Collaboration

Spur groups to debate each other

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

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.

Target's 'wiki' culture starts with CEO

To create a more collaborative culture, CEO Gregg Steinhafel encourages Target's 365,000 employees to harness social media. The retail giant has developed an internal online platform that enables workers at all levels to post comments, share ideas and engage in Facebook-like interaction with each other.

A leadership lesson, set to Mendelssohn

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.

The power of shared values

"Great leadership is not a solo act. It’s a group performance. You need to connect through the heart to lead effectively," says Robert Vanourek, chairman emeritus of the Vail Leadership Institute and co-author of Triple Crown Leadership.

Mayo Clinic's success secret: teamwork

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

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

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

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

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: