Lead, COLLABORATE, Follow, or Get the Heck Out of the Way!
29 April 2010 Tweet It is time to update the old stock phrase. I used to get a lot of mileage out of the guidance of: Lead, Follow, or Get the Heck Out of the Way. Many times I apply this to myself, and learn that I am most fulfilled in my projects if I am either leading or following a person and process I respect. Otherwise, I decide I need to remove myself from the project because I am no longer contributing nor feeling fulfilled.
When I found myself sharing this life advice with a teenager, I realized he was working on a team project and that the phrase lacked the collaboration dimension. It is legitimate to be collaborating with team members on a project, with proper alignment of the four Ps of effective collaboration, to be neither a leader nor a follower, and still be fulfilled. In fact, this is becoming a common work mode, as this is becoming the decade of collaboration.
So now my advice is Lead, Collaborate, Follow, or Get the Heck Out of the Way!
- Leading means you have the authority and responsibility to achieve an objective, and can build the best team to get the job done well.
- Collaborating means you have the right balance of purpose, people, process, and place -- so that you can all feel good about achieving the objective.
- Following means there is a leader you respect who has a clear objective, sound process, and effective style to lead the group to success.
- Otherwise you are wise to gracefully withdraw (get the heck out of the way) and focus your energy where it is more productive for you and for the organization.
Lokesh Datta
Reader Comments (6)
Fantastic post! I agree with this standpoint - in a working environment there are leaders, collaborators, followers and those who take from the meeting but offer no benefit. This is something that I think a lot of businesses could stand by when planning for meetings. If someone isn't involved or going to be offering value, they don't need to be involved. Great post.
Is really interesting your post. I think that to achieve a good collaboration in a common project, you need consider this three dimensions (experience, personal skills, tecnical skills)
It reminds me a situation in witch I was involve. I'm kaizen facilitator as a part of my job in the factory, and I tray usually to select the people who could add the maximum added value to solve the problem.
Not always, I am in the right direction selecting the team. Not all the people who is close to the problem has the key to solve it, you just need sometimes people who has the experience with similar problems, that has already been solved.
I think that having a database of solved problems, in this particular case that I am talking about, could be the key to select the right people that would add maximum value to the problem. In that case we would take advantage of the experience.
In general, If you know where is the knowledge (experience, personal skills, tecnical skills). That means; you have the propperly structured the experience&Skill matrix of the people in your organization you will have a very important asset to be applied.
So what does it mean? I think that if we can focus and control the knowledge of the people in database, we will have the tool to that would give us the criteria to select the right people.
This is the idea we are traying to apply in our factory. But still is in development of course.
I am glad to read your comments.
Toni
Toni: Thanks for the comments. You have some good thoughts about how to choose the best team members for collaboration. These methods fit well with some of the trials of social media in the enterprise, where the narrative people provide about their experiences and working style might lead to selecting better team members.
You are rigth.
Your post open to me a question: What do you mean, when you say "narrative peolpe"? It seems interesting.
Toni, in reply to your question about "Narrative"...
Lokesh Datta and I have been watching the intersection of Enterprise Collaboration and Social Media, two distinct trends that are coming together in interesting ways.
One of the practices I like is when members of an enterprise blog or micro-blog about their work activities -- using blogging tools like WordPress or micro-blogging tools such as Twitter -- they create a free-from Narrative of their efforts that (a) help others understand what they are doing, (b) update their project status, and (c) enable searching to find people with unique characteristics.
My reference was to this last category of activity and how that related to your post. My sense is that routine HR records would identify the usual people to add to teams, based on department, location, background, level, etc. But as you point out, the best contributions on a collaboration effort might come from someone with a very different background and perspective. My hope is that with Social Media in the Enterprise, we will have tools to find the uniquely-qualified people to add to collaborative teams to create breakthrough solutions.
I posted this question on LinkedIn: Where is COLLABORATION in the old stock phrase: lead, follow or get out of the way? Is it time to update?
I received interesting responses that I would like to share.
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Marc Aniballi, Technology Literate Project and Team Leader
It is one of the tenets of collaboration.
Leadership is required (although sometimes shared) in a collaborative environment. Following is also necessary when collaborating. Finally, getting out of the way is also a way to collaborate - if you have nothing to offer the group, don't get in their way!
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Paul Oldfield, Software Consultant, People and Process Engineer, Lean, Agile and RUP at Capgemini
Collaboration - you still have leaders and followers, just not the same leader all the time. Everybody leads in the parts that they are best at.
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Bradford Shimp, President of Broad River Creative
I would say that collaboration is getting noticed more as a great way to get things done. Instead of Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way, you might say Gather a Team, Work Together, or Be Left Behind.
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Ricardo Carrillo, Principal at Acumen Industries
Nothing wrong with the phrase. Instead of doing it yourself, the mantra now is to do it in a group. The word is collaborate, not surrender. You still have to be independently viable and willing to contribute. You need to lead, follow or get out of the way collaboratively. The dynamics of groups tend to challenge individuals to adapt to either stop, slow or contribute to the group. No change really. Collaboration also offers the opportunity for people to contribute very little if they just step in to the background of the group and let others lead the way. So the adage still holds true, don't you think so?