“If you put fences around people, you get sheep.” — William L. McKnight, (1887-1978) Former 3M CEO
McKnight’s quote is powerful regarding the responsibility of leadership. If you take away people’s freedom, you kill their creative spirit. However, it doesn’t go far enough in describing what great leaders do. There should be a second sentence. “If you don’t help people TEAR DOWN fences, regardless of how they got there, you also get sheep.”
The truth is, fences pop up everywhere in organizations, whether a leader puts them there or not. They’re defense and control mechanisms, built by everyone. Sure, leaders have to stop building fences themselves, but more importantly they’ve got to create a culture that discourages building them at all.
In his classic HBR article, Good Communication that Blocks Learning (1994), Chris Argyris gives a great example of this in a story about a client who wanted to improve operations. He worked with 40 managers who identified 9 target areas to cut costs. They successfully implemented the changes with better-than-planned cost savings. Two things struck Argyris during the process: (1) The managers had told him how easy it had been to identify the 9 target areas and (2) they complained that fixing them had been long overdue. If that had been the case, he thought, why had no one ever said anything?!
The 9 target areas, it turns out, weren’t the real problem – everyone knew about them! The real problem was deeper. It was whatever dynamic was going on that prevented the managers from questioning inefficiencies and getting them corrected or eliminated earlier.
That’s where a leader has to dig in.
Try This:
1. Take 10 minutes with your team. Have everyone answer this question: The one thing I think we could be doing better that I’ve never mentioned to the team is _____________.
2. Take another 10 minutes. Have them answer this question (this one is more interesting than the first): The reason I’ve never mentioned this is ______________.
3. If you’re the leader, model both answers first. Make yourself vulnerable.
4. If you start tearing down fences, the people around you will follow.
— Doug Sundheim is a leadership consultant, author, and speaker. His book on Smart Risk-Taking is due out in 2012.
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