In Great Company

by Louis Carter

  Perhaps the thorniest of the five positive best practices for collaboration, I learned the most about consensus building from Senator George Mitchell.36 Not only a U.S. senator and Senate majority leader, Mitchell was also the principal architect of the Good Friday [Peace] Agreement in Northern Ireland, and U.S. special envoy for Middle East peace (2009 to 2011). His historic experience, rounded out by work on corporate boards including Disney, Xerox, and FedEx, points to several themes to consider as we examine collaboration.

  First, he said, consensus building requires a strong belief in a fair process.

  “You can’t always get everyone to agree,” he said. “But by conducting yourself properly, you can get everyone to agree that the process by which a decision was reached was fair and open.” With that, Mitchell said, all sides may abide by the outcome because they feel that it was decided upon properly with impartial rules of order.

  Next, Mitchell said, consensus building requires rising above interpersonal differences that would only serve to deepen the conflict. “The lesson for me was that it is possible to play a constructive role in ending conflict without directly engaging in the conflict ourselves,” he said. As part of that, Mitchell said that remaining above the fray requires patience and dedication to the cause of conflict resolution.

  Finally, Mitchell said, groups must remain focused on finding a solution. In Northern Ireland, he said, the United States helped bring about an end to a conflict that had gone on for decades “without firing a single bullet or spending any money, because we led by example and had a president [Bill Clinton] who was tenacious in persevering, despite repeated setbacks, and despite the unwillingness of any of his predecessors to directly involve themselves in efforts to end the conflict.”

  While the stakes were arguably much higher for Mitchell and the United States than they will be in our own collaborative efforts in companies, many of the same lessons apply: agree on a fair and consistent process, rise above personal differences, and remain committed to finding a solution. Here’s how they translate in situations in which individuals need to collaborate in an everyday setting.

  Don’t Skip Steps

  As Mitchell said, just as conflict resolution requires considerable patience, it is important to recognize that getting buy-in as part of collaboration is a process. According to Deborah Slobodnik, this process is more like a conversation with two parts. “There’s the divergence, where you get to brainstorm and sell your viewpoint,” she said. “But then you have to be able to turn the corner and get to convergence.” This convergence, she said, goes beyond making a decision to achieving buy-in and support for the decision.

  Whether your process is 2 steps or 10, it’s important that people know it and feel that is it is being used consistently and fairly.

  Neutralize the Negative

  Keeping conflicts under control to accelerate collaboration requires staunching negativity. Sometimes that may mean something basic, like keeping the discourse respectful as a matter of course, while other times it may require training leaders in the art and science of conflict resolution.

  Chris Voss, former lead hostage negotiator for the FBI and the author of Never Split the Difference, suggests diffusing difficult interactions by addressing negative emotions first, and then moving on to say something positive. “This intentional sequence is the complete opposite of what everybody is taught, and opposite of human nature. We’re taught to go after the positives initially to set things up right,” he said. “But negative emotions present barriers that are formidable, and you actually you need to go after them first to have a positive outcome.”37

  Similarly, he suggests labeling negative feelings, showing that you understand where they come from, and making an empathetic statement. Examples of empathetic statements that take negative feelings into account include these: “It seems like you feel that this is unfair,” or “I am hearing that I am not taking your interests into account.” According to neuroscience, Voss has said, identifying or labeling a negatives emotion diffuses it without agreeing or disagreeing to what the person is thinking or feeling.

  Taking Voss’s sage advice for neutralizing negativity is a strategy that requires us to be prepared. At the very least, to deliver a hit of dopamine or serotonin in this way, we need to observe and understand other people’s negative feelings and carefully manage our own.

  Get Beyond Consensus

  In my research, I heard that people felt In Great Company when collaboration yielded a total that was greater than the sum of its parts. In the context of managing conflicts in groups, that means going beyond consensus to turn differences in opinion into something powerful and positive.

  To accept the inevitability of conflict and take collaboration to the next level, we need to go back to psychological safety and ensure that we have created a safe place to engage—to explore diverse, and even opposing, perspectives until the end result is a meaningfully better combination or a new solution altogether.

  • • •

  Collaboration is just one element of EC, but it is critical because without it, the other elements fall apart. There is no values alignment or respect, for instance, without collaboration. And we need all five pieces of the EC puzzle to truly be In Great Company.

  SYSTEMIC COLLABORATION: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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  POSITIVE FUTURE

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  At the grand opening of Big River Steel in 2014, a masked figure—larger than life—dressed in all black leather and a black helmet rode up to the plant in Osceola, Arkansas, on a hulking Harley-Davidson motorcycle made of blazing steel. The bike made its way in and up to a stage, where the stunt double who was driving slipped off into the wings as Mark Bula, who was Big River’s chief commercial officer at the time, strode on stage for the launch event, clad in all black leather and carrying a helmet. It was a striking moment marked with open excitement, and it was symbolic of the culture Big River leaders were trying to create. A culture where people would be passionate enough about steel to break the mold and do things differently.

  “Thinking about that day still gives me the chills,” Bula tells me. “It sent an unmistakable message to our employees: we were there to throw out the status quo.”

  Big River Steel is a tech company that just happens to make steel. Located in an area of Arkansas that company insiders call “steel mill heaven” (based on its proximity to the Mississippi River on the east and a major railroad line and interstate on the west), Big River is rethinking what it means to make steel. As part of that, Bula told me they take an entrepreneurial approach to American manufacturing.1 In order to live into their promise as a steel innovator, he said, they “attract and train the best technicians in the business and equip them with the most advanced technology.”

  By all accounts, Big River Steel has many of the ingredients that define the positive future element of being In Great Company.

  First, Big River is highly innovative. Arguably one of the most technologically advanced scrap recycling and steel production facilities in the world, it is also the first “Flex Mill.”2 The company trademarked the term to describe its innovative capability to employ high-tech equipment and highly skilled workers to “flex” and produce steel for a range of industries and uses, from highly specialized automotive products and railcars to energy products and infrastructure projects.

  Next, it stands for individual empowerment. As part of their inception, Big River spent over $10 million on training to set their people up for success. Bula said the leadership team believes in “empowering the workforce so they feel comfortable carving their role in the company and developing whom they become as individuals.” He summed it up like this: “By design, it is in our DNA to want to challenge existing assumptions about the industry. As part of that, we encourage our people to have a ‘rebel mentality’ so that collectively we can put the status quo aside and be the best at what we do.”

  Finally, the organization is future oriented. The company in
vested $1.3 billion to build a facility that is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified, which is a rating system designed to track environmental performance of a building and encourage sustainability. In addition, the Big River plant is a model for the utilization of artificial intelligence. The company partnered with a San Francisco–based start-up to install thousands of sensors that deliver next-generation data to help them become the first smart steel production facility, equipped to monitor and improve maintenance planning, production line scheduling, logistics operations, safety, and environmental protection.

  All of this adds up to an adaptable, fast-moving organization where people feel energized and engaged to act independently and perform at their peak.

  We define the positive future element of In Great Company broadly, as having a forward-facing outlook, a powerful vision for the future, and a capacity for innovative execution. In my study, I found that people feel emotionally connected when an organization has a specific vision for success; processes and a philosophy that set people up to contribute; and the opportunity to play a role in meaningful progress and positive transformation. Oftentimes, the organiza- tions that score highest in their EC scores for positive future are the innovative, entrepreneurial organizations that have a plan to become industry leaders by investing in their people, enabling experimentation, and driving forward toward an exciting future.

  Why a Positive Future Keeps Us Connected

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  The building blocks of positive future—positive future outlook, progress, and innovation—help create and sustain engagement in the workplace. While they each make up important parts of this element of EC, the first of the three, positive future outlook, has the deepest roots in academic work as a subset of the vibrant positive psychology movement.

  The term positive psychology first appeared in a 1954 book by psychologist Abraham Maslow.3 Yet, the modern positive psychology movement itself started more recently. Most agree it became a new area of study and practice in 1998, when well-known psychologist and author Martin Seligman selected it as the main theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association.4

  Along with the two main codevelopers of positive psychology, Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the late Christopher Peterson, psychologist and professor at University of Michigan, Seligman’s work was widely distributed through positive psychology research centers on understanding and cultivating individual well-being and happiness, including what makes us flourish as humans. The area of study and the body of published research are vast, and positive psychology clearly shows that a positive outlook improves our health and happiness.5

  While positive future as it relates to my work on emotional connectedness is not entirely aligned with positive psychology in terms of the range of concepts it covers, there is clear and significant overlap inasmuch as both relate to how a positive orientation by employees, and the degree to which an organization is set up to encourage it, creates a sense of belonging and engagement among and between people at work.

  The next building block of positivity—progress—is another established driver of employee engagement and satisfaction. A study by Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile and psychologist Steven Kramer, for example, found that the happiest and most productive days for people at work were those marked by forward momentum and a sense of progress.6 Amabile and Kramer argue that the power of progress is fundamental to human nature, and it is a primary ingredient in motivation.7 Ample additional studies show that our ability to achieve progress is a critical key to happiness, plain and simple.

  Csikszentmihalyi’s more recent work on “flow” further serves to connect progress and happiness. According to Csikszentmihalyi, “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” These “best moments” are what Csikszentmihalyi calls flow, and he says it is an important contributor to positive outlook and well-being.8

  That syncs up with what I have found—that progress aligns and engages people and connects them to a common purpose.

  The last building block of positive future is innovation. Innovation is inextricably linked to both progress and positive outlook. Although it is a core concept of EC in its own right, the individuals in my study reported that the degree to which their organizations enabled innovation was an indication that they were disposed to encourage a positive outlook and enable progress. Other research supports this. For instance, one study of over 800 financial services employees found that a quarter of respondents wanted to move into the tech sector. Why? In part because they believed they would find working for an innovative organization to be more meaningful.9

  In general, positive future creates cohesiveness and social connection. By delivering upbeat emotions and happiness, it changes our brain chemistry, making us feel safe, supported, and able to push for progress in the workplace.

  Breaking down Barriers to Positive Future

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  With positive future being so, well, positive, why is it such an outlier in the workplace? Like everything else, it’s complicated.

  As part of my work with organizations, I consult with leaders to conduct culture interventions to help turn around engagement and performance when a workplace becomes toxic, demoralized, or otherwise negative in nature. This is an important subset of creating emotional connectedness because negative cultures repel people and destroy trust. As part of that work, I have found that the source of negativity can be either systemic or individual.

  An example of a systemic source of negativity is business-as-usual practices such as micromanagement, red tape, and rigid systems that force us to settle for less. They can kill progress with a thousand cuts. According to Chris Voss, author and former FBI hostage negotiator, one of the biggest cuts is too much compromise. Compromise dilutes passion. Voss sums it up in one phrase: “never split the difference.”10

  “There’s an old phrase that says a camel is a horse designed by committee. Well, that’s compromise,” Voss said. “Whatever kind of job you’re trying to get done, no one is going to be satisfied by fitting two things together just to see what happens.”

  With compromise, everyone feels a little deflated. Voss has said that a better tool for creating a positive, future-focused work environment is collaboration. The process of collaboration includes taking diverse perspectives to arrive at the best solution. Ideally, Voss said, the team can use the power of passion to create a new solution that everyone owns.

  Compromise or not, systemic negativity can manifest naturally based on how an organization is organized. Traditional companies tend to rely on strict hierarchy, for instance. With this, perks such as promotions, prestige, and pay increases are commensurate with one’s position on the corporate ladder. Unless managed with vigilance, the result can be dysfunctional behavior including blame games, information hoarding, and passing the buck.

  A similarly negative potential by-product of hierarchy gone wrong is fiefdoms that form based on corporate politics. In a number of organizations where I’ve consulted, for example, employees felt obligated, based on their reporting structure, to align with specific executives over the mission of the organization. The results were an environment where loyalty directed at leaders was rewarded over results and a situation where people told executives what they wanted to hear as opposed to what they really believed to be true.

  Even flat or matrixed organizations can fall victim to this type of negative behavior if a company centralizes decision-making in the hands of a toxic leader, stifles transparency, or fails to genuinely empower people to do their job. When employees feel trapped in a system in which they can’t be their best selves, negativity becomes a core part of the culture.

  The other source of negativity in organizations is individual malfeasance. In some cases, h
angers-on are allowed to remain and infect others with their vocal discontent. Whether you call them “loafers,” “lifers,” or just “habitual underperformers,” when people fail to pull their weight or worse, intentionally dragging others down to their level, engagement and morale suffer. Similarly, individual negativity can likewise be the result of more than just a few bad apples. For instance, negativity can manifest when individuals at all levels get stuck in their ways and are allowed to resist change and repel innovation. Individual negativity can even cascade from the top down, when a toxic leader habitually fails to recognize positive contributions, yet fixates on failure and magnifies mistakes. In this case, direct reports become afraid to take appropriate risks, and everyone gets stuck in status quo behavior.

  Regardless of the source, systemic and individual negativity can cripple an organization and make it impossible to recruit and retain high-performing individuals. The antidote to both systemic and individual negativity is to implement a set of carefully cultivated best practices, mentioned below, that create emotional connectedness and help create and sustain a positive future.

  Positive Future: The Best Practices Playbook

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  Among the many possible options for using a positive future vision to spark EC, open innovation is particularly apt because it brings many more people together to combine ideas and expertise. Perhaps the best example of an organization using open innovation to forge a positive future for themselves is NASA.