part0017

T he French call it esprit de corps . In a team there is enthusiasm around common interests and responsibilities. There is a feeling of pride, fellowship, and common loyalty that is shared by members of a team. Put simply, we are better together. Brainstorming allows people to access new ideas that would likely remain dormant and unexplored if not stimulated by group collaboration. Sharing discoveries and meeting goals together is more fun. In a team you belong to something greater than yourself. The energy and camaraderie of a team helps people push past individual limitations they might not venture beyond if left on their own. Because the strengths of everyone on the team are at the disposal of the team, productivity can thrive. Teamwork harnesses the power of multiplication and creates leverage. While the ultimate leader cannot in reality share the risk, the risk-taking can be minimized when the team’s insight, perspective, and knowledge are leveraged. Because team members are not sticking their necks out alone, individuals often feel braver and more courageous under this umbrella. Let’s consider this concept.

Alone, a single baboon is easy prey for a lion, leopard, or cheetah. In a troop, that baboon is safe. Within that troop, one baboon is recognized to lead the efforts to protect; you might even say the leader guides and counsels, instills confidence and enthusiasm in troop members. Stay with me now …

Baboons are social creatures. You simply do not find a baboon taking up residence all alone out in the wilderness. They live in troops with a clear leader and an organizational social hierarchy. Baboons communicate with each other constantly, with scientists observing more than thirty distinct vocalizations in addition to numerous recognizable non-vocal gestures.1 Their troops form cohesive units that move together in columns of two or three, fanning out as they search for food.2 This social structure has several functions, but of chief importance is protection from predators. Living in a troop significantly decreases the risk of becoming prey. The troop has more individuals on the lookout for predators, so they are detected more quickly. Lookouts sound the alarm and the troop either runs together for safety, or collectively rally to face the predator as a mob and drive it away.3

I know of no CEO who describes his team as “baboon-like” on the company website, but leadership is present in Baboon Troops for certain. Let’s pull apart the leadership lessons demonstrated above by the troop and their “top baboon” and examine a fresh “baboon leadership” perspective. Consider these elements:

While a baboon troop is certainly not a mirror-image of corporate life, to fiercely defend, be agile, run fast, compete, be on the lookout, and sound an alarm are in many ways, attributes of a leader and a unified team. Regardless of whether or not you buy this loose analogy, one thing is clear—a lone baboon is a dead baboon. A self-interested, dictatorial, smarter-than-everyone-else-in-the-room, un-engaged, non-empathetic, unaware “baboon” is a leader with a short future. In today’s business climate, those following a more progressive leadership model are the leaders who will rise to the top.

From the beginning, I have defined leadership as setting a course for others to follow. Leaders help to define what can be done together as a team. Collaborative leadership encourages members to contribute ideas and strategy, ultimately crafting the path others will follow to reach a common goal or destination. There is a big picture and it has many moving parts. All those moving parts must understand how they fit into the big picture. The big picture is only clear when all the parts are in the right places.

Leaders communicate the big picture, set the course, and then facilitate following this course by offering support for what it is going to look like and how the team is going to get there. Within a team, the leader serves to guide and counsel, to instill confidence and enthusiasm, to create momentum and inspiration for others in their desire to be the best they can be. In short, they empower people to work together to accelerate the crafting, development, and execution of a strategy.

Notice I did not say that the leader has to be “the one” (the “I”) who singularly defines the what, how, and when. The leader does not just tell others what to do, they are not separate from the team. The leader is part of the team—one ingredient in the recipe for creating the outcome (common goal or destination). All parts of the recipe are dependent on “the team” as a whole. A good leader facilities the talents and abilities of each member of their team, allowing them to contribute to the course they follow. A strong leader supports the what, how, and when in regards to the vision, but they have no need to be the all-knowing, smartest-person-in-the-room who has to have all the answers.

While at Moosejaw, it was my objective to turn the company around and make it profitable without destroying their unique culture. Without changing the recipe of their “secret sauce” that had generated a cult-like following in their customers, I needed to lead the development of a new revised proforma, crunch the numbers, address gross margins, and make the business work. I needed to understand and leverage the culture, respecting it for all the power it had while figuring out how to run the company differently. It would have been impossible to achieve this on my own, or by simply handing down directives and asking people to toe the line. Only by leveraging the talents and perspectives of the existing team could we hope to bring structure and thoughtful planning to bear without screwing up the culture. If you have not been on the Moosejaw site you should check it out. The online experience was and remains quirky and humorous; it is an incredibly engaging experiential interaction. From Facebook, to Instragam, and really across all social media interaction, the brand has created a community excited about being identified with Moosejaw.

As the leader, it was my job to direct the evolution to the vision for what could drive a plan, process and discipline to return sales growth and profit across the on-line and brick-and-mortar channels. While the task at hand was “the business” and returning sales and profit, over time, with success we began to undertake even greater explorations to achieve greater growth and higher profits. As a retailer, Moosejaw led the digital wave “with mobile first” as the priority. We as a team, and leveraging the culture of innovation, disruption, and creativity created an agile “technical philosophy.” We created a responsive digital platform and even executed the first 3-D catalog with a unique consumer experience using the iphone’s interface. In the brick and mortar channel, we envisioned a different type of store, a different type of experience. I led the charge to discover how we could create a three-dimensional version of that online experience in a store environment, but the team led the development of bringing Moosejaw’s cult-like following along into the new store prototype. I led the team, challenging them to find ways we could maintain that kind of exceptional engagement and enthusiastic interaction with customers in a live retail experience, but recognized the incredible leverage they brought to the party in accomplishing this work.

We created a cohort of people, made up from a cross-section of the company: from executives and junior management as well as from those who worked in the customer call center and warehouse. Humor was a huge part of the Moosejaw experience. When you called in (and to this day) you are greeted with an unexpected “Moooooose-Jaw” as a hello. If you get put on hold, instead of elevator music, you hear a speech from Winston Churchill. The packaging and delivery trucks utilize tongue-in-cheek humor, and customers love posting funny photos of themselves online, decked out in Moosejaw gear. At the time I joined the company, the stores were modeled to be more of a traditional retail experience. We wanted to create a store that was designed to be more interactive, cultivating the fun of the online culture, and a place where customers wanted to come and hang out.

By pulling on the ideas and input from the team, we created stores with lots of interaction—plasma televisions live streaming content, ping-pong tournaments in the stores, Nerf® gun battles between employees and customers, and odd promotions like in-store pull up contests that would get you a discount for hitting a certain number. At the time I was forty-six years old and most of the employees were in their early twenties. I brought sensibility and stability to the team, they brought quirky creativity, innovation, and ideas in touch with what our customers most liked. Together we found a way to practically use their humor and zest for living a certain lifestyle to create a strategic business advantage. It took teamwork.

Good leaders know how to get the best out of the people for which they are accountable to lead. They understand each team member is a valued contributor, an important ingredient in the recipe. A leader free from self-interest and not full of ego can pull people together. That leader’s desire to be part of something greater is contagious, and others are inspired to be part of that team. A weak leader will try to suppress great ideas and unique abilities from within the team for fear of looking replaceable, but a strong leader is secure in their leadership and understands that facilitating the best efforts of each member creates the greatest outcomes.

Many a leadership book will tell you that when it comes to organizational development, the smartest leaders surround themselves with even smarter people. It is never one person, it is always a group of people. In this, “there is no ‘I’ in TEAM” has never resounded more loudly. The most effective leaders gather a diverse group of people and form them into a cohesive unit; a team that acts as one—one unified front, one voice, one view—and all the result of honoring diversity and encouraging debate, having discussions, and exploring insights. The “one” emerges from the collective voice of the many, led by a leader who leverages each individual’s gifts and perspectives to shape the view. As a team the intellect of the group is leveraged to define the strategy, establish the priorities, determine the tactics and agendas to accomplish the goals and create the outcomes. Lastly, the team measures their progress, their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and the milestones which guide them along the way and serve to focus the broader organization. They act as a team. Individual contributions are multiplied through the power of team. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts—synergy.

Leading a team requires understanding both intellectually and intuitively where you add value and where you have to respect, appreciate, and allow other elements of the team to emerge. There are areas where their abilities are so much better than your own, where their perspective and experience create tremendous advantage. It is a balancing act between understanding your abilities and the abilities of your team. In the case of Moosejaw, the heartbeat of the team was largely driven by the people who lived and breathed that culture. As the leader I came from the outside. I was new, different, and not like all the others. I did certain things, but I never drove the culture—I rode the wave. I gratefully mined the talent of the team. I appreciated their abilities and acknowledged their contributions. One of my most important jobs was not to get in the way of such immense talent, but to channel it.

Try whistling a symphony. It can’t be done. The only way for a composer’s vision to be heard as it was meant to be is to harness the amazing talent of each member of the orchestra responding to the conductor in time and from the same sheet of music, playing brilliantly together. Every voice is an important element, but the joy of playing is multiplied by each member performing in harmony alongside others. All have passion, but each brings a different skill. The leader of the orchestra leverages their individual abilities, focusing them to perform together. As each distinctive talent is submitted to the magnificence of achieving something greater together, the result is powerful.

A team culture thrives on the collective energy of individuals who are working together as a unit. Babe Ruth was baseball’s first member in the Hall of Fame. He was arguably one of the greatest baseball players of all time, but he knew one guy playing great did not win games. Sure, he swung for the fences every time he was at bat, but that was because he had the full support of his team, as they had full support from him. Ruth said, “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” The same could be said of any business organization.

Synergy causes the level of performance of each individual to rise when working together as a team. A high-performance team is never an accident, they are built carefully by a thoughtful leader. It may begin with great talent, but there must also be shared vision and goals. There must be trustworthy behavior and respect among members. Celebration of individual contributions as well as team successes is an important element. When the collective talent and energy is focused and harnessed by an effective leader, the team’s potential is unlimited, capable of great things.

Shortly after taking over the chief executive role at Microsoft in 2014, Satya Nadella explained, “The thing I was most focused on early on was, how am I maximizing the effectiveness of the leadership team, and what am I doing to nurture it? Are we able to authentically communicate, and are we able to build on each person’s capabilities to benefit our organization?”4 Good leaders nurture team culture. What an organization stands for and how these things are demonstrated daily is set by the leader through their actions and expectations. The behavior of the team and its teammates is a reflection on their leader. When teammates are inspired to be the best they can be, when they are held accountable to the standards of a thriving, wholesome culture, then the organization as a whole (as well as the individuals within it) prospers.

In all the elements discussed thus far: communication, setbacks, optimism, values, re-framing, accomplishment, curiosity, humility, tenacity, diversity, adventure, and action, we have been weaving a thread throughout the entire book that has led us to this moment. In light of all we have learned, we now consider our ability to lead a team.

Leadership cannot be limited to one attribute, and this book highlights but a few that my experience has shown to be important in the development of a leader. Leadership begins first with leading yourself—intentionally working toward becoming the best you can be. From there it extends out to leading others—inspiring and encouraging them to become the best they can be.

As we move toward a conclusion, we must spend a few moments together talking about legacy. I will share with you the one I am building and hope to leave behind, but the chapter which follows is meant to make you take stock of what is important to you today and think about what might be important to you fifteen or twenty years from now. It is my hope that this book will help you frame and re-frame your concept of leadership until you have clearly in sight what your leadership legacy will look like as it unfolds.

3. Primate Sociality and Social Systems by Larissa Swedell (Queens College, City University of New York/ New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology). © 2012 Nature Education. Knowledge Project. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/primate-sociality-and-social-systems-58068905 . Retrieved from the web 09/24/18.

4. The Four XFactors of Exceptional Leaders by David Reimer, Adam Bryant, and Harry Feurstein. © 20108 Columbia Business School. Article posted on 09/11/18. https://www.strategy-business.com/article/The-Four-X-Factors-of-Exceptional-Leaders?gko=5222d&utm_source=itw&utm_medium=20180913&utm_campaign=resp . Retrieved from the web 09/24/18.

Baboon Troop	Successful Business Cohort
Baboons are highly agile.	Team members are highly agile (flexible).
Baboons can run at high speeds.	Team members can navigate the fast pace of business. They can run faster and better together to achieve more.
To stay alive, Baboon Troops are constantly vigilant, keeping an eye out for predators (lions, leopards, cheetahs, etc.)	To stay alive (compete), members are constantly vigilant, keeping an eye out for predators (competitors, outdated systems, unimaginative marketing, etc.)
Baboon Troop members each have a defined role (lookouts, foragers, groomers, etc.)	Each team members has a defined role. Roles stratify vertically and spread out horizontally to create reporting relationships and functional organization; but regardless, each role defined individually ultimately sums to a team, team members aggregate as a unit.
Baboons communicate clearly with each other.	Team members communicate clearly with each other.
Baboon Troops ban together around a rallying cry to fight as a pack, fiercely defend their troop, and meet their goals of survival and success (defend against attacking predators).	Teams band together around a rallying cry, a vision unifies them as one, and together they meet their defined goals for survival and success (profitability, performance, etc.).