1 Introduction
2 The Current Business Reality: A “VUCA” World
3 The Antidote: “Agile” Leadership
4 A Bridge Too Far?
What’s remarkable is that the individuals who possess the personal qualities that make this magnitude of destruction possible usually possess other, genuinely admirable qualities. It makes sense: Hardly anyone gets a chance to destroy so much value without demonstrating the potential for creating it. Most of the great destroyers of value are people of unusual intelligence and talent who display personal magnetism. … What’s the secret of their destructive powers? I found that spectacularly unsuccessful people had seven characteristics in common. Nearly all of the leaders who preside over major business failures exhibit four or five of these habits. The truly gifted ones exhibit all seven. But here’s what’s really remarkable: Each of these seven habits represents a quality that is widely admired in the business world. Business not only tolerates the qualities that make these leaders spectacularly unsuccessful, it celebrates them.
5 Gaining Trust and Instilling a Collaborative Culture in Organisations
Although research has identified many determinants of cooperation, virtually all scholars have agreed that one especially immediate antecedent is trust (Smith et al. 1995).
5.1 What Is “Trust”?
5.2 The Trust Deficit
That’s what I found when I recently surveyed 450 executives of 30 companies from around the world. Results from a Golin Harris survey of Americans back in 2002 were similarly bleak: 69% of respondents agreed with the statement ‘I just don’t know who to trust anymore’. In that same year the University of Chicago surveyed 800 Americans and discovered that more than four out of five had ‘only some’ or ‘hardly any’ confidence in the people running major corporations. Granted, trusting corporate leaders in the abstract is different from trusting your own CEO, and some companies and executives are almost universally considered trustworthy; but the general trend is troubling.
5.3 Trustworthiness: The Basis of Trust
5.4 Building Trust
The psychology of fair process, or procedural justice, is quite different. Fair process builds trust and commitment, trust and commitment produce voluntary co-operation, and voluntary cooperation drives performance, leading people to go beyond the call of duty by sharing their knowledge and applying their creativity. In all the management contexts we’ve studied, whatever the task, we have consistently observed this dynamic at work.
5.5 Collaboration
5.6 Why Instil a Culture of Collaboration?
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If they are part of the process of decision-making, members of a collaborative group are more likely to be willing to buy into and take responsibility for implementing the group’s action plan (Kim and Mauborgne 2003).
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Because it is an open process that encourages discussion and dialogue, collaboration builds trust among those involved in the process (Kim and Mauborgne 2003).
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Collaboration can help to “de-silo” organisational thinking and behaviour by open dialogue between different parts of the organisation across functional domains (Reeves and Deimler 2011).
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People possess information that can only be accessed with their consent and active cooperation (Kim and Mauborgne 2003). Collaboration provides access to such information and ideas and thus improves the quality of decision-making: solutions arrived at are likely to be better than those developed in a vacuum, or by only a small number of people (Kuhl et al. 2005).
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A collaborative culture leads to a different way of dealing with people-related problems, including internal conflicts (Reeves and Deimler 2011).
5.7 Profile of a “Collaborative” Leader22
If you bring the appropriate people together in constructive ways with good information, they will create authentic visions and strategies for addressing the shared concerns of the organization (sic) or community (Chrislip and Larson 1994, p. 89)
6 Changing Mindsets
We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are (Nin 1993).
The frames our minds create define—and confine—what we perceive to be possible. Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view (Zander and Zander 2000).
6.1 Mental Models23
cognitive representations of the causal relationships within a system that allow people to understand, predict, and solve problems within that system. Mental models are based on people’s experiences and expectations. They can guide behaviour in different situations, organise thoughts about a problem, and influence the interpretation of information.
6.2 Changing Mindsets
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way (Frankl 1959, p. 86).
Of all forms of mental activity, the most difficult to induce … is the art of handling the same bundle of data as before, by placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework, all of which virtually means putting on a different kind of thinking-cap for the moment. It is easy to teach anybody a new fact … but it needs light from heaven above to enable a teacher to break the old framework in which the student is accustomed to seeing.
People must be exposed to their implicit mental models and examine them before we can change them. Changing what people do is easier than changing what they think since mindsets and assumptions are often deeply embedded beyond conscious thought. Yet changing the way people think about situations is, in fact, the most powerful and useful way to ultimately change behaviour and thereby affect organisational results (Pfeffer 2005, p. 125)
6.3 Embedding a New Mindset
7 Conclusion
When we commit to a vision to do something that has never been done before, there is no way to know how to get there. We simply have to build the bridge as we walk on it (Quinn 2004).