Warren Bennis on Great Groups

Organizing Genius : The Secrets of Creative Collaboration
Bennis, Warren; Biederman, Patricia

Much of the talk about Enterprise 2.0 centers on the possibilities that new technologies open up for improved cooperation and collaboration in organizations. The problems of cooperation and collaboration in organizations have attracted attention long before today s technology options existed. Warren Bennis has been studying the issues of leadership and organizations for decades. In Organizing Genius, Bennis turns his eye toward the lessons we might draw from the successes of great groups.

Published in 1997, Organizing Genius examines the case histories of seven great groups, whose stories are worth knowing regardless of the lessons they contain. The groups the Bennis and co-author Patricia Ward Biederman chronicle include Disney s animation studio, Xerox PARC, Apple s Macintosh team, Clinton s original election campaign team, Lockheed s Skunkworks, Black Mountain College, and the Manhattan Project. As a long-term student of leadership, Bennis here emphasizes the importance of the group in achieving exceptional results when those results call for creativity and innovation. While there is still an important role for leadership, it is leadership that calls for a much more delicate touch than we are accustomed to seeing or valuing. In Bennis s view, in fact, great leaders cannot arise absent a great group to lead.

Bennis highlights the following lessons about great groups:

1. Greatness starts with superb people
2. Great groups and great leaders create each other
3. Every great group has a strong leader
4. The leaders of great groups love talent and know where to find it
5. Great groups are full of talented people who can work together
6. Great groups think they are on a mission from God
7. Every great group is an island but an island with a bridge to the mainland
8. Great groups see themselves as winning underdogs
9. Great groups always have an enemy
10. People in great groups have blinders on
11. Great groups are optimistic, not realistic
12. In great groups, the right person has the right job
13. The leaders of great groups give them what they need and free them from the rest
14. Great groups ship
15. Great work is its own reward

Bennis also has an online article on The Secrets of Great Groups, which summarizes his insights in a slightly different way. None of these lessons are exceptional, although it s good to see that Bennis emphasizes the importance of shared mission. That s something that I see as a frequent problem in groups that are struggling.

In all of this, technology is not center stage. What Bennis does is to show us places where you might focus your technology efforts.