CEO of Boeing, states that the biggest jump
into the CEO job is learning to manage what you can't control
having been trained to manage what you can control.
In 2013, Boeing had a crisis with their lithium
ion batteries in the 787 Dreamliner airplanes.
If the problem was not addressed, huge planes could catch fire and
literally fall out of the sky.
Boeing quickly solved the technological problem, but
another problem remained, a reputational problem.
How could Boeing reassure their customers that the 787 battery problem was solved?
One approach would simply be to send customers a detailed technical report,
explaining how the issues were addressed, much like a scientific white paper.
However, Mike, a manager at Boeing,
decided to have a face-to-face conversation with every customer.
Mike left Seattle for two months to spend a day and a half with every
customer around the globe to answer their questions and reassure them.
Mike at Boeing possessed a key leadership quality
that we call organizational intelligence.
Think of it this way.
Your human capital is the sum total of your skills,
talents, and abilities, based upon your education and experience.
This is what is often found on resumes.
Your organizational capital is the value you bring to your organization in terms of
the relationships you build and maintain in and outside of the organization.
Organizational charts are rather crude depictions that reveal
the chain of command and reporting relationships.
However, as many managers can attest,
the way that work actually gets done and information gets spread within
an organization is a far cry from published organizational charts.
Instead, informal systems of connections and
relationships developed over time, guide the flow of information.
Let's call these informal networks.
Let's look at two hypothetical people
who have the same job in the same organization.
Let's call them Ed and Mike.
The dots represent people.
The lines that connect the dots are communication networks between
the people in the organization, and represent who trusts whom.
In this graph, Ed has about four trusted advisors.
Who he seeks for counsel and advice.
Notice that those trusted advisors are connected to each other as well.
Thus, this is a very dense network.
Ed has a network of relatively close colleges
most likely from the same functional unit.
This type of close knit self-contained network
ia a clique network of closed-loop network.
In the closed-loop network the members know one another quite well and
communication is largely redundant.
Mike's network is very different.
First, Mike's network is much less tightly knit than Ed's network.
Second, Mike's network spans what appears to be more functional units
than Ed's network.
Mike also has about the same number of trusted advisors.
But, unlike Ed's network,
Mike's trusted advisors are not directly connected to each other.
Instead, they are connected to each other through Mike.
Finally, Mike's network is more structurally unique than Ed's.
This means that Mike has relationships with people that no one else has.
Okay, so what?
People are different, big deal.
Not so fast.
There are some leadership and communication lessons to be learned here.
First, people who span organizational divides and integrate knowledge and
best practices around the organization are known as boundary-spanners.
They are the Mikes of the organization, and they connect people and ideas.
Second, the gaps in organizations are structural holes,
and unless people like Mike are filling them, knowledge is literally
falling through the cracks, and we have silos in the organization.
Third, the structural holes that exist between people,
functional units, and teams represent opportunities for leaders.
Indeed boundary spanners with larger networks of
otherwise disconnected contacts get promoted earlier than
comparable managers with smaller networks of interconnected contacts.
Okay, lets bring this back to you.
What can you do to increase your own organizational intelligence?
First and foremost, analyze your own organizational network.
Who are your trusted advisors?
Second, who are your boundary-spanners.
Who are the Mikes in your own network?
Are you nurturing those relationships, or are you letting them stagnate?
Finally, where are the structural holes in your organization?
How can you act as a bridge between people and groups that should be connected?
But are not.
0 Comments