?
I don’t mean this as a put-down, but too often the difference between an early career person and an expert mentor is similar to that between a kindergartner and a college professor who’s never had kids or taught them. The college prof has no experience putting the cookies on the bottom shelf, assumes language above the kindergartner’s vocabulary, uses abstractions instead of concrete, simple words, draws conclusions that make no sense and offers big picture insights that connect no dots whatsoever for the kid. He even lacks the good sense to get down on his knees and look the kindergartner into his eyes when he’s talking to him. And the child is not at the place where he can formulate relevant questions.

On several occasions I’ve observed HR putting a new manager into a mentoring relationship with a smart vice-president. The relationship breaks down quickly because the mentor and mentee are reading from different sheets of music. Inevitably, the VP views the communication failure as the manager’s problem rather than his own. So he interprets the failure as lack of follow-through, motivation, intelligence and savvy. Guess what’s just happened to that mentee’s future?

So, mentors can be so far removed from your day-to-day work that they are of little value to you. You want at least one or two with little more experience than you. Those are the folk who have recently walked in your shoes and can give you relevant, practical, concrete insight into your work.

Build the social contract
Once you’ve targeted a willing mentor, you want to deal with two very important issues right up front. First, lay out very specific, very concrete objectives and be certain you’ve got buy-in from your mentor. Your mentor will clarify those objectives and often modify them. It’s imperative that both of you get full agreement on the objectives.

At that same first meeting start building a social contract. A social contract is not a legalistic document. It’s simply an explicit, conversational agreement of what you expect from your mentor and how you’re going to work together. Social contracts typically need to be renegotiated throughout the mentoring and coaching process. But any social contract should enable you to behave authentically and get the kind of mentoring you want and need. So you should be able to ask direct questions, find out what the mentor expects of you, probe directly into the mentor’s orientation to confidentiality, get agreement on when and how often you’ll talk with each other, even how to deal with conflicts should they arise, and when the relationship is expected to end. And if you’re really gutsy, I’d ask the mentor how you’ll get in trouble with him. Mentors typically have personal, tacit rules that they don’t share unless asked. It’s not that they’re being secretive, but simply that it never crossed their mind to let you know.  And somehow, in all of this, mentees need to be effective listeners. That’s one thing that the mentor really expects.

Very often long-term relationships develop emotional connections. Nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s to be expected. But the social contract will protect both of you from future difficulties that might arise.

Mentoring is not only a key to organizational success; it’s also a key to personal success. If you check around, you’ll find that all top, successful leaders have been mentored. It should be no surprise that those who’ve been mentored are socialized into the organization, make more money, get more opportunities and are promoted--all faster than other employees. So use mentoring wisely. 

Quotation of the Week: Reg Henry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On a rare occasion I stumble for two or three minutes across talk radio or talk tube. It's an enlightening and horrible experience. So I was delighted to see that Reg Henry of the Post-Gazette thought that perhaps talk radio provided the best rationale for attending college. Indeed, this is one of life's important lessons.

Everybody should go to college. Young people should stay up to all hours of the night in dorm rooms and argue absurd philosophical points with fellow students, the better to get absurdity out of their systems. A failure to do this can lead to talk radio in later years.  --Reg Henry

A confession: Yes, I did stay up all nite and argue absurd philosophical and theological points with fellow students. But thankfully, Jesus saved me from talk radio. Ha!

Enjoy--

The Uses and "Dangers" of Authenticity

One of the more insistent cries from MBA faculty and many business gurus has been an emphasis upon “authenticity” in work and team relationships. Being authentic is pretty clear: it’s simply the willingness to be who you are and to tell the truth. It’s appropriate to think of authenticity as a personal characteristic, but it’s also useful to think of it as a “tool.”

Calls for authenticity seem to be cyclical, driven by both culture and context. In the sixties and seventies psychologists continually emphasized and even wrote books about relational honesty. But those discussions and experiences dried up in the ‘eighties and ‘nineties. It’s like the “authenticity grease” finally ran out and we need to go back to the garage and get all the parts lubricated again. Yet, the fact of the matter is that authenticity is a constant need in life and business. You can’t build partners without authenticity.

But authenticity can be a very slippery, even dangerous experience for consultants and especially for organizational managers and employees. What’s being authentic can be personally constructive to one and destructive to another. Indeed, one manager suggested that “many people who pride themselves on their transparency in fact have a mean, aggressive spirit which they excuse as being unusually truthful.  I doubt that they would respond positively to similar bluntness applied to themselves.”

Authenticity is like feedback. It’s a tool, not an innate characteristic that a person is born with. And like feedback, some people are comfortable using it and others are not. Just so, some people move quickly to authenticity while others tend to play their cards fairly close to the chest. Some people become experts in its use and others stumble with the process. Authenticity like feedback is best handled with care by a caring person. 

What authenticity can do
Both consultants and organizational members can find that authenticity is the most powerful tool for building trust and commitment from others. When your authentic communication demonstrates care, honesty and depth, those are qualities that can change the world. Authenticity has the capacity to deliver us from the doubts, reservations and unpredictability between people. It can make work not only great fun, but also very productive and satisfying.

Many people, especially in business, have an economist’s view of the human spirit: they think people can only be counted on to pursue their own narrow self-interest. This “economists’” view of life is so widely shared and frequently used that it has become the way people think about relationships, organizations and even how they design their relationships. This “economic,” suspicious view of life inherently rejects authenticity and full trust. It’s frustrating to realize that even if people do not regularly act in their own self-interest (and they don’t), the research clearly indicates that these same people believe that others do act on that basis. As you can imagine, that seriously limits teamwork, collaboration, and mutuality. It throws an axe into the middle of organizational work and impacts personal relationships negatively, limiting the potential for authenticity.

Building authentic relationships   
One way to understand authenticity is to view it in teamwork and collaborative experiences. In those contexts, building authentic, trusting relationships starts out like a dance with back and forth exchanges of personal background or experience. From there the discussion can move to work relationships. Authentic relationships inevitably flowers in the form of a social contract. In my business, I am very straightforward about building authentic relations (even though I rarely use the term), and I test those waters before we have a financial agreement. Development and coaching don’t work without a contract that either states or implies authenticity. I also don’t think there is such a thing as collaboration or teamwork without a level of authenticity. Clients are often starved for authenticity and revel in the relationship. Authenticity is the grease under all social contracts. I’m certain, also, that authenticity is the reason why clients and colleagues remain friends, long after the end of financial ties.

In team settings where authenticity is profoundly helpful, relationship rules emphasize authenticity. Typically, I recommend that the team begin its work with issues like the following:  

 How will we go about setting mutually shared goals?

• How will we ensure follow-through and completion of agreed-upon tasks?
• How can we best collaborate?
• How will we keep issues open for discussion and disagreement, and manage our conflicts?

If you can get buy-in from all team members on these rules which essentially create a “social contract” there’s a high possibility for authenticity among the members. But you’ll find that the social contract and authenticity will break down. That’s inevitable, so you renegotiate the contract--again and again. The straight-talk renegotiation serves as a real plus—celebrating authentic relationships.

Typically, in my client relationships I’m not aware that our contract has broken down until I walk away from the meeting and sleep on it. My clients are not at all surprised to get an occasional phone call the next morning to get the news that we’ll need to renegotiate. Serendipitously, the act of renegotiating usually results in an even better, more authentic relationship than the initial negotiation. The payoff can be phenomenal.

Flickr photo by tstaires

To Find a Job, Rebuild Your Network

The best way to find a job is still through networking. Certainly the web is useful. But ultimately, nothing is better than face-to-face. Here are my secrets to the process.

No matter how you get the contact, face-to-face will be inevitable. However, many really need to change their networking process to get that new job they’ve always dreamed of.

Networking has been around since the 1930s, but research, insights and major changes enhancing success in the process are relatively recent. Don’t limit your outreach to close friends, colleagues or your current organization. It’s important to realize that your network needs to be tailored to its objectives. And if a new job is your objective, most will need to rebuild that network.

Many people seem to think that networks are easier to form if you’re extroverted and outgoing. But the real issue is effort, not personality style.

And one of the intriguing research finds about high performers is that they distinguish themselves by their network. They don’t necessarily have a big network. But their network has “bridging ties,” ties with people who reach outside their group and outside their organization. Job searchers should be finding and using “bridging ties.”

There are a number of top students of networking and networking analysis. But for popular consumption and personal feedback on your network and network building, pick up Wayne Baker’s, Achieving Success through Social Capital. It’ll help you analyze where your network weaknesses are, how to build a better network and how to focus on your objective.  

Redefine your network to focus on your job search.
Most have far more contacts than they think. Go through your past history, identifying former classmates, colleagues, clients and community acquaintances. When you sit down with a contact to talk, always ask for other contacts. Be very specific.  Follow the sales assumption approach: “Based on our conversation what three people should I contact?” Notice the specific number. If you ask whether they can suggest some others, you’re liable to get a no. But if you ask for specific number and keep seated, they’re liable to go to their own contact list and pull out three names for you. Then ask if you have permission to tell the contact that he/she was the source of the recommendation. And here’s a terrific secret: once you’ve made contact with the three, call the original source back, telling him of the results in up-beat fashion. And thank him. Half the time, he’ll give you more insights and more contacts.

The contact meeting is a discussion, not a job interview.
Keep faith with the stated objective of your meeting. If the purpose of your meeting is information gathering, never, never ask for a job in that discussion. If the contact brings it up, that’s fine. But don’t commit such a strategic blunder. Never go into a discussion unprepared—and be knowledgeable about the contact’s industry. Using information you have about his/her industry, ask more about the industry, its status, future, current jobs situation. Ask how to succeed in the industry and how to position yourself for opportunities.

Finally, get feedback on your handling of the conversation. How can you improve your information-gathering process? What other questions should you be asking, even what shouldn’t you ask. Make it a learning session, both for you and your contact. Give the contact a smile, a firm handshake, and get out of the room—on time. And if the contact continues to give you information, let him know that you appreciate it but that you want to keep faith with his time. He’ll let you know if you can stay seated or should get on your way. And, he’ll respect you for your professionalism. 

Keep good records of your contact and your meetings.
There are all kinds of programs for record keeping, but I keep a special contact file in outlook for potential clients and information gained from meetings. But be sure to check back every two or three months, update the contact, and check to see how he’s doing and whether he has further suggestions for you.

Earlier on in this blog, I pointed out that building a network is about effort, not personality. I hope that message has really sunk in. I’ve worked with numerous leaders who were scrupulous networkers. One especially comes to mind. A vice-president of a consumer products company, I watched him move from job to job, seemingly without any difficult. His first position was lost to a merger, but he had a new position in another company before he finished his tenure. His second position was lost to a strategic IT blunder, but he marched off to another even better position before being let go. He inevitably devoted time every week to networking, revising the quality of his links, and checking in with his contacts. It paid off in spades.

Flickr Photo: by clairphotography 

So How Are You Going to Frame This Issue?

“We now face the exact predicament we expected. We must either allow interest rates to rise on student loans, or stick taxpayers with another multibillion-dollar bill.”

--Jennifer Allen, Republican spokeswoman, Minnesota Legislature

“On behalf of my generation, I should apologize to all of you. We tell you your education is important, which it is, that you should get as much of it as possible, which you should. That it will benefit you and society and the world, but we’re not going to help you pay for it. It’s a profound breakdown of the inter-generational compact.”

--Mark Dayton, Democratic Governor of Minnesota

It’s rare that I permit a newspaper article to strongly impact my emotions. I normally either ignore reports or add the data to my mental filing system and think through any needed system changes. When it’s a serious case of conflicting values like this morning, then the conflict can be challenging. So the front page of this morning’s Minneapolis Star Tribune really, really pissed-me off. The article reported on a conversation that UMN’s President Kaler, Governor Dayton and Senator Franken had with a number of students about loan indebtedness. (Lest there be any doubt, education is one of my highest values.)

The student loan debt of Minnesota students is fourth highest in the nation. The state’s college students who graduated in 2010 and borrowed had an average of $29,058 in student loan debt.

And there are plenty of students who are walking out of college with loan debt between $27 and $40,000.

Framing the issue
Democrats (Dayton) framed the issue as an intergenerational failure and Republicans (Allen) framed the issue as a tax-and-spend issue.

So the Democrats want us to think about the issue as an intergenerational failure. That’ll be a tough sell to the older generation who do much of the voting.

And Republicans want us to think about the issue as a demand on our pocket books, another tax issue. That’ll be an easy sell to the older generation.

FYI: Studies show that most of our decisions are made on an emotional basis. That’s not a completely negative way of deciding. Sometimes our emotions are smart. They’re useful for survival. Furthermore, it’s important to recognize that our tribal membership (Republican or Democrat) deeply impacts our decisioning. We have deeply held values and commitments, often lacking serious rationale. But they still impact our decision making. However, if the issue is personally or organizationally important, rational decision-making is the best route to success.

What you get is how you frame the issue
Most of us intuitively know something about frames. We allude to them when we talk about “thinking outside the box” or “not being on the same page.” A frame is simply a mental structure that simplifies and guides our understanding of complex issues. Our world is too complex for our brains to ever hope to fully process what’s coming at us. Even prior to the information age. If we didn’t use frames, we’d be quickly consumed with trying to make sense of all the data flowing at us.

Most of us pay no attention whatsoever to this automatic mental process. But we can pay a very high price for this much-needed simplicity. It can limit what we see and what we understand. The analogy of a window frame shows us the difficulties. Architects designing a new house choose where to place windows to give us a desired view. But no single window can show us the entire panorama. When we first moved from Colorado and Arizona to Minnesota nearly 40 years ago, my wife and I went nuts about the windows in Minnesota homes. They were very small. We didn’t like what we got from a small window: little light and no perspective. There’s an important lesson in that. Both Governor Dayton and Jennifer Allen are using frames that are far too small for their subject. But few people will recognize that.

Frames and policies
The fact of the matter is few see their frames for thinking unless they’ve had the training to do so. Frames are like stereotypes or mental models. They’re very powerful. With Dayton and Allen, the frame difference is the major cause of the policy difficulties. As long as the legislators are working with those two frames, the public will never hear or even understand the issues. And as I said, that’s good for the Republicans and bad for the Democrats. That’s because the rhetorical world of the older voter is filled with tax issues and largely lacking in any sense of the broader good. So how the hell do you talk about the “broader good?” The Democrats better figure that one out. The Democrats are winning a lot of battles, but losing the one about the broader good. And it’s all about framing.

Frame distortion
Frames guide our thinking in a chaotic world. They can play tricks on our minds. Here, from Russo and Schoemaker, are some of the built-in dangers of frames:

• Frames distort what we see.
• Frames themselves are often hard to see
• Frames appear complete. We don’t even notice that something’s missing.
• Frames are exclusive. It’s hard to look out more than one window at a time.
• Frames are “sticky” and hard to change. We’ve been locked into the same frames for years—with a lot of reinforcement—so it’ll take conscious effort to change them.

Making frame change
About ten years ago my frugal wife decided she needed a new car. Her old Pontiac was dying. She turned the planning and research over to me, so I checked out her frame. Her conclusion was that she wanted a very “secure, safe” car (she taught in the inner city), preferably a four wheel drive, heated front seat and it should be small to move around in traffic and park. Using her frame, my research found that there was only one car that fit the bill: the Audi A4. “But that’s a very expensive car,” she responded. I pointed out that she hadn’t factored cost into her frame and that there was only one car that could give her what she wanted. She agreed that I’d framed the problem correctly, but still . . . . I finally sold it to her on the basis that it was a “Kraut car,” German made. Since she’s half German, with all the analytical precision thereto appertaining, she rolled. She got the Audi—and I was the proud, status-oriented husband of a wife who drove an Audi. She’d framed the issue correctly and as a result she got exactly what she wanted--and needed! (She agreed that as empty-nesters and the kids out of college, money wasn’t an issue. So we took that out of the framing.) I assume you realize that my case for the Audi was both rational and emotional decision making.

Edina Is Not . . . Well . . . Mississippi or Alabama

You have to move fast to keep up with some Minnesota cities, especially up-scale Edina.

In my recent blog on collaboration, I pointed out that competencies are inevitably a response to culture, society and economics. Indeed, the burgeoning emphasis on collaboration is uniquely tied to the evolution of the economy and the knowledge worker.

Now comes the fruit of another cultural shift. Reported in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the gift was, amusingly, an Easter gift to diversity.

First, the state’s Catholic hierarchy made an ass of itself in front of its own high school students at Minneapolis’ DeLaSalle High School regarding gays, gay families and of all things, adopted kids. The high schoolers raised an uproar with the hierarchy reps, causing the church to back down fast. What the church was trying to do—with only high school seniors present—was gain more votes for anti-gay legislation. Our Catholic fathers seem not to know that the arc of the biblical tradition is toward inclusion. So, the hierarchy probably lost more than it gained, showing the immense gap between the younger generation and old, white men in black robes.

But the more intriguing Easter gift was from the city fathers of Edina, who decided, unanimously, to add still more dates to their no-meetings list. The change only affected 3 of 120 meetings this calendar year. Now the no-meeting list includes the following:

Christian holidays: Christmas, Christmas Eve, Good Friday

Jewish holidays: The evening before and the day of Yom Kippur, the evening before and two days of both Rosh Hashanah and Passover

Islamic holidays: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha

Hindu holidays: Diwali

A priest at the Hindu temple responded that the move is “really awesome. That means American culture is really considerate of other cultures, they try to understand and want them to celebrate. It really helps us at the temple.”

Of course, this will drive the Tea Party nuts, but I suspect there aren’t many of that ilk in Edina.

“Edina” is Minnesota shorthand for lots of money, successful professionals and top public schools. But it has also become, like many East coast and Midwestern suburbs, a mecca (hmmmm--my Islamic reference.) for wealthy professionals, many of whom are Islamic and Indian.

Tolerant Minneapolis and the western suburbs (including Edina) are a case-study in how to change cultural attitudes. There was a time in the first half of the twentieth century when Minneapolis was known as the most anti-semitic city in the country. But the Star Tribune, under the leadership of the Cowles family, changed all that. Not only did they editorialize against anti-semitism, but the family strongly supported Planned Parenthood, editorialized for birth control and public schools, and led in the immense focus upon arts in the Twin Cities. We always enjoyed the arts in New York and Chicago, but we also knew that we’d get just as much exposure in the Twin Cities, especially in drama and music.

A few years ago, I found myself seated on a flight to Chicago beside Joe Dowling, the artistic director of the Guthrie. At the time the Guthrie was raising funds for its new edifice on the Mississippi and I chatted with Dowling about the status of the drive. “You have to remember,” he explained, “that the Guthrie is the most heavily endowed theater in the world.” As a New York theater-goer, that was more than a little shock to my system. But as I thought about it, not much of a surprise.

It continues to amaze me how much a few people can impact a culture for the good--and not reinforce its death-giving values.

Is Leadership Passé?

Not quite, but you’d better start learning how to “do” collaboration. Competency needs grow out of cultural, economic and organizational demands. And today’s world, more and more, needs the skills of collaboration.

Recognize this!
The manufacturing age, which began with Henry Ford in the early 1900’s, focused on manufacturing’s needed competency: managing. Employees weren’t knowledge agents. They pounded widgets and followed orders, and everyone, bosses and ordinary employees, was fairly clueless about leadership. The only related term was “leader.”

A leader was the next rung up the manufacturing ladder from us peasants (I spent my year off from college—summer 1957 to spring 1958—in a Detroit manufacturing plant. And I was one of those peasants. But, since it was Detroit at the height of the manufacturing age, I made a huge pot of money, got my shit together, and went back to college and graduate school. Astute move.) The ascending order of company hierarchy was peasant (or whatever), leader, foreman, supervisor, then white collar executives who drove big Detroit cars. The leader was merely a very low level manager, responsible for five to ten people and their widget production. He usually drove a little Detroit Chevy, Plymouth or Ford. I had a great leader for my manufacturing education. You might find my experience very enlightening, here.) But the leader was totally a very controlling manager. He wasn’t interested in your ideas. He was not what we think of today as a leader.

By the 1970’s there was a fair amount of clarity on managing. When the explosion of technology in the 1980s demanded a different kind of smarts—Drucker’s knowledge worker—leadership was required to manage those people. Unlike my experience in Detroit, organizations began to realize that we humans weren’t merely peasants or robots. So the talk circled around the need for leadership, the definition of leadership, the differences between leading and managing, and questions of whether leaders are born or made. (They’re made!)

But society, economics and business continue their volatile move into the future. And in today's world, the great need for competency is the discipline of collaboration.

What’s collaboration?
Don’t be too quick to say that you know how to collaborate. Few do. It’s a tough skill to navigate. Like leadership, there are no born collaborators. And it’s very easy to go off the rails when you’re attempting to “do” collaboration, wondering what the hell just happened.

The first major shot across the bow on the subject of collaboration is Morton Hansen’s Collaboration: How leaders (there’s that word again) avoid the traps, create unity, and reap big results. It’s exceptionally good for the first pass at a major business subject. (Although not nearly as much fun as the first major shot at leadership by Warren Bennis. But no business writer can match the fun in Bennis and I’ll be very sorry to see his smarts and literary brilliance pass off the scene. God, what a well-rounded, well educated, highly practical, humanistic thinker!)

But back to Hansen. It takes him 14 pages to get around to defining his subject (He needed a better editor). He talks about it as the process by which people from different units work together in cross-unit teams on a common task or provide significant help to each other. Though accurate, his definition is pretty flat, lacking pizzaz. But, as I said above, there ain’t many Bennises.

Where Hansen is especially useful is his in analysis of what is and is not collaboration, when to use it and when not to use it, and what it can do for an organization.

Why collaboration?
In chapter 2, Hansen lays out his case for collaboration. Though his rationale is simple-minded and obvious, it’s exceptionally important and highly reflective of business needs today. Don’t forget, everything is obvious once you know the answer (see Duncan Watts). Hansen sees better innovation, better sales, and better operations providing a huge rationale for the competency. And he supplies a superb set of examples to explain his rationale. Every organization from P&G and Norwest Bank to British Petroleum.

Hansen needs to make much clearer that because of the knowledge explosion, no single person in business today, no single division or group, has the intelligence to create a product or service ready for the consumer to buy. You’re simply going to have to access a lot of smarts, from more than one place, or else you’ll get beat up badly by the companies that do understand and act upon the knowledge explosion. I wish that was obvious, but sadly, it isn’t. That’s one of the reasons many companies go bankrupt and disappear from the stock market.

Why so tough?
Though I have both extensive education and extensive experience in the field of collaboration it's still tough as nails to pull off. For a number of reasons. We have all these business silos still very much in place and their members aren’t interested in cross-silo collaborating, even when needed. Indeed, collaborators often find themselves in hostile territory attempting to pull off collaboration. Hansen’s comparison of Sony and Apple makes the point exceptionally well.

Another related issue, just as important, is that a huge portion of the business population is congenitally incapable of collaboration. It seems not to be in the genes. It's like strategic thinking. Ninety-five percent of business folk are incrementalists and can't think strategically. The training in collaboration, thus far, is also piss-poor. And long term, when organizations get around to recognizing the absolute necessity for the competency, they may have to terminate some of their folk to fulfill their organizational needs and succeed financially.

Collaboration relationships between business people and their clients is just downright terrifying to many. They have no models for collaboration, no personal experiences of the subject, and frankly, don’t really believe it can be pulled off. But as Apple has proved exceptionally well (in spite of their fascist leader, Jobs), great success in the knowledge economy absolutely requires the competency of collaboration.

It’s plainly obvious that long term, collaborative abilities are going to be more important than leadership. Besides, if you can “do” collaboration, you can "do" leadership. Leadership is merely (that’s right, “merely”) a subset of effective collaboration.

Photo fm Flickr: by starheadboy