...I became fascinated with leadership in its many forms and
styles. I interviewed hundreds of leaders in dozens of disciplines, trying to
pinpoint the attitudes and behaviors that allow some leaders to succeed while
others fail. At the same time I continued to study how organizations cope with
change, never more important than in the tumultuous present. The more I
learned, the more I realized that the usual way of looking at groups and
leadership, as separate phenomena, was no longer adequate. The most exciting
groupsthe ones...that shook the world-resulted from a mutually respectful
marriage between an able leader and an assemblage of extraordinary people.
Groups become great only when everyone in them, leaders and members alike, is
free to do his or her absolute best. This book is about organizing gifted
people in ways that allow them both to achieve great things and to experience
the joy and personal transformation that such accomplishment brings. In
today's Darwinian economy, only organizations that find ways to tap the
creativity of their members are likely to survive.
|
Groups
become great only when everyone in them, leaders and
members alike, is free to do his or her absolute best.
|
THE END OF THE GREAT MAN
"None of us is as smart
as all of us."
The myth of the triumphant individual is deeply ingrained in
the American psyche. Whether it is midnight rider Paul Revere or basketball's
Michael Jordan in the 1990s, we are a nation enamored of heroesrugged
self-starters who meet challenges and overcome adversity. Our contemporary
views of leadership are entwined with our notions of heroism, so much so that
the distinction between "leader" and "hero" (or
"celebrity," for that matter) often becomes blurred. In our society
leadership is too often seen as an inherently individual phenomenon.
And yet we all know that cooperation and collaboration grow
more important every day. A shrinking world in which technological and
political complexity increase at an accelerating rate offers fewer and fewer
arenas in which individual action suffices. Recognizing this, we talk more and
more about the need for teamwork, citing the Japanese approach to management,
for example, as a call for a new model of effective action. 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 by-line culture where recognition and status are according to individuals,
not groups.
But even as the lone hero continues to gallop through our
imaginations, shattering obstacles with silver bullets, leaping tall buildings
in a single bound, we know there is an alternate reality. Throughout history,
groups of people, often without conscious design, have successfully blended
individual and collective effort to create something new and wonderful. The
Bauhaus school, the Manhattan Project, the Guaneri Quartet, the young
filmmakers who coalesced around Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, the
youthful scientists and hackers who invented a computer that was personal as
well as powerful, the creators of the Internet--these are a few of the Great
Groups that have reshaped the world in very different but enduring ways.
That should hardly surprise us. In a society as complex and
technologically sophisticated as ours, the most urgent projects require the
coordinated contributions of many talented people. Whether the task is
building a global business or discovering the mysteries of the human brain,
one person can't hope to accomplish it, however gifted or energetic he or she
may be. There are simply too many problems to be identified and solved, too
many connections to be made. And yet, even as we make the case for
collaboration, we resist the idea of collective creativity. Our mythology
refuses to catch up with our reality. We cling to the myth of the Lone Ranger,
the romantic idea that great things are usually accomplished by a
larger-than-life individual working alone. Despite the evidence to the
contrary, we still tend to think of achievement in terms of the Great Man or
Great Woman, instead of the Great Group.
But in a global society, in which timely information is the
most important commodity, collaboration is not simply desirable, it is
inevitable. In all but the rarest cases, one is too small a number to produce
greatness. A recent study of senior executives of international firms
published by Korn-Ferry, the world's largest executive search firm, and The
Economist resoundingly confirms our thesis that tomorrow's organizations will
be managed by teams of leaders. Asked who will have the most influence on
their global organizations in the next ten years, 61 percent responded
"teams of leaders"; 14 percent said "one leader."...
Farrell's article on artists' circles begins with a quote
from Henry James in praise of group creativity: "Every man works better
when he has companions working in the same line, and yielding to the stimulus
of suggestion, comparison, emulation. Great things have of course been done by
solitary workers; but they have usually been done with double the pains they
would have cost if they had been produced in more genial circumstances."
James's point is well taken. Gifted individuals working
alone may waste years pursuing a sterile line of inquiry or become so enamored
of the creative process that they produce little or nothing. A Great Group can
be a goad, a check, a sounding board, and a source of inspiration, support,
and even love...
...The organizations of the future will increasingly depend
on the creativity of their members to survive... In a truly creative
collaboration, work is pleasure, and the only rules and procedures are those
that advance the common cause... Intrinsically motivated, for the most part, the people in them are buoyed by
the joy of problem solving...
Obviously, there are lessons here for transforming our
classrooms, our offices, even our communities. Traditionally, collaboration in
the classroom, for instance, has been taboo, condemned as a form of cheating.
Yet what we discover in Great Groups is that collaboration can only make our
classrooms happier and more productive. What lessons do Great Groups have for
our workplaces, where so many people feel stifled, not stimulated? Look how
hard people in Great Groups work, without anyone hovering over them. Look how
morale soars when intelligent people are asked to do a demanding but worthy
task and given the freedom and tools to do it. Imagine how much richer and
happier our organizations would be if, like Great Groups, they were filled
with people working as hard and as intelligently as they can, too caught up
for pettiness, their sense of self grounded in the bedrock of talent and
achievement.
...Kidder has a wonderful term to describe the structures
that result in creative collaboration. They are, he writes, "webs of
voluntary, mutual responsibility."...
Organizing Genius
The Secrets of Creative Collaboration.
By Warren Bennis and
Patricia Ward Biederman.
239 pp. New York:
Addison Wesley Publishing Company.
The difference between the methods of the old age and that of the new can be seen expressed in the idea of leadership by one and leadership by a group. It is the difference between the imposition of an individual's response to an idea upon his fellow men and the reaction of a group to an
idea..."
"Never
doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
A farmer who had a quarrelsome family called his sons and told them to lay a
bunch of sticks before him. Then, after laying the sticks parallel to one
another and binding them, he challenged his sons, one after one, to pick up
the bundle and break it. They all tried, but in vain. Then, untying the
bundle, he gave them the sticks to break one by one. This they did with the
greatest ease. Then said the father, "Thus, my sons, as long as you
remain united, you are a match for anything, but differ and separate, and you
are undone."