LEARNING LINKS
Lessons from Everest: The Role of Collaborative Leadership in Crisis
by Dori Digenti

Dealing with today's volatile business environment is similar to scaling Mt. Everest: Survival demands strong leadership and quick decision-making based on the best information we can gather in a short time. Success or failure, especially in crises, has more to do with how well the group interacts and makes decisions together than with individual skills and resources. In this context, collaborative leadership is crucial.

Collaborative leadership is a set of skills for leading people to accomplish both individual and collective goals. Collaborative leaders must be excellent communicators of a passionate vision. Their role also includes staying aware of the big picture and weaving many factors together into a plan to accomplish an overarching goal. They continually assess progress and review alternative scenarios with their teams, creating contingency plans so the group can respond quickly to changing conditions. Collaborative leaders must also balance the agendas of very different people and help them achieve their highest level of capability. And although they collect input and information from others, such leaders must ultimately make decisions that they feel best serve the organization's needs.

Unfortunately, few managers know what collaborative leadership entails or how to implement it. Many think it means keeping everyone happy or couching mandates in friendly language. But a collaborative leader's ultimate task is to create a web of relationships among team members that won't collapse under stress. Cultivating the human capacity of your organization—before a crisis occurs—can help you ensure that team members don't fall apart when you need them most.

Read the complete article online or see The Systems Thinker®, Vol. 12, No. 2 (March 2001).

Readers who wish to discuss this topic are invited to the The New Workplace forum.

Systems thinking can help us develop our awareness of—and then transform—the often unnoticed patterns of behavior that make up our lives. Linda Booth Sweeney, author of When a Butterfly Sneezes: A Guide for Helping Kids Explore Interconnections in Our World Through Favorite Stories (Pegasus Communications, 2001), believes that, by learning to ask deeper, more systemic questions about the challenges we encounter, we can develop more effective solutions. For example, by asking "What would happen next?" when considering the consequences of a particular action, we may begin to see the underlying causal loops operating in everyday situations. Booth Sweeney illustrates this process with the recurring, universal example of the need to clean up a messy room.

Conversations with toddlers about cleaning up often play out along these lines: "What does mommy do if your room is messy?" "Mommy gets mad." "What makes her happy?" "Cleaning up the room." At this point, we typically stop exploring the behavior pattern. But once pressure is off the child to clean, what happens? The room gets messy again, and mommy feels the steam building again. To consider the messy-room dynamic from a systemic perspective, a mom might take the conversation a step further by asking, "What happens after you clean your room?" "You're happy, Mom." "And then what eventually happens?" "The room gets messy again because you're not mad anymore." Together, the parent and the child can explore ways to break the cycle. By doing so, parents can anticipate situations they want to avoid (getting mad) and find fundamental solutions (developing the child's internal motivation to clean).

Continue reading the article on our web site.

Learn more about books and resources by Linda Booth Sweeney by reading "Pegasus Highlights" in the right hand column.

SHOP TALK

What online resources have you found useful for thinking innovatively about management in the workplace?

Please take a minute to send your ideas to levpts@pegasuscom.com. Selected comments will be shared in a future issue of LEVERAGE POINTS.

FROM THE FIELD
Cities Wire for Revitalization

In the past few years, many downtrodden blue-collar American towns and cities have discovered a new kind of economic viability—high-speed Internet access. No longer willing to wait for big phone and cable companies to install fiber-optic networks in their business districts, many cities have collaborated with publicly and privately owned utilities to connect themselves with the world. As a result, locales such as Tacoma, WA; Worcester, MA; and Louisville, KY, have attracted service providers hankering to sell Internet access through the new infrastructure and start-ups eager for affordable rents and easy commutes.

For decades, as its sexier neighbor Seattle flourished, Tacoma watched suburban malls supplant its downtown retail districts, leaving the city a virtual wasteland. After energy industry deregulation in 1992, Tacoma Power tried fruitlessly to get cable monopoly TCI and phone company US West to wire the city for high-speed Internet access and other applications. Then in 1997, when city officials finally approved Tacoma Power's plan to spend $100 million on a fiber-optic network called "Click," the city's collapsed communications infrastructure was revitalized. Since then, approximately 100 start-up companies have located in Tacoma, buildings have been restored, and hundreds of new jobs have opened up.

As municipalities make inroads in providing telecom services to their communities, many cable and phone giants have scrambled to upgrade their infrastructures. Some have even sued public utilities for conflict of interest. Worcester's approach, where private industry installed the network, might serve as a model for the future. But places such as "America's #1 Wired City," as Tacoma tags itself, are just glad their technological assets are helping to revitalize their hometowns.

Source: Jill Hecht Maxwell, "On the Wired Front," Inc. Tech 2000, No. 3

Readers who wish to discuss this topic are invited to The New Workplace forum.