Back in 2004 Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was kicking our butt. According to General Stanley McChrystal in his book titled Team of Teams, the butt kicking was rooted in our management style more than anything else. So, he began to tear down the walls between his disparate Task Force teams. One of his communications strategies was to replace the culture of “need to know basis” with the mantra of share everything. His standing guidance was “share information until you’re afraid it’s illegal.” Share more.
You and your teams are no different. Without telling your team a thing, they most likely default to hoarding and holding information. Think about it. If you’re working a problem within your operations team, does engineering really need to know? If you’re working a problem within your maintenance team, does the leasing team need to know? If you’re working a problem with your SEAL team, does the Navy need to know? The answer in today’s networked, right sourced, and complex world, is a resounding yes.
McChrystal went so far as to hold his conference calls on speakerphone, so his inner circle (seated right next to him) could listen in. Yikes. Through practice, BTL has discovered most of the teams we serve are operating way to much on a “need to know basis.” The best teams display the most transparency and over communicate as a default. Make sense?
Share more. Broadcast because you’ve got nothing to hide and lots of interested teammates who just might want to hear and even help. Create a culture of shared intelligence. You and your system just got better. Who knows, maybe one of your sales leaders has an idea one of your collectors could use to create some coin. Who knows? We’ll only know if we share and share some more. High performance cultures hoard less and share more. You?
Live hard. Love harder…
BUILT TO LEAD 