Collaborative Leadership

  • New Expanded and Updated Edition of The Culture of Collaboration® Book

    How has collaboration evolved? What is the current state of collaboration at Toyota, Mayo Clinic, Industrial Light & Magic, Boeing and other companies profiled in the first edition of The Culture of Collaboration® book? What are the keys to long-term value creation through collaboration?

    These are questions I sought to answer as I went back inside collaborative companies to research and write the new, expanded and updated edition of The Culture of Collaboration® book.

    Jacket with border CofC EU

    The expanded and updated edition has just been released, and I’m proud of the finished work. The 363-page business book includes 54 images and illustrations and a beefy index. By the way, 54 images and illustrations is no easy feat in 2024. Ever wonder why most business books lack pictures? It’s time-consuming to license even a single image from a large organization.

    One thing I’ve learned is that deserialization and collaboration go together like peanut butter and jelly. Deserialization means removing sequences from the lifecycle of products and services. The idea is to collapse outmoded sequential approaches and replace them with spontaneous, real-time processes.

    Deserialization also involves removing sequences from interaction. This means killing what’s left of the in-box culture. In short, deserialization is the key to long-term value creation through collaboration. That’s why the subtitle of the expanded and updated edition of The Culture of Collaboration® is: Deserializing Time, Talent and Tools to create Value in the Local and Global Economy.

    I’ve also learned that despite best efforts, collaboration can stall within highly-collaborative organizations. Paradoxically, collaboration happens in companies in which the dominant culture is command and control. Likewise, internal competition and command and control exist in mostly-collaborative organizations. Many factors, as I explain in the expanded and updated edition, influence both the evolution and regression of The Culture of Collaboration.

    More broadly… as I write in the preface, in some ways we’re less collaborative than we were in the early 2000s. Social media lets us broadcast opinions without refining ideas through real-time interaction. We join groups that make rules for how we should think. Videoconferencing enables interaction at a distance, but too often we’re wasting time in scheduled virtual meetings rather than creating value together spontaneously. While in the same room, we meet rather than collaborate. We leave meetings to work and then schedule follow-up meetings to review work. This serial process zaps value.

    My objective in revisiting this topic is to consider whether we have evolved or veered off track and to provide a new framework for unblocking collaboration and unlocking value.

    Let me know your thoughts about the new, expanded and updated edition of The Culture of Collaboration® book.

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  • Fidelity’s Amazing, Disappearing Star Fund Manager?

    The era of the star fund manager is waning.

    Fidelity Investments may replace a star-oriented fund management system with a collaborative approach after a consultant's report. As is so often the case when organizations suddenly consider—and often embrace— a more collaborative structure and culture, exigent circumstances precipitated the potential move. I call this phenomenon The Bounty Effect, and I’ve written extensively about it in the book by the same name. The Bounty Effect occurs when an event or circumstance creates a fundamental shift, changes the game and accelerates collaboration.

    The Bounty Effect for Fidelity occurred because of two exigent circumstances:

    Last year Fidelity reportedly fired Gavin Baker, manager of Fidelity OTC Portfolio, for allegedly sexually harassing a junior female staff member though Baker denies the allegations. This happened against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement. The apparent firing prompted Fidelity to conduct a “cultural review” of its stock picking unit.

    The other exigent circumstance is the reported outflow of $40 billion from Fidelity’s actively-managed funds in 2017, according to Morningstar, as investors have increasingly embraced exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and passively managed index mutual funds meaning those linked to the performance of a particular index such as the S&P 500. Active fund management essentially means one star manager with a supporting cast of analysts attempts to beat a particular index. Fidelity built its reputation in the 1980s around successful active managers including Peter Lynch who managed the Fidelity Magellan Fund.

    The decline of the “star” fund manager mirrors trends in other industries and throughout workplaces. Before the rise of human resources as a valued discipline, swashbuckling managers made hiring and tactical decisions based on gut and sometimes whim. Executives often made strategy decisions in a vacuum.  As HR has become more data driven, the era of the swashbuckling manager has ebbed. Leaders make few decisions without input or at least without consulting HR, finance, IT, communications or some other function. Companies measure everything and everybody which, incidentally, can short circuit collaboration.

    Fidelity would likely argue that “star” managers never made decisions in a vacuum but rather consulted Fidelity’s extensive research team and worked with analysts assigned to each fund. Nevertheless the funds industry—including Fidelity—has historically embraced star culture. And so have such industries as sports, food and beverage, medicine, journalism, the film industry and so many others. The media still goes to bizarre lengths to reinforce star culture, because media decision makers believe that personalities sell newspapers and drive viewership and eyeballs translating into advertising dollars. I’ve even read stories on “star” butchers. And while I appreciate the skill involved in selecting and cutting meat, putting certain butchers on a pedestal feeds a misleading perception that the vast majority of butchers fail to measure up to the so-called stars.

    When we turn athletes, chefs, doctors, television hosts, movie producers and others into stars, these so-called “stars” start believing the rules that apply to everybody else never apply to them. This breeds bad behavior. Star culture has also diminished the contributions of people who work with “stars” which makes these people feel sidelined and less likely to provide valuable input. In short, star culture costs organizations dearly. In contrast, embracing a collaborative culture and structure creates value.

    If Fidelity abandons its “star” manager system, the question is whether the move is window dressing or real structural change. We may learn that one person never really “managed” Fidelity’s actively-managed funds and that fund management was always an inherently-collaborative process among colleagues despite Fidelity’s marketing so-called “star” managers.

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  • Socrates and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s City Hall

    The in-box culture is dead, but that may be news to the mayor and officials in New York City.

    New York’s City Hall apparently never got the message about deserialization. What I mean by deserialization is curbing the in-box or pass-along approach to work and interaction that is critical for collaboration and value creation. But New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has sure received plenty of memos…decision memos, that is.

     

    New York City Hall
    New York City’s City Hall reportedly embraces the pass-along approach to work and interaction

    Before Mayor de Blasio makes many decisions, his staff prepares memos. And before these decision memos reach the Mayor, they reportedly require the signatures of at least eight officials including the first deputy mayor, the law department, the Mayor’s counsel, the budget director, the press secretary, the head of intergovernmental affairs and the deputy mayor with direct responsibility, according to a recent story by J. David Goodman in the New York Times. This is the antiquated pass-along approach.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that a memo on flight rules for helicopters took at least nine rounds of revisions. Nine rounds! This is pass-along times nine. And we wonder why citizens complain that government is mired in bureaucracy. The Times story quotes the Mayor’s chief of staff Tom Snyder as saying the Mayor’s decision-making process is “extremely granular, engaged, semi-Socratic.”

    Actually, Mayor de Blasio’s approach is anything but Socratic. Socrates believed that the way to the truth was through questioning and dialogue. Socrates rejected writing, because writing meant—quite literally in ancient Athens—that ideas were set in stone or wax and that the process of developing those ideas was dead.  Socrates also rejected scripted speeches, because these are essentially the recitation of written words. For organizations making decisions, one form of the truth is accurate information—which is dynamic rather than set in stone. As the situation changes, sometimes hour-to-hour, what can be considered accurate information also shifts.

    Using memos or email to make decisions compromises collaboration and disrupts value creation. This approach is a hallmark of command-and-control organizational structure and culture. By the time each department head or official has signed off on the course of action and passed the baton to the next official, the “truth” or facts have often changed. Socrates would roll over. Yet dialogue and questioning without a structure can also pose problems particularly for complex organizations such as New York City government and large, distributed enterprises. So what’s the alternative?

    My most recent book, The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration, shows how to change the structure of organizations so that they can evolve from command and control to collaborative. And a fundamental element is creating an Open-Access Enterprise which enables the organization for spontaneous dialogue. In the Open-Access Enterprise, everybody has access to everybody else—and that access is immediate.

    Using unified communications, we can see who is available and connect instantly. We can bring key stakeholders into collaborative group sessions (CGS) so we can hash out issues in real time, make decisions and create a work product without getting mired in the pass-along approach of memos and meetings. A CGS can occur virtually using unified communications and related tools or the session can happen physically with all participants in the same room.

    Mayor De Blasio’s apparent goal of getting broad input into decisions makes sense. Embracing the Socratic method has merit. But the structure and processes of the Mayor’s office appear flawed and are short circuiting the goal. This is typical of many organizations that embrace collaboration as a concept but sabotage collaboration with a command-and-control structure that encourages bureaucracy and reinforces hidden agendas and internal competition. The solution is to adopt a collaborative organizational structure that leaves memos and traditional meetings in the dust. The in-box culture is dead.

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  • Millennial Malarkey

    “The people under 30 get it. It’s second nature to them.”

     “We have a bifurcated workforce.”

     “Let’s just turn the keys over to the Millennials. They get it. We don’t.”

    These are some snippets of conversation from well-intentioned change agents who overemphasize generational differences while attempting to transform their organizations into collaborative enterprises. In The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration®, I identify this scenario as the Generation Gap Trap. It’s a trap, because overemphasizing generational differences reinforces fear and internal competition which short circuit collaboration.

    Undoubtedly, younger team members who are so-called “digital natives” are accustomed to using tools such as texting, instant messaging, and social media. It takes more than using tools, though, to collaborate. In The Culture of Collaboration® book, I define collaboration as working together to create value. And it’s quite possible to text, IM, or use social media without creating any value.

    The point is that age is by no means a predictor of collaborative behavior.  Some people right out of college or graduate school internally compete while they use “collaborative” tools and technologies. Meantime, collaboration is baked into the behavior of some team members in their fifties and sixties. Some disciplines like aerospace engineering or animation are inherently collaborative, and therefore experience in these fields is a better predictor of collaborative behavior than age. I have worked with some “boring” industrial companies in which people work together to create value far more easily and often than team members in supposedly collaborative Silicon Valley companies.

    After seemingly endless media reports describing how millennials demand a collaborative workplace, a new CEB study indicates that millennnials—those born between 1980 and 2000—are the most competitive generation in today’s workplace. Among CEB’s findings are that millennials are more driven by performance relative to others than by absolute performance and that millennials are less likely to trust peers and their peers’ input. Trust, incidentally, is one of the 10 Cultural Elements of Collaboration that my colleagues and I have identified. Without trust, collaboration is dead on arrival.

    In an August 1, 2015 “Schumpeter” column in The Economist, the unidentified columnist explores some of these millennial myths and cites the CEB study. The columnist incorrectly concludes from the research that to motivate young team members, organizations should put less emphasis on collaboration. The real take-away regarding the CEB study is that emphasizing generational differences is folly.

    De-emphasizing collaboration because millennials are less motivated by it would pander to a generation without guiding it. Instead, doubling down on adopting collaborative organizational structures and cultures will ultimately motivate team members regardless of generation and create far more value than command-and-control and internal competition.

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  • Accenture Scraps Reviews, Rankings and Joins The Bounty Effect Bandwagon

    Nothing impedes collaboration more than outmoded recognition and reward systems. And replacing annual performance reviews and rankings advances collaborative culture, behavior and organizational structure.

    Many organizations promote themselves as collaborative while simultaneously reinforcing internal competition through annual performance reviews and rankings. This process squanders time and distracts the organization while pitting team members against one another. Performance reviews and rankings incent team members to hoard information and maintain hidden agendas rather than share ideas and work together towards common goals.

    Accenture is the latest major organization to eliminate rankings and performance reviews. “Massive revolution” is how Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme characterized the organizational change as quoted in the July 21 edition of The Washington Post.

    In the Spring of 2013, Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates read an advanced copy of The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration® which demonstrates why ranking team members falls short and how a Collaborative Reward System creates greater value than an internally-competitive system. Replacing performance reviews is the first of seven components of the Collaborative Reward Process (CRP) that I outline in the book.  In November, 2013, Microsoft eliminated rankings of team members. You can read more about Microsoft’s reward system shift in my January 20, 2014 post.

    Many legacy recognition and reward systems are based on the premise that individuals have different goals and must be motivated using “carrot-and-stick” approaches. But in a collaborative organization, people share the same goals so “carrot-and-stick” performance reviews and rankings are obsolete.

    So why do organizations persist in ranking and annually reviewing the performance of team members? The justification is weeding out non-performers and promoting “star” players, but the real reason is clinging to an outmoded command-and-control organizational structure. Remnants of this structure include not only performance reviews and rankings, but also organization charts, meetings and mission statements. These remnants inhibit organizations from maximizing value through collaboration.

    Undoubtedly, more organizations will follow Accenture, Microsoft and other major companies in replacing rankings and annual performance reviews—and in adopting a more collaborative organizational structure.

     

     

     

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  • General Motors and the “C” Word

    General Motors CEO Mary Barra is taking aim at the “C” word.

    “I hate the word culture,” Barra is quoted as saying in an article by Joseph B. White in the Mary BarraSeptember 30 edition of the Wall Street Journal. “Culture is really just how we all behave,” according to Barra. The comments are curious in that Barra testified before a Congressional subcommittee last June that she would

    GM CEO Mary Barra outlines new strategic plan  (Image copyright GM)

    not rest until GM’s “deep underlying cultural problems” are resolved. The subcommittee was investigating GM’s failure to recall thousands of cars with defective ignition switches for eleven years.

    It’s myopic to dismiss the word culture. Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s third definition of culture is “a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization.” GM would benefit from focusing on these issues plus the broader context of the word culture. In his Tusculan Disputations, the ancient Roman orator Cicero introduced the concept of culture as cultivation of the soul as a farmer cultivates crops. Culture has come to represent beliefs and customs of societies. Cultural anthropologists study social structure and customs in populations ranging from villages to corporations.

    Culture is inextricably intertwined with collaboration in that how “we all behave” in Barra’s words determines whether we’re working together towards common goals or working at cross purposes. Ironically, in a July 28, 2014 post, The Culture of Collaboration® blog took General Motors to task for overemphasizing culture change without structural change. Culture change typically delivered as an edict often highlights the desired result without providing a way to get there. This common prescription from leaders, pundits and management gurus often fails, because the shift originates with executives without detail, discussion or broad buy-in. Meantime, the outmoded organizational structure stays the same. To achieve collaborative culture and the payoff that collaboration provides, it’s necessary to change the organizational structure. Then culture change can happen.

    On October 1, GM outlined its new strategic plan that focuses on technology and product advances, growth in China, establishing Cadillac as a separate business unit “headquartered” in New York City and delivering “core operating efficiencies.” Incidentally, the notion of headquarters is a relic of Industrial Age command and control. Nowhere does the plan mention structural change, which the automaker sorely needs. Changing GM’s structure requires overhauling everything from how team members share information across levels, roles and regions to how the company recognizes and rewards people as I detail in my book, The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration®.

     

     

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  • Health Insurance Company Experiences The Bounty Effect

    When Presbyterian Health Plan denied Dave Bexfield of Albuquerque, New Mexico reimbursement for a multiple sclerosis treatment trial, Bexfield launched a campaign to recover the $200,000 he spent on the treatment. He contacted media, bombarded Presbyterian with calls and emails, and ultimately lined his garage walls with the insurer’s denial letters, according to an August 1, 2014 column by David Segal in the New York Times.

    The treatment was a stem cell transplant trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. The trial worked in that Bexfield no longer takes M.S. medication and the disease is in remission. But the stem cell transplant was apparently not a covered benefit when Bexfield received the treatment. Ironically, Presbyterian Health Plan added this treatment to the benefits for Bexfield’s plan a few months after he finished the trial. A Presbyterian spokesperson reportedly called the timing “unfortunate.”

    Unfortunate indeed for Presbyterian Health Plan in that Bexfield refused to back down. Presbyterian reportedly insisted that the only reason the company had added stem cell transplants for M.S. as a benefit was that the federal government had mandated it. So Bexfield submitted a Freedom of Information Act request and received documents indicating there was no federal mandate. This suggested that Presbyterian had decided on its own based on the treatment’s merits to begin covering stem cell transplants after Bexfield had completed the trial. After receiving many additional letters and media calls, Presbyterian changed course. Presbyterian Health Plan President Lisa Farrell Lujan agreed to reimburse Bexfield not only the $200,000, but also an additional $198,000 in interest at 18 percent, according to the Times.

    Boom. The Bounty Effect had arrived at Presbyterian Health Plan, and the company seized the opportunity to change. The Bounty Effect happens when exigent circumstances compel businesses, governments and organizations to change their structures from command-and-control to collaborative. The exigent circumstances were groundbreaking advances in stem cell research. Bexfield’s campaign and the resulting media attention drove The Bounty Effect home. In this situation, Presbyterian adopted a more collaborative approach. Often structural change starts small and grows. This episode may pave the way for more fundamental structural changes at the company.

    In my latest book, The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration, one of the 7 steps is Processes. And a key process is employing Measurement Counter-Measures which curb the measurement mania that can complicate collaboration and compromise value. The point is that a maniacal focus on measurement can produce the opposite of the intended result. Clearly, Presbyterian’s measurement mania produced myopia in that claims representative had difficulty seeing beyond the numbers.

    The $200,000 for the stem cell transplant would cost the insurer in the short run, but the money produces a living, breathing example of an insurance customer who may potentially avoid further treatment for M.S. and save the insurer plenty. One measurement counter-measure is to perform a common sense reality check. If the numbers defy common sense, that’s our cue to pause and reconsider. Employing Measurement Counter-Measures is often the hardest collaborative process for financial professionals to adopt.

    Lujan, Presbyterian’s president, is the company’s former CFO and was previously an audit manager with Arthur Andersen. She told the Times that the individual decisions Presbyterian made in Bexfield’s case were correct but that consistent policies had to be balanced against fairness. “When I looked at the forest, I came to a different conclusion than those who had looked at each individual tree,” according to Lujan.

    The old reimbursement decision was obsolete, because of scientific breakthroughs. Clinging to an antiquated coverage decision would expose the company to possible litigation, bad publicity, and a hit to its reputation. More fundamentally, the old decision—and the structure that produced that decision—failed the fairness test and the common sense reality check.

    The Bounty Effect prompted Lujan to take a key step—but changing the structure requires much more. If only the CEO can see the forest and use a fairness test, the organization flies blind and the business suffers. In adopting a collaborative structure, the challenge for Presbyterian and for many organizations is empowering people at all levels to consider the big picture, participate in decisions and take action. This requires, among other shifts, changing the recognition and reward system and enabling spontaneous interaction so that all Presbyterian Health System team members share a view of the forest and not just individual trees.

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  • Pope Francis Promotes Collaborative Structure

    The least collaborative organization is changing its structure.

    Which organization? Well, here are some of its characteristics. This global enterprise pays a few people to make decisions while everybody else follows orders. The CEO’s direct reports act like a royal court and compete for face time. Senior leaders often live lavishly and consume conspicuously. Headquarters micromanages satellite offices. Bureaucracy and formality reduce efficiency.  Internal competition runs rampant. The command-and-control organizational structure quashes dissent.

    Sound familiar? This description fits many global corporations and government entities. This particular multinational spent $170 billion in the United States in 2010, according to The Economist. The organization is the Catholic Church and, more specifically, the Roman Curia, the church’s centralized administrative operation.

    Like many corporations, the Catholic Church suffers from an obsolete organizational structure that is compromising value. And like many corporations, reform-minded leaders have tried introducing a new approach. But entrenched interests and a centralized bureaucracy rife with intrigue, fiefdoms, and Machiavellian motivations has frequently derailed change.

    Enter Pope Francis setting the stage for change by wearing a simple white robe and black shoes rather than the regal vestments and ruby shoes of his predecessor. He has washed the feet of inmates and has Pope Francis smallopted to live in a guest quarters rather than the Vatican’s deluxe papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace. There are signs the Pope’s frugal tone is rippling across the Church. In March, the Pope accepted the resignation of Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg, Germany who spent the equivalent of $43 million on a new house and office complex.  In April, the Atlanta Archdiocese announced that it would sell Archbishop Wilton Gregory’s $2.2 million mansion.

    Beyond Pope Francis’ rejection of the trappings of office, he is taking steps to adopt a more collaborative structure in the Roman Curia and in the global Catholic Church. The Pope has chosen a “working group” of eight cardinals from outside the Curia to collaborate with him on changing the structure.

    Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio heads the Vatican department that writes the church laws that will codify reforms. The Religion News Service quotes Cardinal Coccopalmerio as saying “The big change is the emphasis on collegiality, on collaboration.” Now Pope Francis, Cardinal Cocopalmerio and other new church leaders are focused on breaking down barriers among silos so that information flows around the organization rather than from top to bottom. Cardinal Cocopalmerio has proposed naming a “moderator of the Curia” to identify inefficiencies and cut through red tape.

    Pope Francis participates in meetings without dominating them and embraces broad input. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. recently attended one such meeting at the Vatican about appointing new bishops. Typically, popes never attend such meetings. Pope Francis reportedly stayed for three hours. “We’re all sitting around the table, and he comes in and pulls up a chair,” Cardinal Wuerl told Fox News.  At another similar meeting, a senior cardinal asked the Pope what he thought about the topic. “If I told you what I think, you would all agree,” Pope Francis responded according to Cardinal Wuerl. “I want to hear from you what you think.”

    Perhaps most significantly, according to Cardinal Wuerl, the Pope has repeatedly advocated a collaborative process through which “the Holy Spirit can be heard.”  And the Holy Spirit isn’t going to be heard if just one person speaks. “He wants all of us to be speaking with him so at the end of the day he can say this truly was the fruit of the work of the Spirit.”

    Hallelujah. Many corporations in multiple industries including United States government agencies can learn from the Pope’s example. It takes more than window dressing and a desire for change to create value through collaboration.  The only viable approach is changing the organizational structure which, in turn, shifts the culture. My research on collaboration indicates that changing the structure requires seven steps—plan, people, principles, practices, processes, planet and payoff. Pope Francis has demonstrated that making progress through these steps requires that a leader set the stage for change so that others feel comfortable participating.

    In essence, The Bounty Effect has hit the Catholic Church. The Bounty Effect happens when exigent circumstances compel companies, governments and organizations to change their structures from command-and-control to collaborative. For the Catholic Church, exigent circumstances range from sexual abuse scandals to corruption and cronyism at the Vatican. And it’s The Bounty Effect that led to the election of Pope Francis and the structural change now underway.

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  • Seven Steps to The Culture of Collaboration

    My new book, The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration, has received two favorable reviews: one in Publishers Weekly and the other in Library Journal. Both reviews focus on the 7 Steps: Plan, People, Principles, Practices, Processes, Planet and Payoff.

    I’m delighted that both reviewers understood the book’s premise that businesses must abandon obsolete organizational structures designed for the Industrial Age and replace them with infinitely more valuable collaborative structures suitable for the Information Age. Leigh Mihlrad of the National Institutes of Health reviewed The Bounty Effect for Library Journal. “Rosen declares that while the control method might have worked in the Industrial Age, it does not work in today’s Information Age,” according to the review. Mihlrad concludes with the Library Journal's verdict: “For those in positions to bring about organizational change, this book provides many useful examples.”

    The Publishers Weekly review highlights my point that The Bounty Effect is by no means limited to corporations. “Rosen argues that collaboration moves well beyond organizational boundaries, as it applies to neighborhoods, communities, and government,” according to Publishers Weekly.  “Collaboration creates greater value, enhances achievement, and produces sustainable business models; the question then becomes how quickly can an organization free itself from the Industrial Age and operate to its maximum capacity in the Information Age.” The sooner an organization starts the seven steps, the faster it can migrate from command-and-control and maximize value through collaboration

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  • Changing Organizational Structures for Collaboration

    My new book entitled The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration® is now available. It’s the second book in a series which includes The Culture of Collaboration®: Maximizing Time, Talent and Tools to Create Value in the Global Economy. The Bounty Effect shows how to change the structure of organizations for collaboration.

    Why do organizations need to change their structures? The Industrial Age was command and control. The Information Age is collaboration. Yet Industrial Age structures render collaboration dead on arrival in the Bounty Effect Jacket JPGInformation Age. Remnants of these structures—including organization charts, performance reviews, meetings and mission statements—inhibit organizations from using new collaborative methods and tools that spark innovation. Now we’re at the point where many organizations—from corporations and small businesses to universities and government agencies—have a desire to collaborate.  Some have taken action to instill collaborative culture. But what’s holding back collaboration is obsolete organizational structures, which we must change.

    The Bounty Effect gets its name from the mutiny that occurred on the H.M.S Bounty in 1789. Before the mutiny, Captain William Bligh used a well-worn management technique: command-and-control. The mutiny forced the structure and culture to change as Bligh became a collaborative leader and his loyalists participated in decisions as they struggled for survival aboard a small boat. The mutiny was an exigent circumstance, one that compels immediate action.

    The Bounty Effect happens when exigent circumstances compel businesses, governments and organizations to change their structures from command and control to collaborative. Triggers include disruptive market forces, new competitors, regional slowdowns, natural disasters, terrorist attacks and global downturns.

    The book is about how to seize the opportunity that The Bounty Effect provides and change the organizational structure in seven steps.  My objective in writing the book is to provide a framework for structural change necessary to transform organizations into collaborative enterprises. And The Bounty Effect demonstrates how collaborative enterprises create far more value than command-and-control organizations. Using the framework, people and organizations can determine how to redesign and adopt a collaborative structure that fits. I welcome your input.

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