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F R O M T H E F O U N D E R
Encouraging cooperation
If you want to encourage cooperation in your firm, take a look at your organization structure, accounting, and incentive compensation.
I found myself in a debate with someone on LinkedIn recently in response to an HBR article on collaboration inside organizations. This fellow and I got into the subject of how to actually encourage collaboration inside our businesses.
This isn’t the first time I have had one of these debates, and in my opinion, it is one of the best aspects of LinkedIn. You get a chance to interact with intelligent people who are interested in business. I won’t get into all the details, but suffice it to say that this particular individual – a self-proclaimed “leadership coach and transformation catalyst” who is dedicated to “inspiring change and growth” – was making solving the problem of a lack of collaboration inside organizations much simpler than it really is. I suggested that, “the lack of collaboration in many companies is because of how they are organized and how they do their accounting, combined with their incentive compensation schemes. You can have all the values you want to espouse, but they
mean little if the structure pits people against each other and the reward system is designed to incentivize individual or unit performance versus overall company performance.” His response was, “Shouldn’t we be talking about embracing, engaging, enabling, empowering, and energizing with genuine enthusiasm, rather than ‘enforcing’?” Besides the fact that nothing in my responses suggested enforcing anything, I am going to call BS on his approach and others like it. As a lifelong career management consultant, I cannot tell you how many failed management initiatives and leadership training programs I have either witnessed or been made aware of. When all you
Mark Zweig
See MARK ZWEIG, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 15, 2021, ISSUE 1417
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