OVERVIEW

The Failure Gene That's Baked into the DNA of Every Group and How to Escape It

"HE'S OFF AGAIN."

I glanced up from the multitabbed workbook I'd just been handed and looked across to the doorway. It was true — he was off again. He was Andy, the wiry, late-thirties founder-owner of the components manufacturer whose offices I was sitting in. And by "off" my co-observer meant "off to anywhere that isn't here."

We'd been working in this windowless room for just over ninety minutes, the start of what was intended to be a two-day strategic planning session, and we'd already lost Andy three times. Well, twice, in the wandering-out-of-the-room sense. The other time was when he'd simply failed to turn up at 8 A.M. when the meeting was supposed to start — a meeting he had planned, convened, and insisted everyone else clear their schedules to attend.

While his high-powered team of C-level executives cooled their heels, Andy had wandered in at 8:10 talking casually on his cell phone, finished up the call in his own good time, and eventually called the meeting to order a full twenty minutes late.

Late or not, the meeting had begun well enough. Andy delivered a superb off-the-cuff tour d'horizon, recapping the company's recent history (its precipitous 5-year growth, 3-year stagnation, and now, this year, a return to growth, if modest), summarized the business's strengths (brand awareness, perceived quality, superb management talent) and weaknesses (spotty distribution, no middle-market product), and finished with a genuinely inspiring call for openness, creativity, and full engagement during the next two days.

At that point Andy handed off to the company's CFO, Joanne, for a review of the current year's financial performance. Seven minutes into her presentation, as Joanne was explaining why inventories had risen in the first quarter, Andy stood, stretched, and quietly moved to stand by the side wall of the room. Two minutes later, he'd slipped wordlessly through the door into the corridor outside, off to do who knows what.

I watched as Joanne continued with her presentation despite Andy's absence, but it was clear that she was doing so with less energy and less enthusiasm than before. The degree of engagement by everyone else in the room had slipped as well. Ten minutes later, her presentation finished, Joanne simply ground to a halt. I was surprised that no one had any questions for her; instead, with a barely subdued sense of frustration, the rest of the executive team took restroom breaks and checked email as we all simply waited for Andy to return and for the meeting to restart.

OOPS, HE DID IT AGAIN

When he did return 15 minutes later, Andy did so with no explanation or apology, just his usual firm but affable demeanor. Sitting back down at the head of the table, he simply picked up his copy of the agenda for the day and, with a "Right then, what's next?" moved on to the next item.

For the hour since then Andy had stayed (mostly) focused on the matters at hand, albeit on his own terms. High-level, 30,000-feet topics got his attention, as did anything "big" — new ideas, innovative approaches, creative thinking. But when the discussion moved into detail, it was clear that Andy had a strictly limited tolerance for minutiae, and it usually wasn't long before he shut that part of the discussion down, often to the obvious dismay of the person most responsible for the matter at hand.

Now, however, there was no avoiding detail. This part of the session involved us critiquing each department's 12-month operating plan: seven reporting departments, each with a 15- to 20-page document and supporting spreadsheets. Plans that everyone around the room had spent massive amounts of time and energy putting together. Plans they depended on for success in the year ahead. Plans that they very much wanted to discuss — in detail. This time, Andy hadn't lasted even five minutes before slipping out of the room.

I looked slowly at the other 11 people seated around the large conference table. We were supposed to be working in teams of three, each group examining a different color-coded section of the workbook we'd all been handed, but most of the participants had disengaged in frustration at Andy's latest absence. They talked desultorily about last night's game, scrolled through emails on their cell phones, some worked through paperwork they had brought with them to the session. It was as if the energy of the group, their sense of focus, even the very purpose of the session itself had departed the room with Andy.

I looked over at Joanne, who, with Andy, I'd known since they'd started the business almost a decade previously. She had a wry grimace on her face. "This isn't funny anymore," she said. "It used to be amusing, watching Andy squirm when we try to get the detailed stuff done, but now ..." — she looked around the room and dropped her voice a little — "now we have a business to run. A big business. And we have top-class folks here who just aren't going to put up with this."

"I know," I said. "I can see you're at a breaking point here." I looked around one more time. All that talent around the table, all that preparatory work. All that frustration. I could see why Joanne was deeply worried. I looked at her reassuringly. "You have a true visionary in Andy. Remember that tiny workshop where you both started out? Back there, back then, being a visionary worked ... you wouldn't, and couldn't, have made it without him. We just need to help Andy understand how a visionary works." I spread my arms, taking in the whole of the room, "here, and now."

INTRODUCING THE VISIONARY

The Visionary is one of three natural "styles" or roles that all of us default to when we are in a group or team situation (we'll meet the other two, the Processor and the Operator, shortly).

Andy may be an extreme case, but most Visionaries possess similar traits. Big-thinkers turned on by ideas, they're easily bored with...