You're It

by Leonard J Marcus

  What motivates all these people? And how do you satisfy and balance the variety of their ambitions? They are persuaded to join because the combined mission is inclusive. The extent to which you extend influence beyond your authority is your measure of “people follow you.” As a meta-leader, your authenticity is your currency. You advance through the confidence people have in you—singular—and the trust that you—plural—together can do IT.

  You become the meta-leader needed in the moment. In leading beyond, Dunne rallied the full range of stakeholders. Without all of them, the company probably would not have survived. It was Dunne’s suddenly found multidimensional “us” perspective that enabled him to accomplish so much, for so many, in so short a period of time. He calculated that balance and got it right.

  How do you transform your outlook into that of a multidimensional meta-leader? It is a choice you make.

  Viewed from the meta-perspective, what you do is part of a larger whole. Your actions have an impact on you, the situation, your subordinates, your boss, your organization, and your customers, suppliers, and community, as well as society at large. For you and for your diverse, connected stakeholders, your endeavors have meaning. As a meta-leader, you grasp this complex system, your role in it, and why it matters. You animate the picture, giving it life in a way that engages you and conveys it to others. Doing so is your way of saying to those others, “You’re it,” gaining their buy-in to this recrafted value and purpose.

  You describe this bigger picture in the narrative you shape and share. Show others the greater impact of what you are all doing together, whether it’s “saving lives,” “creating hope,” “beating the sales goal,” “protecting the environment,” or “preserving our culture.” Imbue activities with direction and achievement. You hope your boss will encourage and derive satisfaction from your motivation, energy, and the connectivity you forge. Your subordinates will better grasp why the production goal, the service introduction, or the crisis preparedness mission objective is so important. External stakeholders will gravitate toward your shared purpose and progress.

  Your job is not simply completing a task. Rather, it is producing value and accomplishing desired results. This is what it means to get people to go “the extra mile.” The innovative thinking, abundant effort, and determination that result in extraordinary achievement spring from such efforts. Other stakeholders, both internal ones and those beyond your direct authority or control, experience that you fully appreciate their contributions. This way of leading—inspiring a connected network of people to move in a coordinated direction—is more productive than any threat or financial incentive alone.

  While the big picture provides context, nothing speaks louder than concrete action and tangible progress. Even small steps along the way can be significant. Measure and mark the evolution and note the milestones you encounter. Celebrate successes and credit the triumphs to the whole—to what you are able to do together. Mark your progress—for example, with an illustrated office thermometer charting headway or a widely distributed blog providing updates. Posting pictures of people at work on the internet energizes the organization’s social network. Acknowledge and reward people for their contributions. Forward movement is compelling and reinforces the collective belief in what can be achieved together. Think, act, and achieve expansively.

  There is also a real attraction for people to being part of something bigger: the excitement and sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people working toward an aspirational mission and accomplishing goals together. This is the emotional and intuitive side of fostering change and progress. It’s an immeasurable: the belief system the leader nurtures and followers share.

  The Learning Organization

  As meta-leader, you create the conditions in which all this productivity and exploration happens. Peter Senge calls this a “learning organization.” New and creative ideas are promoted, considered, and challenged. Mistakes are learning opportunities and problems are challenges to overcome. When followers are allowed, even encouraged, to fail within acceptable parameters, they are more likely to take the risks that achieve remarkable results. Your responses to performance and outcomes provide followers with signals about what is acceptable and what is not.

  Be the role model for the type of follower you hope to cultivate. Nurture a culture in which it is safe to challenge assumptions, confront orthodoxies, and test new options. A generative process in which your followers further inspire resourcefulness will be contagious for the followers to whom you lead down, up, across, and beyond. Your meta-leadership amplifies your vision, goals, and methods beyond your organization and out to your wider enterprise of activity.

  None of this implies that, as a meta-leader, you are a pushover. You can be both tough and open at the same time. Be clear about expectations, hold standards high, demand accountability, and be rigorous in your assessments. Match toughness with fairness, transparency, appropriate rewards, and an understanding of stakeholder impact. That combination will garner exceptional motivation, loyalty, and effort.

  Meta-leading takes more than mere intelligence and optimism. It also requires courage and energy as you often navigate uncharted territory. Success is not guaranteed. For some, this is a terrifying prospect. As meta-leader, this is a vast and exciting puzzle to solve. At times, it evolves from a crisis. Sometimes, it is a wild new idea. Recognize the “you’re it” moment when it happens and navigate accordingly.

  In our interviews with and observations of meta-leadership practitioners, we are curious about how they achieve their insights and maintain their drive. We find two consistent attributes. Meta-leaders are eager learners, studying the people they lead, the work they direct, and the larger world in which they operate. And they are equally enthusiastic teachers and mentors, imparting their experience with generosity and a firm commitment to the people and tasks at hand. They inhabit the three dimensions of meta-leadership in their quest to understand themselves, the situation in which they lead, and the many people who are part of getting the job done, including those beyond their direct scope of authority.

  One person who began as our student and is now a colleague, Rich Serino, is an exemplar. You met Rich in an earlier chapter, as the FEMA deputy administrator leading the federal response to Super Storm Sandy. Serino lives the thinking and practices of meta-leadership. He has the capacity to lift himself up and out of the basement and encourages followers to do the same. By actively listening, he perceives and understands situations systematically, shaping the involvement of followers. He leads up to his bosses the way he wants followers to lead up to him. And he pursues cross-organizational coordination of effort in ways that are replicated by others.

  During Serino’s tenure as FEMA deputy administrator, a major flood hit North Dakota. The damage was extensive. Rich was dispatched to the area as the senior federal official. On the trip out, advisors warned him that North Dakotans don’t like FEMA and the federal government. They share an inborn Midwestern antipathy to Washington, and he was told to expect a hostile reception. Once on scene, he was helicoptered over the devastation. Making the case for federal funds to support the recovery, the North Dakota National Guard adjutant general (TAG) pointed out the damage: “That school is gone. That bridge is out. That neighborhood is devastated. No one died. No one was injured. That library is gone.” He went on until they returned to the base emergency operations center. Serino walked into a room of angry-looking local political, emergency, and business leaders. This was his leading-beyond moment. Everyone was fixed on Serino, and ready to attack.

  “Before I say anything else, I just want to say thank you. I just was taken out by the TAG and I saw all the devastation. And as he pointed out what happened, he told me, ‘No one died and no one was injured.’ That was because of you. What you did. You saved lives. You made a difference. So, thank you. Yes, money will come here to North Dakota to help in the recovery. And we’ll bicker about how much. But for right now, thank you for all y
ou’ve done.”

  The room was silent. The hostility subsided as everyone realized they were together on the same side of the disaster. Leading beyond: recrafted connectivity.

  Bringing the Swarm Together

  Connectivity is when people, organizations, and systems work together with congruence and synchrony. In addition to all the tools we give you to develop the meta-leadership mind-set, there is an innate quality—embedded in human nature—that generates and nurtures this connectivity.

  In the first chapter, we described swarm meta-leadership. In the face of unknown risk and immediate urgency, Boston Marathon bombing response leaders rallied a web of connectivity, aligning organizations, communities, and individuals. That web provided protection, knowledge, and support. Its robustness fostered the resilience the city needed. Yes, there were already official agreements, systems, and drills in place that defined how collaboration was supposed to work. However, the complex and cross-jurisdictional crisis scenario faced in the moment tested existing parameters and assumptions. The impact of the compelling human solidarity that emerged exceeded what the formally established response network could have achieved alone. You can make that swarm meta-leadership part of your connectivity-building, even in noncrisis, everyday situations.

  As with basement responses, instinctual human behaviors are prompted by deeply embedded neural connections. Relationships are shaped by these instinctive stimuli combined with learned behaviors. Parenting patterns and family and tribal affinities are hardwired into human nature. The learned behaviors are the “how to.” A baby cries on a plane. Most people ignore the noise or are silently annoyed by it—people have learned socially appropriate responses. By contrast, the parents go into a tizzy of activity. Instincts prompt them to nurture and protect.

  Connectivity is instinctive. We naturally engage others in solving problems, pursuing opportunities, and building solutions. Despite cultural nuances and differences, humans are fundamentally social beings. Those social impulses impel connection. Think of the genuine connectivity and caring seen—at times—in warm family gatherings, supportive faith-based organizations, in-harmony musical groups, winning sports teams, high-functioning work groups, and bonded neighborhoods. Ilana Lerman described that connectivity in her work for social justice.

  Humans also engage in conflict. Flip each of the above examples and you find humans at their combative worst. In the quest for survival, one group coalesces to defeat the threatening other. Your brain instinctually calculates risks and rewards, deciding who to work with and who to fight. Friend or enemy. Survival depends on both individual and collective, innate and learned, calculations of the collaborate/compete equation.

  Since we first developed the five principles of swarm meta-leadership, we have taught them to diverse audiences and observed their application for upgrading inclusive connectivity in businesses, professional groups, and communities in both crisis and routine operations. You will mold these principles to fit situations through which you lead. There are many variants on swarm meta-leadership that emerge within organizations as well as beyond them. Here we present the principles in their most challenging form: for leading beyond to people outside your organization or authority structure.

  How can you apply the five principles of swarm leadership practices to both your everyday scenarios and a crisis scenario? In the following pages, we answer this question by detailing the application of each principle.

  Unity of Effort

  Every swarm has a shared purpose. As a meta-leader, the narrative you craft rallies followers to your mission. That narrative is your vision, compelling purpose, or solution to a complex problem: your words are the glue that holds people together. In a few succinct words, your message must be meaningful and motivating to those you hope will follow.

  In genuine ways, you model and live that unity of effort. People then believe in you, and they join the cause, purpose, or organization. When Rich Serino told North Dakotans, “You saved lives. You made a difference. So, thank you,” he demonstrated appreciation, which opened the door to mutual respect that turned antagonism into agreement.

  Unity of effort can formulate around a social mission, a business objective, the pursuit of victory, or beliefs. The measure of your message is in its motivation. Do others care about where you lead them? Do they believe it can be accomplished and that you can lead them there? Is the purpose worth their time and effort? The greater the pull of your purpose and message, the more others adhere to its cause. Ethan Zohn created this unity of effort for HIV prevention in Africa through his Grassroot Soccer initiative. Bottom line: will “people follow you”?

  Generosity of Spirit and Action

  How is commitment to the collective effort expressed? If people are on board with you, they contribute their time, energy, money, resources, smarts, and goodwill—all necessary ingredients for whatever you hope to accomplish.

  In keeping with the Map-Gap-Gives-Gets discussion, the meta-leader expects followers to anticipate a return. It might be intangible: the gratification of being part of your efforts, the satisfaction of making a difference, or the camaraderie in your swarm. Or the return might be tangible: money, opportunity, resources, recognition, or reciprocal contributions to their own efforts—your time and effort in exchange for theirs.

  Therefore, for everything you “get” from those in your swarm, there is a “give” from you to them. People like to be part of solving a problem. They take pride in their collective accomplishment. You demonstrate appreciation in your comments, actions, and recognition.

  Meta-leaders rally people to make a difference. Following 9/11, Jimmy Dunne coalesced a swarm to fight back and rebuild Sandler O’Neill. The organization needed that generosity of spirit to jump-start the business. Dunne demonstrated generosity with so many people and inspired others to be generous with him and his cause. He also brought them into the battle against Osama Bin-Laden as together they fought for survivors, family members, and a better future. He gave many people their “you’re it” moment.

  Stay in Your Lane and Help Others Succeed in Theirs

  Large, complex organizations apportion work, expertise, and responsibility into specialized units: departments, offices, professions. Everyone has a job whose function is one part of overall production. With that job come perks, including a budget, recognition, and opportunities for promotion.

  It is not uncommon for competitive people or professional groups to expand their scope of responsibility. Some health care clinicians, for example, claim that they can do what has been the sole province of others, such as when work traditionally done by doctors is shifted to nurses. The conflict that often ensues is about revenues, prestige, and control. Doctors defend their territory by claiming that they hold the “real” competence or concern for patient well-being. Interactions turn adversarial as information, knowledge, and know-how are withheld and resources are hoarded. The attitude becomes: “be the winner, or else you’re the loser.”

  Overcoming the territorial instinct, the meta-leader points to the potential gains reaped by working together. In leading down, you work to make your subordinates a success. So too in leading beyond: you craft networks of linked professionals who, in their unique mission or responsibility space, can also serve to make each other a success. In the health care example, the question could be: how can we draw even more patients and revenue into our system? We work, market, and collaborate together as a “center of excellence” to achieve the absolute best and most efficient clinical results. The “center of excellence” structure delineates the lanes in which the swarm’s participants undertake their individual and team tasks—an arrangement that motivates the required gives and gets to achieve their collective mission.

  Your meta-leadership role is to highlight the big-picture benefits of mutual success and focus on the requisite collaboration and cooperation. Monitor the gives and gets to ensure that everyone has a unique job to do that does not infringe on others. Keep everyone satisfi
ed. If someone feels screwed and pulls out, your efforts could go for nothing. Emphasize appropriate sharing of what is known, done, and possessed for the combined good. In formalized situations, such sharing requires intellectual property agreements, nondisclosure clauses, and contractual arrangements. This is all part of creating a network of expanded contributions and expanded benefits. Uplift the mission: it is rousing to be an “honored member” of a “center of excellence.”

  These principles are particularly vital in the midst of crisis. Applying Map-Gap-Gives-Gets, Barry Dorn, back at Fort Dix, faced a mass casualty crisis. Map: He knew what he faced and what he needed. Gap: “I did not have enough of anything.” Get: Medical supplies, blood, clinicians, support staff. Give: You are part of a lifesaving mission. Get: Everyone lived. Mission accomplished. Barry instantaneously mobilized a system to care for the wounded, effectively rallying support from organizations well beyond his base.

  When we observe leaders practicing the principle of “stay in your lane and help others succeed in theirs,” we find seamless effort—both individually and together—among the leaders, agencies, and people involved in the network. They accomplish their responsibilities knowing that other leaders and organizations are doing the same. People do not intrude into the work of others. They assist one another to succeed, knowing that the scope of responsibility for each differs.

  In large complex endeavors—such as a political campaign, social movement, or organizational transformation—there is much to be done and a lot to be coordinated. Working together, leaders get the gears of a complex system to connect, achieving more than any one group or organization could do alone.