Collaboration

Avoid 5 traps that divide groups

September 23, 2013

Bossy know-it-alls make poor team ­leaders. To build unity among your group, display humility and strive to learn from others. Avoid communicating these five destructive messages to your team.

Meetings can play a valuable role

July 8, 2013

Conventional wisdom dictates that sitting in conference rooms squanders a huge chunk of an executive’s workday. But all those back-to-back meetings may actually serve a productive purpose.

Spur groups to debate each other

March 29, 2013

In the 1920s, Alfred Sloan ran General Motors. When he convened his management team to explore whether to open a plant abroad, they all approved the move. Sloan replied that he wouldn’t make a decision until he heard some disagreement. He wanted the best judgments to flow from clashing viewpoints.

The story behind Apple’s iconic ad

January 22, 2013

Consigliere Bill Campbell, guru to Silicon Valley, played a key role in getting Apple’s iconic “1984” ad on the air to introduce the Mac during Super Bowl XVIII. Advertising Age calls that ad the best commercial ever made.

A leadership lesson, set to Mendelssohn

November 14, 2012

When Maestro Wolfgang Heinzel stands before the Merck Orchestra, he may look like an authoritarian leader, commanding musicians from his podium. But Heinzel doesn’t actually know how to play the instruments himself—“in the same way a leader in an organization can’t do everyone’s job,” says Jon Chilingerian. Here is what maestros—and good leaders—understand.

Mayo Clinic’s success secret: teamwork

August 16, 2012

After a diagnosis, patients at the Mayo Clinic meet with a team of specialists who help them understand what’s happening so they can decide about treatment together, says president and CEO Denis Cortese. This kind of teamwork is the stock-in-trade of Cortese, who won last year’s top leadership award from the National Center for Healthcare Leadership.

6 ways to prepare for collaboration

August 7, 2012
As chief of the New York City and Los Angeles police departments, William Bratton experienced firsthand how powerful a force collaboration could be. Bratton offers several principles for leaders to follow in building a collaborative organization:

Secret to winning: Forming alliances

April 19, 2012
In what may become a unifying theory of human behavior, biologist E.O. Wilson is positing a theory that “individual selection,” or competition to thrive and pass along one’s genes, inevitably loses out to “group selection.” Forming alliances has become a fundamental human trait, he says, because “it is a good way to win.”

Making music, not fame

March 22, 2012
Guitar hero Brad Paisley admits that he sometimes finds it hard to relate to young musicians who move to Nashville primarily for fame and fortune. “As I’ve come to understand it, making music isn’t about competition,” he says. “It’s about collaboration. I am a player. And I play with people, not against them.”

Networking a web of talent

March 12, 2012
You may be LinkedIn, but is the talent within your organization linked? When talent can more easily collaborate—and when workers know how to tap into one another’s strengths—the whole organization benefits. Here’s what it looks like in action: