Henry Mintzberg wrote in a 2009 HBR article that “community
means caring about our work, our colleagues, and our place in the world,
geographic and otherwise, and in turn being inspired by this caring. Tellingly,
some of the companies that are admired most - Toyota, Semco (Brazil), Mondragon (a
Basque federation of cooperatives), Pixar, and so on - typically have this strong
sense of community.”
Where, today, we often find that “young”, successful companies
usually have this sense of community. They are growing, energized, committed to
their people, almost a family. But sustaining it with the onset of maturity can
be another matter. Things slow down, politics builds up, the world is no longer
their oyster. Community is sometimes easier to preserve in the social
sector, with NGOs, not-for-profits, and cooperatives. The mission may be more
engaging, and the people more engaged.
Mintzberg went on to highlight that “communityship”
is not a word in the English language. But it should be - to stand between
individual leadership on one side and collective citizenship on the other. In
fact, he believed that we should never use the word “leadership” without also
discussing communityship.
Imho too many leaders today talk about ‘themselves’
and focus on the ‘I’ rather than the collective team or organisation. They have
a great opportunity to build a great ‘community’ and a great place to work, but
are too focused on their own successes – often negating the very foundation on
which effective leadership is built.
Mintzberg goes on to mention that “communityship
requires a more modest form of leadership that might be called engaged and
distributed management. A community leader is personally engaged in order to
engage others, so that anyone and everyone can exercise initiative. If you
doubt this can happen, take a look at how Wikipedia, Linux, and other
open-source operations work. So maybe it’s time to wean ourselves from the
heroic leader and recognize that usually we need just enough leadership - leadership
that intervenes when appropriate while encouraging people in the organization
to get on with things.”
Building a community requires the leader to accept
the principles of leadership at the micro level and focus on the organisations
most vital resource – its human resource. Where leaders put their people before
themselves and engage in professional conversations and behaviours that
motivate them to optimise their performance, ensuring a win-win for the
employee and the organisation.
Mintberg mentions that “the way to start rebuilding
community is to stop the practices that undermine it, such as treating human
beings as human resources; firing them in great numbers when the company has
not met performance targets (but remains profitable); tolerating obscene
compensation packages for CEOs (especially ones that offer them “retention” and
other bonuses for doing what they receive a salary to do); exhibiting a general
disrespect for anything in the company’s past, including its culture; and in
general overemphasizing leadership. In other words, the organization has to
shed much of its individualist behavior and many of its short-term measures in
favor of practices that promote trust, engagement, and spontaneous
collaboration aimed at sustainability.”
The concept, though sound, is not that easy to
implement on the ground. It needs a leader who is confident in their ability
and their own ‘self’. It takes a leader who has a proven track record and
someone who isn’t seeking ‘glory’ or ‘recognition’ for their own past failings
or perceptions of failure. Unfortunately too many leaders today are still
seeking to prove things to themselves and don’t have the self-confidence to
focus most of their attention on their people.
In conclusion Mintzberg highlights how “a robust
community requires a form of leadership quite different from the models that
have it driving transformation from the top. Community leaders see themselves
as being in the center, reaching out rather than down. They facilitate change,
recognizing that much of it must be driven by others. At General Electric, Jeff
Immelt, who wants the company to become as much renowned for innovation and
organic growth as it has been for operational excellence, encourages the teams
running GE’s businesses to figure out for themselves what is needed for
transformation.”
The good news is that as with many business
principles – if you believe in it enough, then ‘you’ can make it happen and the
outcomes of community based leadership are benefits that span the whole
organisation and beyond, to include stakeholders too.
References
Mintzberg, H. (2009). Rebuilding Companies as
Communities. Harvard Business Review[On-line: http://hbr.org/2009/07/rebuilding-companies-as-communities/ar/1]