Community Insight: Shared-Leadership Culture
This is an advance preview of Mindhive thought leader Bob Dick's 'Rethinking Leadership' eBook.
People can achieve more when they work together to coordinate their effort and expertise. In other words, coordination is a key imperative for teams ... and for organisations — it is perhaps the key imperative.
Turning conventional workgroups into collaborative teams
Hierarchy
Team-based design
Hierarchy
In a conventional workgroup, resources and outcomes are decided elsewhere in the hierarchy. The workgroup leader is responsible for deciding how the workgroup members will convert the allocated resources into the requested outcomes. The leader forecasts, plans, organises (that is, allocates), commands and controls the work. The workgroup members are each allocated some part of the action. They carry it out, sometimes under close supervision.
In an alternative team-based design, much of what the workgroup leader previously did can become a collective team responsibility. Provided the team is functioning well, the leader’s responsibility is to manage relationships with other teams. The team leader now forecasts future work and helps the team to develop the skills and understanding to achieve the outcomes. The team collaboratively plans, organises (allocates) and controls the work, and carries it out.
Team based design
In this approach the team takes over much of what the leader previously did. The leader becomes a “boundary rider” looking after coordination with other teams. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens gradually as the team members develop the necessary understanding, skills and maturity. We know how to do this well at team level. We’re less confident about scaling it up to organisational level.
There are scattered examples of moving to a less hierarchical and bureaucratic structure. Interestingly, they are seldom imitated, even when they are dramatically successful. To be successful, we must first examine and change our mental models of what organisations are and how they function.
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Thought leader profile
Bob Dick is an independent scholar, an occasional academic, and a consultant in the fields of community and organisational change. In almost all of his work, including academic work, Bob uses highly participative methods.
In this work he uses action research and action learning, most recently for leadership development, organisational and community improvement, and organisational resilience.
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