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September 3 - September 13, 2022
As Zolli puts it, “if we cannot control the volatile tides of change, we can learn to build better boats.”
Peter Drucker had a catchy statement: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right thing.”
Anyone who has ever played or watched sports knows that instinctive, cooperative adaptability is essential to high-performing teams.
Their structure—not their plan—was their strategy.
The creation and maintenance of a team requires both the visible hand of management and the invisible hand of emergence,
The crew’s attachment to procedure instead of purpose offers a clear example of the dangers of prizing efficiency over adaptability.
“mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.”
adaptive small teams operating within an old-fashioned rigid superstructure.
Robin Dunbar theorized that the number of people an individual can actually trust usually falls between 100 and 230
require completely rethinking the conventional organizational approach to distributing information.
NASA would have to link its teams together by disregarding the “need to know” paradigm and widely broadcasting information.
making sure that everyone has constantly updated, holistic awareness
“taking individual performance out of the lexicon on day one.”
transparency
demanded a disciplined effort to create shared consciousness.
“Share information until you’re afraid it’s illegal.”
Shared consciousness in an organization is either hindered or helped by physical spaces and established processes.
engagement was the central predictor of productivity, exceeding individual intelligence, personality, and skill.
Drucker’s exhortation to “do the right thing” rather than “do things right”:
“Perry Principle.”
Our One Rule: Use good judgment in all situations.
every Captain was a Nelson.” We wanted our force to exhibit
“Eyes On—Hands Off” represented a complete reverse of the Perry Principle: if we could see it, we would not need to try to control it.
new paradigm of personal leadership.
The role of the senior leader was no longer that of controlling puppet master, but rather that of an empathetic crafter of culture.
The gardener creates an environment in which the plants can flourish.
The move-by-move control that seemed natural to military operations proved less effective than nurturing the organization—its structure, processes, and culture—to enable the subordinate components to function with “smart autonomy.”
The gardener cannot actually “grow” tomatoes, squash, or beans—she can only foster an environment in which the plants do so.
As a leader, however, my most powerful instrument of communication was my own behavior.
even if the brief had been terrible, I would compliment the report. Others would later offer them advice on how to improve—but it didn’t need to come from me in front of thousands of people.
“Thank you”
Gardeners plant and harvest, but more than anything, they tend.
“dinosaur’s tail”:
An organization should empower its people, but only after it has done the heavy lifting of creating shared consciousness.
Shared consciousness is a carefully maintained set of centralized forums for bringing people together.
Empowered execution is a radically decentralized system for pushing authority out to the edges of the organization.
