Today's leadership challenge: Rebuilding teamwork
Any chance I get, I always ask C-suite executives what issue is front-of-mind. During the economic crisis, it was predictable: cost-cutting, market conditions, when growth might return and whether they'd keep their jobs. Now the answer is more likely to be: How can they I get my people to work together more effectively? That's because they're spending more energy competing internally than externally.
During the crisis, companies' focus on targets, deadlines and key performance indicators (KPIs) may have made them terrifically lean -- but it didn't build social capital. Trust, reciprocity and give-and-take between disciplines and departments are needed to understand and get the best from each other. If anything, pressure and cost-cutting reduced social capital, and most pay structures haven't helped.
Many KPIs implicitly pit department against department, as when finance cuts spending and travel costs, sales is ordered to increase revenue and marketing has to increase market share. Years of layoffs have reinforced the belief that everyone is on their own.
Now, as the economy looks like it's thawing, CEOs face an army of soloists, fiercely conditioned to fight for their own survival at any cost. That wholly defensive posture may have served them well in the past, but it's a cultural disaster now.
Companies work mostly in teams because they recognize that the best ideas derive from the rich interplay of ideas and thinking styles. Hoping to serve a cross-section of customers, they need goods and services that come from a multidisciplinary approach. Most products require the seamless collaboration of different departments to deliver on promises. In addition, companies with matrix structures depend on different disciplines working collectively, even though the people inside these structures are rewarded individually.
For all these gears to mesh, companies need a lot of trust, reciprocity and sharing -- of information, know-how and experience. In this context, the defensive -- even heroic -- soloist is an impediment, not an asset. It doesn't help that everyone is also exhausted.
As a consequence, most senior leadership teams face a conundrum: how to revitalize their people without restructuring their organizations. Conferences, seminars, coaching all help and, as is usual after a recession, training is the first budget item to grow. But two fundamental things must change if the collaboration CEOs seek is to become a reality.
Pay can't be competitive. Determining pay by forced ranking (in which individuals are assessed and placed into three tiers: high potential, average and subpar) implicitly encourages internal competition. You can't assess people individually and expect them to work collectively. If you want high team performance, you must reward as a team.
Social capital must be accrued before it can be invested. That means if you want people to respect and trust one another, they have to know each other, which takes time and often requires deliberate initiatives. Many people now work so fast and furiously -- eyes on the prize -- that they never really get to know their co-workers. Social connectedness is profoundly motivating, but it requires the investment of time.
When I ran my first software company, we were hiring so fast that almost no one knew anyone else, and employees didn't develop trust and confidence in each other until I made the time and opportunity for them to get to know one another.
Collaboration is a fine art, and as such, it takes practice, error and persistence. To turn a siloed, competitive organization into one where people actively support and trust one another doesn't take a miracle -- but simply praying for it won't work, either.
