Big problems – the kind that societies face – often require an approach like Aesop’s fable. A bunch of blindfolded folks touch different parts of an elephant and describe them to each other. No one can make sense about what the reality is because they’re all describing different things like a tail, a trunk, a belly, or a foot. It’s only when they combine their descriptions into a consistent framework that they can gather that it’s an elephant.
To achieve this insight, though, people have to collaborate in a constructive way. When people seem to bicker or pontificate endlessly like on TV, how can we get there? Collaboration expert J. Richard Hackman shows us how to design teams to address hard problems like these by analyzing teamwork in the intelligence community (e.g., CIA, FBI, etc.).
Though this book’s specific use case consists of intelligence professionals, Hackman’s lessons of teamwork far surpass this one instance. “Intelligence professionals” could just be a stand-in name for a community of informed people. The scholar Hackman cuts to the heart of helpful collaboration through this specific field of high stakes and high impact. I don’t work in the intelligence community, but I found plenty of applications to my work life. His six core principles can be applied to almost any team situation.
His main insight is that a team’s design has an incredible influence over its outcomes. To him, leadership is not something that’s built through charisma – something we all seem to want more of – but rather through arranging circumstances to enhance that chances of a team’s success. When a team encounters problems, he suggests that we look not at individual teammates, nor at a supreme individual leader, but at a team’s design.
Anyone looking to take part in their team’s shared leadership should heed this book. It’s not just for intelligence professionals, and it’s not just for titular leaders either. It’s for people who want to usher in a more effective team that accomplishes a task together through information exchange. Although we Americans like to think of ourselves as self-reliant individuals, much of our impact comes via community efforts. Succeeding at these efforts requires effective teamwork that this book shines a light on how to create.
Collaborative Intelligence: Using Teams to Solve Hard Problems
By J. Richard Hackman
Narrated by Kevin Pierce
Copyright (c) 2013
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Length: 7:38
Genre: Management
www.amazon.com