Overview

Background

When private sector organizations or local, state and nationalgovernments are experiencing problems, the blame is oftenattributed to failed leadership. In such circumstances, leadersreceive most of the criticism even though economic, political andother factors may be as much as, or more responsible for theseproblems. The truth is that mono-causal explanations of oftendifficult, interdependent problems oversimplify complex realities.Nonetheless, effective leadership is very important to both avoidanceof problems and the solution of those problems when they occur.

This importance is magnified in "Collaborative Organizations".Providing leadership in a collaborative organization is somewhatlike trying to influence the behaviors of all individuals on a raft inwhite water given the noise, turbulent flow of the water and thedifferent vantage points, assets and concerns of the crewmembers.

Leadership is particularly important when two or more organizationsfrom different sectors (Private, Public and Not-for Profit) agree tocollaboratively undertake programs or projects that cannot becarried out by a single sector. As these collaborative efforts areformed, partnerships between organizations lead to collaborativeorganizational activity and in essence, new "organizations" withnotable characteristics are brought into being in often looselystructured arrangements. Mechanisms such as contracts, mutual aidagreements, terms of agreement, memoranda of understanding,public-private partnerships etc. are put into place. Thesearrangements create many leadership challenges. The primarypurpose of this book is to aid leaders working in collaborativeorganizations to meet these challenges.

I had an opportunity to personally experience the dynamics ofa collaborative organization early in my career. I was asked tobecome a temporary member of a project team that was in theformative stage of its project life cycle. The project had as it charge,development of a missile to exploit a novel guidance concept thathad been benched tested. This project team included individualswho worked at various government laboratories scattered aroundthe country and some consultants from the private sector. Only afew of the team's members were direct reports of the Engineerselected to be the project's manager. This Engineer was tasked tocoordinate this ever-growing team's efforts; however he was notempowered with those elements of authority commonly associatedwith individuals occupying positions within a hierarchy.

My assignment on this team was to help develop a time and costplan for the project using the then novel PERT planning technology(Program Evaluation and Review Technique). In the process ofgathering information for this plan I visited the various engineeringgroups that were working separately on their tasks related tothe different missile elements: the guidance and control systems,the airframe and its skin, the missile's power source, its explosivecomponent, the missile's aerodynamic characteristics, studies of itsmanufacturability and reliability, and missile testing and evaluationprocedures.

The centrality of the Project Manager's role quickly becameapparent. These differing groups of Engineers were starting theirwork employing different assumptions about the eventual missile'slength, weight, and center of gravity as well as their time and costassumptions. I was able to provide clear evidence of the importantrole of the project manager as the missile's master architect andfacilitator of team communications to ensure all were on thesame page. Team members readily grasped the importance ofworking from common assumptions and recognized their mutualinterdependence as their work progressed. The project teamunderstood that collaboration was crucial and that the Projectmanager's role was central. In the ensuing months that I was withthis project I observed the emergence of a highly effective team thatexhibited a mission driven, collaborative ethos.

Premises Underlying this Book

This section of the introductory chapter identifies the book's majorpremises. Each of the premises is addressed in some detail in theremaining chapters of the book.

• Collaborative organizations differ from stand-aloneorganizations that have hierarchical structures with a singleperson at their apex. Collaborative organizations are notbureaucratic, top down organizations. In fact, they arebottom up organizations and often have multiple, horizontalrelationships. Readers of this book will come to understandthe characteristics of collaborative organizations and theleadership challenges they pose.

• Research and Development organizations are collaborativeorganizations; they provide useful insights into behaviors andattributes of leaders that are compatible with the requisitesof inter-sectoral collaborative organizations. TechnicalDirectors of Laboratories and managers of their programsand projects lead without relying on bureaucratic authority;yet they are able to carry out their leadership responsibilitieseffectively. These individuals lead by example, earn respectfor their expertise, gain trust by being trustworthy, andare adept at influencing and persuading their followers tocommit their talents and energy to shared goals and values.Chapter 8 goes into more detail on this premise.

• It is useful to revisit quality literature on leadership to gleaninsights from that literature that are particularly well suitedfor use by collaborative leaders.

• Leaders of collaborative organizations need to be wellgrounded in organizational theories and organizationalanalysis. These leaders need to have a "bag of conceptualtools and techniques" to assist them in steering their "fluidorganizations".

• An ability to "frame" and "reframe" situations by viewingthem through differing conceptual frames of reference andthereby guide organizational dynamics will be a particularlyimportant attribute of collaborative leaders.

• "Leadership languages" will be beneficial assets in thecontext of collaborative organizations. These languagesare composed of the many concepts, models, theories,metaphors and analogies leaders may choose to employ.

• Leadership approaches grounded in "systems thinking" willprove particularly useful to collaborative leaders. Systemthinking is grounded in a vast literature about differingfacets of systems and the applications of systems conceptsto challenges leaders face.

• Collaborative leaders need to skillfully nurture new ideasand technologies if they are to be successful in guiding theinventive and innovative efforts of their organizations.

Organization of the Remainder of Book

Today, we are seeing increasing numbers of...