LEADERSHIP & COLLABORATION 

Leadership, what is it?  One of the greatest aspects of leadership is engagement, which can lead to collaboration.  A quote that pertains to collaboration is the following quote from Robert Penn Warren from his book, All the Kings Men, (1946):

The creation of man whom God in His foreknowledge knew doomed to sin was the awful index of God's omnipotence. For it would have been a thing of trifling and contemptible ease for Perfection to create mere perfection. To do so would, to speak truth, be not creation but extension. Separateness is identity and the only way for God to create, truly create, man was to make him separate from God Himself, and to be separate from God is to be sinful. The creation of evil is therefore the index of God's glory and His power. That had to be so that the creation of good might be the index of man's glory and power. But by God's help. By His help and in His wisdom (437).

Warren offers an admonishment to those interested in leadership to realize that one can have an effect but that effect and affect will strengthen, and broaden with the addition of others, an organization. Collaboration is seen as acting or working together with the success of others and self as a central goal where a win – win operational state is possible and achieved (Maital & Seshadri, 2007).

Procter and Gamble’s (P&G) in its drive to achieve improved innovation rates used collaboration.  P&G had to find a way to amass, analysis, and direct the use of volumes of information and have the external and internal communities communicate and create new modes of operation. P&G determined that it needed an open marketplace where the internal and external would compete, and external ideas would receive the same hearing as internal ideas within the organizational culture (Drake, Sakkab & Jonash 2006).  .  With this new perspective, P&G created a culture that started embracing innovative ideas found elsewhere, and in the end P&G doubled share price, cash flow, profits with a success rate of innovation reaching a level of 75% (Drake, Sakkab & Jonash 2006).  Dell Computer’s collaboration with FedEx, UPS and DHL enabled Dell to set standards in customer service by morphing a mass production model of computer manufacturing into a mass customization model of production with low overhead cost (Maital & Seshadri, 2007).  The above models of collaboration are proof positive of the saying that many heads are better than one.

Thus, two heads or multiply hands focused upon a define task can have an impact on the value of an organization and individual leadership.

References:

Drake, M.P., Sakkab, N., and Jonash, R.,  (2006, Nov/Dec) Maximizing Return on Innovation Investment.  Research Technology Management. 49 (6), 32-41 and 10.

Maital, S., & Seshadri, D. V. R. (2007). Innovation management: Strategies, concepts and tools for growth and profit.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Response Books.

Warren, R. P. (1946). All the kings men.  Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt Brace.