Re-thinking collaboration.
It is close to impossible to force collaboration in any organization. Even in healthy situations, where everyone understands the strategy and supporting objectives, there will be corners of either unconscious or passive dissent, for whatever reason -- fear of change, power hunger, insecurity, jealousy, envy, out-of-bounds ambition that eclipses any shared endeavor. And strategy is a shared endeavor. Leaders who have been through this know that one clear path to organic collaboration is a consistent focus, with constant reminders to all, of what constitutes successful performance and whether every individual is achieving it. The greatest benefit, beyond a clear view into results, is the creative energy consistency and constancy generate -- because there will be surprises, and strong teams move beyond the personal to turn surprises into indestructible threads linking the past to the future.
Young Woman Sewing. Pierre-Auguste Renoir. 1879. Oil on canvas. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection. Art Institute of Chicago.
Tony Blair on leadership essentials
Tony Blair to Raju Narisetti: I call it “the four P’s”:
Prioritization. In trying to do everything, you do nothing.
Policy. In the end, getting the right answer is really important.
Personnel. Get good people around you. You’re more likely to succeed.
Performance management. Implementation is often missing from politics. That means putting an idea into practice and tracking it so that you actually do what you said you would.
Four research-backed ways to help your team collaborate better
Jay Van Bavel and Laura Kriska: in real-world settings, it’s crucial for leaders to constantly identify and articulate superordinate goals — shared objectives that require cooperation across silos to achieve. Offer rewards for collective success and show how individual and departmental efforts contribute to the bigger picture. More than 70 years of research has found, over and over again, that this is the most powerful strategy to bridge divides and shift teams into more collaborative mindsets.
Ancient treasures unearthed during Greece's metro construction now adorn its new stations
Richard Whiddington: Located on the Aegean Sea, the city was founded in 315 B.C.E. by Cassander of Macedon, who named it after his wife Thessalonike, who was the sister of Alexander the Great. It has played host to the Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans, civilizations whose artifacts will be on display throughout the metro system—in all, more than 300,000 artifacts were discovered during the construction. In many instances since development began in 2006, it was the unwitting discovery of these artifacts that delayed the project, forcing engineers, architects, and archaeologists to rethink and collaborate.