Harvard Business Review The Essential Guide to Leadership by Harvard Business Review

Wise executives tailor their approach to fit the complexity of the
circumstances they face.

A Leader’s Framework
for Decision Making

by David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone

COPYRIGHT © 2007 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. In January 1993, a gunman murdered seven in others. Why do these approaches fail even
people in a fast-food restaurant in Palatine, a when logic indicates they should prevail?
suburb of Chicago. In his dual roles as an ad- The answer lies in a fundamental assumption
ministrative executive and spokesperson for of organizational theory and practice: that a
the police department, Deputy Chief Walter certain level of predictability and order ex-
Gasior suddenly had to cope with several ists in the world. This assumption, grounded
different situations at once. He had to deal in the Newtonian science that underlies scien-
with the grieving families and a frightened tific management, encourages simplifications
community, help direct the operations of an that are useful in ordered circumstances.
extremely busy police department, and take Circumstances change, however, and as they
questions from the media, which inundated become more complex, the simplifications
the town with reporters and film crews. can fail. Good leadership is not a one-size-
“There would literally be four people coming fits-all proposition.
at me with logistics and media issues all at
once,” he recalls. “And in the midst of all this, We believe the time has come to broaden
we still had a department that had to keep the traditional approach to leadership and
running on a routine basis.” decision making and form a new perspective
based on complexity science. (For more on
Though Gasior was ultimately successful in this, see the sidebar “Understanding Complex-
juggling multiple demands, not all leaders ity.”) Over the past ten years, we have applied
achieve the desired results when they face the principles of that science to governments
situations that require a variety of decisions and a broad range of industries. Working with
and responses. All too often, managers rely other contributors, we developed the Cynefin
on common leadership approaches that work framework, which allows executives to see
well in one set of circumstances but fall short things from new viewpoints, assimilate complex

harvard business review • november 2007 page 61

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making

David J. Snowden (snowded@mac concepts, and address real-world problems are easily discernible by everyone. Often, the
.com) is the founder and chief scientific and opportunities. (Cynefin, pronounced right answer is self-evident and undisputed. In
officer of Cognitive Edge, an interna- ku-nev-in, is a Welsh word that signifies the this realm of “known knowns,” decisions are
tional research network. He is based multiple factors in our environment and our unquestioned because all parties share an un-
primarily in Lockeridge, England. experience that influence us in ways we can derstanding. Areas that are little subject to
Mary E. Boone (mary@maryboone never understand.) Using this approach, change, such as problems with order process-
.com) is the president of Boone Associ- leaders learn to define the framework with ing and fulfillment, usually belong here.
ates, a consulting firm in Essex, Con- examples from their own organization’s his-
necticut, and the author of numerous tory and scenarios of its possible future. This Simple contexts, properly assessed, require
books and articles, including Managing enhances communication and helps execu- straightforward management and monitoring.
Interactively (McGraw-Hill, 2001). tives rapidly understand the context in which Here, leaders sense, categorize, and respond.
they are operating. That is, they assess the facts of the situation,
categorize them, and then base their response
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research on established practice. Heavily process-
Projects Agency has applied the framework oriented situations, such as loan payment
to counterterrorism, and it is currently a key processing, are often simple contexts. If some-
component of Singapore’s Risk Assessment thing goes awry, an employee can usually
and Horizon Scanning program. Over time, identify the problem (when, say, a borrower
the framework has evolved through hun- pays less than is required), categorize it
dreds of applications, from helping a pharma- (review the loan documents to see how partial
ceutical company develop a new product payments must be processed), and respond
strategy to assisting a Canadian provincial appropriately (either not accept the payment
government in its efforts to engage employees or apply the funds according to the terms
in policy making. of the note). Since both managers and employ-
ees have access to the information necessary
The framework sorts the issues facing for dealing with the situation in this domain,
leaders into five contexts defined by the nature a command-and-control style for setting
of the relationship between cause and effect. parameters works best. Directives are straight-
Four of these—simple, complicated, com- forward, decisions can be easily delegated,
plex, and chaotic—require leaders to diagnose and functions are automated. Adhering to
situations and to act in contextually appropri- best practices or process reengineering makes
ate ways. The fifth—disorder—applies when sense. Exhaustive communication among
it is unclear which of the other four contexts managers and employees is not usually re-
is predominant. quired because disagreement about what
needs to be done is rare.
Using the Cynefin framework can help ex-
ecutives sense which context they are in so Nevertheless, problems can arise in simple
that they can not only make better decisions contexts. First, issues may be incorrectly clas-
but also avoid the problems that arise when sified within this domain because they have
their preferred management style causes been oversimplified. Leaders who constantly
them to make mistakes. In this article, we ask for condensed information, regardless of
focus on the first four contexts, offering exam- the complexity of the situation, particularly
ples and suggestions about how to lead and run this risk.
make appropriate decisions in each of them.
Since the complex domain is much more Second, leaders are susceptible to entrained
prevalent in the business world than most thinking, a conditioned response that occurs
leaders realize—and requires different, often when people are blinded to new ways of think-
counterintuitive, responses—we concentrate ing by the perspectives they acquired through
particularly on that context. Leaders who past experience, training, and success.
understand that the world is often irrational
and unpredictable will find the Cynefin Third, when things appear to be going
framework particularly useful. smoothly, leaders often become complacent.
If the context changes at that point, a leader
Simple Contexts: The Domain of is likely to miss what is happening and react
Best Practice too late. In the exhibit “The Cynefin Frame-
work,” the simple domain lies adjacent to
Simple contexts are characterized by stability the chaotic—and for good reason. The most
and clear cause-and-effect relationships that frequent collapses into chaos occur because

page 62 harvard business review • november 2007

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making

success has bred complacency. This shift can longer leads to foresight after a shift in con-
bring about catastrophic failure—think of text, a corresponding change in management
the many previously dominant technolo- style may be called for.
gies that were suddenly disrupted by more
dynamic alternatives. Complicated Contexts: The Domain
of Experts
Leaders need to avoid micromanaging and
stay connected to what is happening in order Complicated contexts, unlike simple ones,
to spot a change in context. By and large, may contain multiple right answers, and
line workers in a simple situation are more though there is a clear relationship between
than capable of independently handling cause and effect, not everyone can see it. This
any issues that may arise. Indeed, those is the realm of “known unknowns.” While
with years of experience also have deep insight leaders in a simple context must sense, catego-
into how the work should be done. Leaders rize, and respond to a situation, those in a
should create a communication channel—an complicated context must sense, analyze, and
anonymous one, if necessary—that allows respond. This approach is not easy and often
dissenters to provide early warnings about requires expertise: A motorist may know that
complacency. something is wrong with his car because the
engine is knocking, but he has to take it to a
Finally, it’s important to remember that mechanic to diagnose the problem.
best practice is, by definition, past practice.
Using best practices is common, and often Because the complicated context calls for
appropriate, in simple contexts. Difficulties investigating several options—many of which
arise, however, if staff members are discour- may be excellent—good practice, as opposed to
aged from bucking the process even when best practice, is more appropriate. For exam-
it’s not working anymore. Since hindsight no ple, the customary approach to engineering a

Understanding Complexity

Complexity is more a way of thinking about frequently referred to as emergence. isolation. More recently, some thinkers and
the world than a new way of working with • The system has a history, and the past practitioners have started to argue that
mathematical models. Over a century ago, human complex systems are very different
Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scien- is integrated with the present; the ele- from those in nature and cannot be modeled
tific management, revolutionized leadership. ments evolve with one another and in the same ways because of human unpre-
Today, advances in complexity science, com- with the environment; and evolution dictability and intellect. Consider the follow-
bined with knowledge from the cognitive is irreversible. ing ways in which humans are distinct from
sciences, are transforming the field once • Though a complex system may, in retro- other animals:
again. Complexity is poised to help current spect, appear to be ordered and predict-
and future leaders make sense of advanced able, hindsight does not lead to foresight • They have multiple identities and can
technology, globalization, intricate markets, because the external conditions and fluidly switch between them without
cultural change, and much more. In short, systems constantly change. conscious thought. (For example, a per-
the science of complexity can help all of us • Unlike in ordered systems (where the son can be a respected member of the
address the challenges and opportunities we system constrains the agents), or chaotic community as well as a terrorist.)
face in a new epoch of human history. systems (where there are no constraints),
in a complex system the agents and the • They make decisions based on past
A complex system has the following char- system constrain one another, especially patterns of success and failure, rather
acteristics: over time. This means that we cannot than on logical, definable rules.
forecast or predict what will happen.
• It involves large numbers of interacting One of the early theories of complexity is • They can, in certain circumstances, pur-
elements. that complex phenomena arise from simple posefully change the systems in which
rules. Consider the rules for the flocking they operate to equilibrium states (think
• The interactions are nonlinear, and behavior of birds: Fly to the center of the of a Six Sigma project) in order to create
minor changes can produce dispropor- flock, match speed, and avoid collision. This predictable outcomes.
tionately major consequences. simple-rule theory was applied to industrial
modeling and production early on, and it Leaders who want to apply the principles
• The system is dynamic, the whole is promised much; but it did not deliver in of complexity science to their organizations
greater than the sum of its parts, and will need to think and act differently than
solutions can’t be imposed; rather, they they have in the past. This may not be easy,
arise from the circumstances. This is but it is essential in complex contexts.

harvard business review • november 2007 page 63

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making

new cell phone might emphasize feature A over their knowledge, and they are unlikely to
feature B, but an alternative plan—emphasizing tolerate controversial ideas. If the context
feature C—might be equally valuable. has shifted, however, the leader may need
access to those maverick concepts. To get
Another example is the search for oil or around this issue, a leader must listen to the
mineral deposits. The effort usually requires a experts while simultaneously welcoming
team of experts, more than one place will po- novel thoughts and solutions from others.
tentially produce results, and the location of Executives at one shoe manufacturer did
the right spots for drilling or mining involves this by opening up the brainstorming pro-
complicated analysis and understanding of cess for new shoe styles to the entire com-
consequences at multiple levels. pany. As a result, a security guard submitted
a design for a shoe that became one of their
Entrained thinking is a danger in compli- best sellers.
cated contexts, too, but it is the experts
(rather than the leaders) who are prone to Another potential obstacle is “analysis
it, and they tend to dominate the domain. paralysis,” where a group of experts hits a
When this problem occurs, innovative sugges- stalemate, unable to agree on any answers
tions by nonexperts may be overlooked or because of each individual’s entrained
dismissed, resulting in lost opportunities. The thinking—or ego.
experts have, after all, invested in building
Working in unfamiliar environments can
The Cynefin Framework help leaders and experts approach decision
making more creatively. For instance, we put
The Cynefin framework helps leaders world of fact-based management; the retail marketing professionals in several mili-
determine the prevailing operative context unordered world represents pattern- tary research environments for two weeks.
so that they can make appropriate based management. The settings were unfamiliar and challenging,
choices. Each domain requires different but they shared a primary similarity with the
actions. Simple and complicated contexts The very nature of the fifth context— retail environment: In both cases, the market-
assume an ordered universe, where disorder—makes it particularly difficult to ers had to work with large volumes of data
cause-and-effect relationships are per- recognize when one is in it. Here, multi- from which it was critical to identify small
ceptible, and right answers can be deter- ple perspectives jostle for prominence, trends or weak signals. They discovered that
mined based on the facts. Complex and factional leaders argue with one another, there was little difference between, say,
chaotic contexts are unordered—there is and cacophony rules. The way out of this handling outgoing disaffected customers and
no immediately apparent relationship realm is to break down the situation into anticipating incoming ballistic missiles. The
between cause and effect, and the way constituent parts and assign each to one exercise helped the marketing group learn
forward is determined based on emerg- of the other four realms. Leaders can how to detect a potential loss of loyalty
ing patterns. The ordered world is the then make decisions and intervene in and take action before a valued customer
contextually appropriate ways. switched to a competitor. By improving their
strategy, the marketers were able to retain
Based on a graphic by Debera Johnson far more high-volume business.

Games, too, can encourage novel thinking.
We created a game played on a fictional
planet that was based on the culture of a real
client organization. When the executives
“landed” on the alien planet, they were asked
to address problems and opportunities facing
the inhabitants. The issues they encountered
were disguised but designed to mirror real
situations, many of which were controversial
or sensitive. Because the environment seemed
so foreign and remote, however, the players
found it much easier to come up with fresh
ideas than they otherwise might have done.
Playing a metaphorical game increases man-
agers’ willingness to experiment, allows them
to resolve issues or problems more easily

page 64 harvard business review • november 2007

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making

and creatively, and broadens the range of will die. None of those experts knew a priori
options in their decision-making processes. what would work. Instead, they had to let a
The goal of such games is to get as many solution emerge from the materials at hand.
perspectives as possible to promote unfet- And they succeeded. (Conditions of scarcity
tered analysis. often produce more creative results than
conditions of abundance.)
Reaching decisions in the complicated do-
main can often take a lot of time, and there is Another example comes from YouTube.
always a trade-off between finding the right The founders could not possibly have pre-
answer and simply making a decision. When dicted all the applications for streaming
the right answer is elusive, however, and you video technology that now exist. Once people
must base your decision on incomplete data, started using YouTube creatively, however,
your situation is probably complex rather the company could support and augment the
than complicated. emerging patterns of use. YouTube has become
a popular platform for expressing political
Complex Contexts: The Domain of views, for example. The company built on this
Emergence pattern by sponsoring a debate for presiden-
tial hopefuls with video feeds from the site.
In a complicated context, at least one right
answer exists. In a complex context, however, As in the other contexts, leaders face sev-
right answers can’t be ferreted out. It’s like the eral challenges in the complex domain. Of
difference between, say, a Ferrari and the primary concern is the temptation to fall
Brazilian rainforest. Ferraris are complicated back into traditional command-and-control
machines, but an expert mechanic can take management styles—to demand fail-safe
one apart and reassemble it without changing business plans with defined outcomes. Leaders
a thing. The car is static, and the whole is the who don’t recognize that a complex domain
sum of its parts. The rainforest, on the other requires a more experimental mode of man-
hand, is in constant flux—a species becomes agement may become impatient when they
extinct, weather patterns change, an agricul- don’t seem to be achieving the results they
tural project reroutes a water source—and the were aiming for. They may also find it difficult
whole is far more than the sum of its parts. to tolerate failure, which is an essential aspect
This is the realm of “unknown unknowns,” and of experimental understanding. If they try
it is the domain to which much of contempo- to overcontrol the organization, they will
rary business has shifted. preempt the opportunity for informative
patterns to emerge. Leaders who try to impose
Most situations and decisions in organiza- order in a complex context will fail, but those
tions are complex because some major who set the stage, step back a bit, allow
change—a bad quarter, a shift in management, patterns to emerge, and determine which
a merger or acquisition—introduces unpre- ones are desirable will succeed. (See the
dictability and flux. In this domain, we can un- sidebar “Tools for Managing in a Complex
derstand why things happen only in retrospect. Context.”) They will discern many opportu-
Instructive patterns, however, can emerge if nities for innovation, creativity, and new
the leader conducts experiments that are safe business models.
to fail. That is why, instead of attempting
to impose a course of action, leaders must Chaotic Contexts: The Domain of
patiently allow the path forward to reveal Rapid Response
itself. They need to probe first, then sense,
and then respond. In a chaotic context, searching for right an-
swers would be pointless: The relationships
There is a scene in the film Apollo 13 when between cause and effect are impossible to de-
the astronauts encounter a crisis (“Houston, termine because they shift constantly and no
we have a problem”) that moves the situation manageable patterns exist—only turbulence.
into a complex domain. A group of experts is This is the realm of unknowables. The events
put in a room with a mishmash of materials— of September 11, 2001, fall into this category.
bits of plastic and odds and ends that mirror
the resources available to the astronauts in In the chaotic domain, a leader’s immediate
flight. Leaders tell the team: This is what job is not to discover patterns but to stanch the
you have; find a solution or the astronauts bleeding. A leader must first act to establish

harvard business review • november 2007 page 65

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making

order, then sense where stability is present establish order. However, in his role as
and from where it is absent, and then respond mayor—certainly one of the most complex
by working to transform the situation from jobs in the world—he was widely criticized
chaos to complexity, where the identification for the same top-down leadership style that
of emerging patterns can both help prevent proved so enormously effective during the
future crises and discern new opportunities. catastrophe. He was also criticized afterward
Communication of the most direct top-down for suggesting that elections be postponed so
or broadcast kind is imperative; there’s simply he could maintain order and stability. Indeed,
no time to ask for input. a specific danger for leaders following a crisis
is that some of them become less successful
Unfortunately, most leadership “recipes” when the context shifts because they are not
arise from examples of good crisis manage- able to switch styles to match it.
ment. This is a mistake, and not only because
chaotic situations are mercifully rare. Though Moreover, leaders who are highly successful
the events of September 11 were not immedi- in chaotic contexts can develop an overin-
ately comprehensible, the crisis demanded flated self-image, becoming legends in their
decisive action. New York’s mayor at the time, own minds. When they generate cultlike adora-
Rudy Giuliani, demonstrated exceptional tion, leading actually becomes harder for
effectiveness under chaotic conditions by them because a circle of admiring supporters
issuing directives and taking action to re- cuts them off from accurate information.

Tools for Managing in a Complex Context

Given the ambiguities of the complex do- the condition of the merchandise. meeting environment. Each team ap-
main, how can leaders lead effectively? Participants police themselves by points a spokesperson who moves
rating one another on the quality of from that team’s table to another
• Open up the discussion. Complex their behavior. team’s table. The spokesperson pre-
contexts require more interactive • Stimulate attractors. Attractors are sents the first group’s conclusions while
communication than any of the other phenomena that arise when small stim- the second group listens in silence. The
domains. Large group methods (LGMs), uli and probes (whether from leaders or spokesperson then turns around to face
for instance, are efficient approaches others) resonate with people. As attrac- away from the second team, which rips
to initiating democratic, interactive, tors gain momentum, they provide into the presentation, no holds barred,
multidirectional discussion sessions. structure and coherence. EBay again while the spokesperson listens quietly.
Here, people generate innovative ideas provides an illustrative example. In Each team’s spokesperson visits other
that help leaders with development and 1995, founder Pierre Omidyar launched tables in turn; by the end of the session,
execution of complex decisions and strat- an offering called Auction Web on his all the ideas have been well dissected
egies. For example,“positive deviance” is personal website. His probe, the first and honed. Taking turns listening in si-
a type of LGM that allows people to item for sale, quickly morphed into lence helps everyone understand the
discuss solutions that are already work- eBay, a remarkable attractor for people value of listening carefully, speaking
ing within the organization itself, rather who want to buy and sell things. Today, openly, and not taking criticism personally.
than looking to outside best practices sellers on eBay continue to provide ex- • Manage starting conditions and
for clues about how to proceed. The perimental probes that create attractors monitor for emergence. Because out-
Plexus Institute used this approach to of various types. One such probe, selling comes are unpredictable in a complex
address the complex problem of hospital- a car on the site, resonated with buyers, context, leaders need to focus on creat-
acquired infections, resulting in behavior and soon automobile sales became a ing an environment from which good
change that lowered the incidence by popular attractor. things can emerge, rather than trying
as much as 50%. • Encourage dissent and diversity. to bring about predetermined results
Dissent and formal debate are valuable and possibly missing opportunities
• Set barriers. Barriers limit or delineate communication assets in complex that arise unexpectedly. Many years
behavior. Once the barriers are set, the contexts because they encourage the ago, for instance, 3M instituted a rule al-
system can self-regulate within those emergence of well-forged patterns and lowing its researchers to spend 15% of
boundaries. The founders of eBay, for ideas. A “ritual dissent” approach, for their time on any project that interested
example, created barriers by establishing instance, puts parallel teams to work on them. One result was a runaway success:
a simple set of rules. Among them are the same problem in a large group the Post-it Note.
pay on time, deliver merchandise
quickly, and provide full disclosure on harvard business review • november 2007

page 66

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making

Decisions in Multiple Contexts: A Leader’s Guide

Effective leaders learn to shift their decision-making styles to match changing business environments. Simple, complicated,
complex, and chaotic contexts each call for different managerial responses. By correctly identifying the governing context,
staying aware of danger signals, and avoiding inappropriate reactions, managers can lead effectively in a variety of situations.

SIMPLE THE CONTEXT’S THE LEADER’S JOB DANGER SIGNALS RESPONSE TO
CHARACTERISTICS DANGER SIGNALS
Sense, categorize, respond Complacency and comfort
Repeating patterns and Ensure that proper processes are Desire to make complex Create communication
consistent events in place problems simple channels to challenge orthodoxy
Clear cause-and-effect Delegate Entrained thinking Stay connected without
relationships evident to every- Use best practices No challenge of received wisdom micromanaging
one; right answer exists Communicate in clear, direct ways Overreliance on best practice if Don’t assume things
Known knowns Understand that extensive context shifts are simple
Fact-based management interactive communication may Recognize both the value and
not be necessary the limitations of best practice

COMPLICATED Expert diagnosis required Sense, analyze, respond Experts overconfident in their Encourage external and internal
Create panels of experts own solutions or in the efficacy of stakeholders to challenge expert
Cause-and-effect relationships Listen to conflicting advice past solutions opinions to combat entrained
discoverable but not immediately thinking
apparent to everyone; more than Analysis paralysis
one right answer possible Use experiments and games to
Expert panels force people to think outside the
Known unknowns familiar
Viewpoints of nonexperts
Fact-based management excluded

COMPLEX Flux and unpredictability Probe, sense, respond Temptation to fall back into Be patient and allow time for
No right answers; emergent habitual, command-and-control reflection
instructive patterns Create environments and mode
Unknown unknowns experiments that allow patterns Use approaches that
Many competing ideas to emerge Temptation to look for facts encourage interaction so
A need for creative and innova- rather than allowing patterns to patterns can emerge
tive approaches Increase levels of interaction and emerge
Pattern-based leadership communication
Desire for accelerated resolution
High turbulence Use methods that can help gener- of problems or exploitation of
No clear cause-and-effect rela- ate ideas: Open up discussion (as opportunities
tionships, so no point in looking through large group methods);
for right answers set barriers; stimulate attractors;
Unknowables encourage dissent and diversity;
Many decisions to make and no and manage starting conditions
time to think and monitor for emergence
High tension
CHAOTIC Pattern-based leadership Act, sense, respond Applying a command-and-control Set up mechanisms (such as
approach longer than needed parallel teams) to take advantage
Look for what works instead of “Cult of the leader” of opportunities afforded by a
seeking right answers Missed opportunity for innovation chaotic environment
Chaos unabated
Take immediate action to Encourage advisers to challenge
reestablish order (command and your point of view once the crisis
control) has abated

Provide clear, direct Work to shift the context from
communication chaotic to complex

harvard business review • november 2007 page 67

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making

Yet the chaotic domain is nearly always their workplaces. Had Gasior misread the
the best place for leaders to impel innova- context as simple, he might just have said,
tion. People are more open to novelty and “Carry on,” which would have done nothing
directive leadership in these situations than to reassure the community. Had he misread it
they would be in other contexts. One excellent as complicated, he might have called in experts
technique is to manage chaos and innovation to say it was safe—risking a loss of credibility
in parallel: The minute you encounter a crisis, and trust. Instead, Gasior set up a forum
appoint a reliable manager or crisis manage- for business owners, high school students,
ment team to resolve the issue. At the same teachers, and parents to share concerns and
time, pick out a separate team and focus its hear the facts. It was the right approach for a
members on the opportunities for doing things complex context: He allowed solutions to
differently. If you wait until the crisis is over, emerge from the community itself rather
the chance will be gone. than trying to impose them.

Leadership Across Contexts •••
Business schools and organizations equip
Good leadership requires openness to change leaders to operate in ordered domains (simple
on an individual level. Truly adept leaders will and complicated), but most leaders usually
know not only how to identify the context must rely on their natural capabilities when
they’re working in at any given time but also operating in unordered contexts (complex and
how to change their behavior and their deci- chaotic). In the face of greater complexity
sions to match that context. They also prepare today, however, intuition, intellect, and cha-
their organization to understand the different risma are no longer enough. Leaders need
contexts and the conditions for transition be- tools and approaches to guide their firms
tween them. Many leaders lead effectively— through less familiar waters.
though usually in only one or two domains
(not in all of them) and few, if any, prepare In the complex environment of the current
their organizations for diverse contexts. business world, leaders often will be called
upon to act against their instincts. They will
During the Palatine murders of 1993, Deputy need to know when to share power and when
Chief Gasior faced four contexts at once. He to wield it alone, when to look to the wisdom
had to take immediate action via the media of the group and when to take their own
to stem the tide of initial panic by keeping counsel. A deep understanding of context, the
the community informed (chaotic); he had to ability to embrace complexity and paradox,
help keep the department running routinely and a willingness to flexibly change leader-
and according to established procedure ship style will be required for leaders who
(simple); he had to call in experts (compli- want to make things happen in a time of
cated); and he had to continue to calm the increasing uncertainty.
community in the days and weeks following
the crime (complex). That last situation Reprint R0711C
proved the most challenging. Parents were To order, see the next page
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We look for lessons in the How Successful
actions of great leaders. We Leaders Think
should instead be examining
what goes on in their heads— by Roger Martin
particularly the way they
creatively build on the
tensions among conflicting
ideas.

Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article:

73 Article Summary
The Idea in Brief—the core idea
The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work

75 How Successful Leaders Think

83 Further Reading
A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further
exploration of the article’s ideas and applications

Reprint R0706C page 71

How Successful Leaders Think

The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice

COPYRIGHT © 2007 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The secret to becoming a great leader? What does integrative thinking look like in STEP 3: ENVISIONING THE DECISION’S
Don’t act like one, Martin advises. Instead, action? Contrast conventional and integra- OVERALL STRUCTURE
think like one. tive thinkers’ approaches to the four steps of
decision making: Conventional thinkers break a problem
Brilliant leaders excel at integrative thinking. into pieces and work on them separately. Inte-
They can hold two opposing ideas in their STEP 1: IDENTIFYING KEY FACTORS grative thinkers see a problem as a whole—
minds at once. Then, rather than settling for examining how its various aspects affect one
choice A or B, they forge an innovative Conventional thinkers consider only obvi- another.
“third way” that contains elements of both ously relevant factors while weighing options.
but improves on each. Integrative thinkers seek less obvious but po- Example:
tentially more relevant considerations. Young held several issues in his head simul-
Consider Bob Young, cofounder of Red taneously, including CIOs’ concerns, dy-
Hat, the dominant distributor of Linux Example: namics of individual and corporate markets
open-source software. The business model Bob Young disliked the two prevailing soft- for system software, and the evolving eco-
Young created for Red Hat transcended the ware business models: selling operating nomics of the free-software business. Each
two prevailing software industry models— software but not source code needed to “piece” could have pushed him toward a
winning Red Hat entrée into the lucrative develop software applications (profitable separate decision. But by considering the
corporate market. but anathema to open-source advocates) issues as an interrelated whole, Young
or selling CD-ROMs containing software began to realize only one player would ulti-
How to become an integrative thinker? Resist and source code (aligned with open-source mately dominate the corporate market.
the simplicity and certainty that comes values but not profitable). Seeking a third
with conventional “either-or” thinking. choice, he considered CIOs’ reluctance to STEP 4: ACHIEVING RESOLUTION
Embrace the messiness and complexity of buy new technology that would be compli-
conflicting options. And emulate great cated to maintain. Viewing their reluctance Conventional thinkers make either-or
leaders’ decision-making approach— as relevant eventually helped Young see choices. Integrative thinkers refuse to accept
looking beyond obvious considerations. that selling software service would be a su- conventional options.
perior alternative to the existing product-
Your reward? Instead of making unattrac- based business models. Example:
tive trade-offs, you generate a wealth of To pursue market leadership, Young devised
profitable solutions for your business. STEP 2: ANALYZING CAUSALITY an unconventional business model. The
model synthesized two seemingly irrecon-
Conventional thinkers consider one-way, lin- cilable models by combining low product
ear relationships between factors: more of A price with profitable service offerings. Red
produces more of B. Integrative thinkers con- Hat began helping companies manage the
sider multidirectional relationships. software upgrades available almost daily
through Linux’s open-source platform. It
Example: also gave the software away as a free Inter-
Young analyzed the complex relationships net download. Thus, Red Hat acquired the
among pricing, profitability, and distribu- scale and market leadership to attract cau-
tion channels. He recognized that a prod- tious corporate customers to what became
uct based on freely available components its central offering: service, not software.
would soon become a commodity. Any
electronics retailer could assemble its own
Linux product and push it through its well-
developed distribution channel—leaving
Red Hat stranded. Analysis of these causal
relationships yielded a nuanced picture of
the industry’s future.

page 73

We look for lessons in the actions of great leaders. We should instead be
examining what goes on in their heads—particularly the way they
creatively build on the tensions among conflicting ideas.

How Successful
Leaders Think

by Roger Martin

COPYRIGHT © 2007 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. We are drawn to the stories of effective leaders forcing managers to look for opportunities
in action. Their decisiveness invigorates us. beyond the confines of a narrowly conceived
The events that unfold from their bold moves, market. Trying to learn from what Jack Welch
often culminating in successful outcomes, did invites confusion and incoherence, because
make for gripping narratives. Perhaps most he pursued—wisely, I might add—diametrically
important, we turn to accounts of their deeds opposed courses at different points in his
for lessons that we can apply in our own career and in GE’s history.
careers. Books like Jack: Straight from the Gut
and Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things So where do we look for lessons? A more
Done are compelling in part because they productive, though more difficult, approach is
implicitly promise that we can achieve the to focus on how a leader thinks—that is, to
success of a Jack Welch or a Larry Bossidy—if examine the antecedent of doing, or the ways
only we learn to emulate his actions. in which leaders’ cognitive processes produce
their actions.
But this focus on what a leader does is mis-
placed. That’s because moves that work in one I have spent the past 15 years, first as a man-
context often make little sense in another, agement consultant and now as the dean of a
even at the same company or within the expe- business school, studying leaders with exem-
rience of a single leader. Recall that Jack plary records. Over the past six years, I have in-
Welch, early in his career at General Electric, terviewed more than 50 such leaders, some for
insisted that each of GE’s businesses be num- as long as eight hours, and found that most of
ber one or number two in market share in its them share a somewhat unusual trait: They
industry; years later he insisted that those have the predisposition and the capacity to
same businesses define their markets so that hold in their heads two opposing ideas at once.
their share was no greater than 10%, thereby And then, without panicking or simply settling
for one alternative or the other, they’re able to

harvard business review • june 2007 page 75

How Successful Leaders Think

Roger Martin (martin@rotman creatively resolve the tension between those One was the classic proprietary-software
.utoronto.ca) is the dean of the Rotman two ideas by generating a new one that con- model, employed by big players such as Mi-
School of Management at the Univer- tains elements of the others but is superior to crosoft, Oracle, and SAP, which sold custom-
sity of Toronto and the author of The both. This process of consideration and synthe- ers operating software but not the source
Opposable Mind: How Successful Lead- sis can be termed integrative thinking. It is this code. These companies invested heavily in
ers Win Through Integrative Thinking, discipline—not superior strategy or faultless research and development, guarded their
forthcoming from Harvard Business execution—that is a defining characteristic of intellectual property jealously, charged high
School Press in the fall of 2007. most exceptional businesses and the people prices, and enjoyed wide profit margins be-
who run them. cause their customers, lacking access to the
source code, were essentially locked into
I don’t claim that this is a new idea. More purchasing regular upgrades.
than 60 years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald saw “the
ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at The alternative, employed by numerous
the same time and still retain the ability to small companies, including Red Hat itself, was
function” as the sign of a truly intelligent indi- the so-called free-software model, in which
vidual. And certainly not every good leader suppliers sold CD-ROMs with both the software
exhibits this capability, nor is it the sole source and the source code. The software products
of success for those who do. But it is clear to weren’t in fact free, but prices were modest—$15
me that integrative thinking tremendously for a packaged version of the Linux operating
improves people’s odds. system versus more than $200 for Microsoft
Windows. Suppliers made money each time
This insight is easy to miss, though, since the they assembled a new version from the many
management conversation in recent years has free updates by independent developers; but
tilted away from thinking and toward doing profit margins were narrow and revenue was
(witness the popularity of books like Execu- uncertain. Corporate customers, looking for
tion). Also, many great integrative thinkers standardization and predictability, were wary
aren’t even aware of their particular capability not only of the unfamiliar software but also of
and thus don’t consciously exercise it. Take its small and idiosyncratic suppliers.
Jack Welch, who is among the executives I
have interviewed: He is clearly a consummate Bob Young—a self-deprecating eccentric in
integrative thinker—but you’d never know it an industry full of eccentrics, who signaled his
from reading his books. affiliation with his company by regularly sport-
ing red socks and a red hat—didn’t like either
Indeed, my aim in this article is to decon- of these models. The high-margin proprietary
struct and describe a capability that seems to model ran counter to the whole philosophy of
come naturally to many successful leaders. To Linux and the open-source movement, even if
illustrate the concept, I’ll concentrate on an ex- there had been a way to create proprietary ver-
ecutive I talked with at length: Bob Young, the sions of the software. “Buying proprietary soft-
colorful cofounder and former CEO of Red ware is like buying a car with the hood welded
Hat, the dominant distributor of Linux open- shut,” Young told me. “If something goes
source software. The assumption underlying wrong, you can’t even try to fix it.” But the free-
my examination of his and others’ integrative software model meant scraping a slim profit
thinking is this: It isn’t just an ability you’re from the packaging and distribution of a freely
born with—it’s something you can hone. available commodity in a fringe market, which
might have offered reasonable returns in
Opposable Thumb, Opposable Mind the short term but wasn’t likely to deliver
sustained profitable growth.
In the mid-1990s, Red Hat faced what seemed
like two alternative paths to growth. At the Young likes to say that he’s not “one of the
time, the company sold packaged versions smart guys” in the industry, that he’s a sales-
of Linux open-source software, mainly to man in a world of technical geniuses. Nonethe-
computer geeks, periodically bundling to- less, he managed to synthesize two seemingly
gether new versions that included the latest irreconcilable business models, placing Red
upgrades from countless independent devel- Hat on a path to tremendous success. His re-
opers. As Red Hat looked to grow beyond sponse to his strategic dilemma was to com-
its $1 million in annual sales, it could have bine the free-software model’s low product
chosen one of the two basic business models price with the proprietary model’s profitable
in the software industry.

page 76 harvard business review • june 2007

How Successful Leaders Think

service component, in the process creating tage, it would have gone to waste if our species We often don’t know
something new: a corporate market for the had not exercised it in ever more sophisticated what to do with
Linux operating system. As is often the case ways. When we engage in something like writ- fundamentally opposing
with integrative thinking, Young included ing, we train the muscles involved and the models. Our first impulse
some twists on both models that made the brain that controls them. Without exploring is usually to determine
synthesis work. the possibilities of opposition, we wouldn’t have which is “right” and, by
developed either its physical properties or the the process of
Although inspired by the proprietary cognition that accompanies and animates it. elimination, which is
model, Red Hat’s service offering was quite “wrong.”
different. “If you ran into a bug that caused Analogously, we were born with opposable
your systems to crash,” Young said of the ser- minds, which allow us to hold two conflicting
vice you’d buy from the big proprietary shops, ideas in constructive, almost dialectic tension.
“you would call up the manufacturer and say, We can use that tension to think our way
‘My systems are crashing.’ And he’d say, ‘Oh, toward new, superior ideas. Were we able to
dear,’ while he really meant, ‘Oh, good.’ He’d hold only one thought or idea in our heads at a
send an engineer over at several hundred time, we wouldn’t have access to the insights
dollars an hour to fix his software, which was that the opposable mind can produce.
broken when he delivered it to you, and he’d
call that customer service.” Red Hat, by con- Unfortunately, because people don’t exercise
trast, helped companies manage the upgrades this capability much, great integrative think-
and improvements available almost daily ers are fairly rare. Why is this potentially pow-
through Linux’s open-source platform. erful but generally latent tool used so infre-
quently and to less than full advantage?
Young also made a crucial change to what Because putting it to work makes us anxious.
had been the somewhat misleadingly dubbed Most of us avoid complexity and ambiguity
free-software model: He actually gave the soft- and seek out the comfort of simplicity and clar-
ware away, repackaging it as a free download ity. To cope with the dizzying complexity of the
on the Internet rather than as an inexpensive world around us, we simplify where we can.
but cumbersome CD-ROM. This allowed Red We crave the certainty of choosing between
Hat to break away from the multitude of small well-defined alternatives and the closure that
Linux packagers by acquiring the scale and comes when a decision has been made.
market leadership to generate faith among
cautious corporate customers in what would For those reasons, we often don’t know what
become Red Hat’s central offering—service, to do with fundamentally opposing and seem-
not software. ingly incommensurable models. Our first im-
pulse is usually to determine which of the two
In 1999, Red Hat went public, and Young models is “right” and, by the process of elimi-
became a billionaire on the first day of trading. nation, which is “wrong.” We may even take
By 2000, Linux had captured 25% of the server sides and try to prove that our chosen model is
operating system market, and Red Hat held better than the other one. But in rejecting one
more than 50% of the global market for Linux model out of hand, we miss out on all the
systems. Unlike the vast majority of dot-com value that we could have realized by consider-
era start-ups, Red Hat has continued to grow. ing the opposing two at the same time and
finding in the tension clues to a superior
What enabled Young to resolve the apparent model. By forcing a choice between the two,
choice between two unattractive models? It we disengage the opposable mind before it can
was his use of an innate but underdeveloped seek a creative resolution.
human characteristic, something we might
call—in a metaphor that echoes another This nearly universal personal trait is writ
human trait—the opposable mind. large in most organizations. When a colleague
admonishes us to “quit complicating the issue,”
Human beings are distinguished from it’s not just an impatient reminder to get on
nearly every other creature by a physical fea- with the damn job—it’s also a plea to keep the
ture: the opposable thumb. Thanks to the ten- complexity at a comfortable level.
sion that we can create by opposing the thumb
and fingers, we can do marvelous things— To take advantage of our opposable minds,
write, thread a needle, guide a catheter we must resist our natural leaning toward sim-
through an artery. Although evolution pro- plicity and certainty. Bob Young recognized
vided human beings with this potential advan- from the beginning that he wasn’t bound to

harvard business review • june 2007 page 77

How Successful Leaders Think

choose one of the two prevailing software busi- tive about integrative thinkers is how they
ness models. He saw the unpleasant trade-offs approach the steps. (See the exhibit “Conven-
he’d have to make if he chose between the two tional Versus Integrative Thinking.”)
as a signal to rethink the problem from the
ground up. And he didn’t rest until he found Determining salience. The first step is figur-
a new model that grew out of the tension ing out which factors to take into account. The
between them. conventional approach is to discard as many as
possible—or not even to consider some of them
Basically, Young refused to settle for an in the first place. In order to reduce our expo-
“either-or” choice. That phrase has come up sure to uncomfortable complexity, we filter out
time and again in my interviews with success- salient features when considering an issue.
ful leaders. When asked whether he thought
strategy or execution was more important, We also do this because of how most orga-
Jack Welch responded: “I don’t think it’s an nizations are structured. Each functional spe-
‘either-or.’” Similarly, Procter & Gamble CEO cialty has its own narrow view of what merits
A.G. Lafley—when asked how he came up with consideration. Finance departments haven’t
a turnaround plan that drew on both cost traditionally regarded emotional factors as
cutting and investment in innovation—said: salient; similarly, departments concerned with
“We weren’t going to win if it were an ‘or.’ organizational behavior have often ignored
Everybody can do ‘or.’” quantitative questions. Managers pressure
employees to limit their view of what’s salient
The Four Stages of Decision Making to match the department’s doctrine, leaving
people with only a subset of the factors to
So what does the process of integrative think- which they might otherwise have produc-
ing look like? How do integrative thinkers con- tively paid attention.
sider their options in a way that leads to new
possibilities and not merely back to the same When our decisions turn out badly, we often
inadequate alternatives? They work through recognize after the fact that we’ve failed to
four related but distinct stages. The steps consider factors that are significant to those
themselves aren’t particular to integrative outside the immediate reach of our jobs or
thinking: Everyone goes through them while functional specialties. We say to ourselves, “I
thinking through a decision. What’s distinc- should have thought about how the employees
in our European operation would have inter-

Conventional Versus Integrative Thinking

When responding to problems or challenges, leaders work through four steps. Those who are conventional thinkers seek simplicity along the
way and are often forced to make unattractive trade-offs. By contrast, integrative thinkers welcome complexity—even if it means repeating one
or more of the steps—and this allows them to craft innovative solutions.

1Determining 2 Analyzing 3 Envisioning 4 Achieving
Salience Causality the Decision Resolution
CONVENTIONAL Focus only on Architecture
THINKERS obviously relevant Consider one-way, Make either-or
features linear relationships Break problems into choices; settle for
between variables, pieces and work on best available
in which more of A them separately or options
produces more of B sequentially

INTEGRATIVE Seek less obvious Consider See problems as a Creatively resolve
THINKERS but potentially multidirectional whole, examining how tensions among
relevant factors and nonlinear the parts fit together opposing ideas;
relationships and how decisions generate innovative
among variables affect one another outcomes

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How Successful Leaders Think

preted the wording of that memo” or “I should Linux, service was a bigger selling point than Integrative thinkers don’t
have thought about the state’s road-repair product and that a vendor’s long-term credibil- mind a messy problem.
program before choosing a site for our new dis- ity was crucial. In fact, they welcome
tribution center.” The integrative thinker, by complexity, because
contrast, actively seeks less obvious but poten- Analyzing causality. In the second step of that’s where the best
tially relevant factors. Of course, more salient decision making, you analyze how the nu- answers come from.
features make for a messier problem, but inte- merous salient factors relate to one another.
grative thinkers don’t mind the mess. In fact, Conventional thinkers tend to take the same
they embrace it, because it assures them that narrow view of causality that they do of sa-
they haven’t dismissed anything that may illu- lience. The simplest type of all is a straight-line
minate the problem as a whole. They welcome causal relationship. It’s no accident that linear
complexity, because that’s where the best regression is the business world’s preferred
answers come from. They are confident that tool for establishing relationships between
they’ll find their way through it and emerge on variables. Other tools are available, of course,
the other side with a clear resolution. but most managers shun them because they’re
harder to use. How many times has a superior
In his thinking about a new business model scolded you for making a problem more com-
for Red Hat, Bob Young added into his calcula- plicated than it needs to be? You protest that
tions something ignored both by software you’re not trying to complicate anything; you
companies generally and by Linux suppliers in just want to see the problem as it really is. Your
particular: the day-to-day concerns of corpo- boss tells you to stick to your job, and a poten-
rate CIOs and their systems administrators. tially complex relationship becomes a linear
Doing this allowed him to envision an innova- one in which more of A produces more of B.
tive model that tapped into an entirely new
market for Linux-based products and services. When we make bad decisions, sometimes it
is because we got the causal links between sa-
As a whole, the software industry disdains lient features wrong. We may have been right
CIOs’ reluctance to buy the newest and best about the direction of a relationship but wrong
technology, attributing it to timidity or strict about the magnitude: “I thought that our costs
adherence to the “you’ll never get fired for buy- would decrease much faster than they actually
ing IBM” mantra. Young not only empathized did as our scale grew.” Or we may have gotten
with the CIOs but found their caution under- the direction of a relationship wrong: “I
standable.“It’s not FUD—fear, uncertainty, and thought that our capacity to serve clients
doubt,” he said.“It’s sensible.” would increase when we hired a new batch of
consultants, but it actually shrank, because the
Linux software was an entirely new product experienced consultants had to spend a huge
for corporate buyers, one that didn’t follow any amount of their time training the new ones
familiar rules. It was free. No one supplier con- and fixing their rookie mistakes.”
trolled it. Thousands of versions were out
there, and each one changed nearly every The integrative thinker isn’t afraid to ques-
day. From the CIOs’ perspective, that Linux tion the validity of apparently obvious links
was cheaper and better than Windows-based or to consider multidirectional and nonlinear
products—the basic sales message delivered by relationships. So, for example, rather than sim-
Red Hat’s rivals—played a relatively small part ply thinking, “That competitor’s price-cutting
in the calculation. The CIOs were thinking is hurting our bottom line,” the integrative
about whether their investment would be in a thinker may conclude, “Our product intro-
stable and consistent platform that would duction really upset our rivals. Now they’re
work across their organizations and whether cutting prices in response, and our profitabil-
their suppliers would still be around in ten or ity is suffering.”
15 years. Systems administrators worried that
the complexity of Linux—with its random and The most interesting causal link that Young
almost daily upgrades—would create a man- identified was the rather subtle one between
agement nightmare, since different teams of the free availability of Red Hat software’s basic
people throughout the company would have components and the likely—or inevitable, in
to maintain the software packages. Young’s view—evolution of the industry. The
relationships he saw between pricing, profit-
Viewing these concerns as salient helped ability, and distribution channel drove his
lead Young to conclude that, in the case of company in a different direction from its

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How Successful Leaders Think

Linux competitors, which saw a perfectly good and distribution of Red Hat’s original software
market for their “free” software. This is what product. Would their individual answers,
allowed him to create and then lock up the agglomerated into an overall Red Hat strategy,
new corporate market. have produced the spectacularly successful
new business model that Young came up with?
For example, Young recognized the vulner- It doesn’t seem all that likely.
ability of a product based on freely available
components. Whatever you charged for the Integrative thinkers don’t break down a
convenience of getting a Linux operating sys- problem into independent pieces and work on
tem bundled together on one CD-ROM, inevi- them separately or in a certain order. They see
tably “someone else would come in and price the entire architecture of the problem—how
it lower,” he said. “It was a commodity in the the various parts of it fit together, how one
truest sense of the word.” He also realized decision will affect another. Just as important,
that a company that wasn’t a current rival— they hold all of those pieces suspended in
say, a big electronics retailer—could put to- their minds at once. They don’t parcel out the
gether a Linux product of its own and then elements for others to work on piecemeal or
push it through its own well-developed dis- let one element temporarily drop out of sight,
tribution channel, leaving Red Hat and only to be taken up again for consideration
other suppliers out in the cold. “I knew I after everything else has been decided. An
needed a product I had some control over so I architect doesn’t ask his subordinates to design
could make CompUSA a customer”—that is, a a perfect bathroom and a perfect living room
corporate purchaser of Red Hat’s service and a perfect kitchen, and then hope that the
package—“rather than a competitor” with its pieces of the house will fit nicely together. A
own CD-ROM product. business executive doesn’t design a product be-
fore considering the costs of manufacturing it.
The causal relationships spotted by Young
weren’t earth-shattering on their own, but Young held simultaneously in his head a
putting them together helped Young create a number of issues: the feelings and the chal-
more nuanced picture of the industry’s future lenges of chief information officers and sys-
than his competitors were able to. tems administrators, the dynamics of both
the individual and the corporate markets for
Envisioning the decision architecture. operating system software, the evolving eco-
With a good handle on the causal relation- nomics of the free-software business, and the
ships between salient features, you’re ready to motivations behind the major players in the
turn to the decision itself. But which decision? proprietary-software business. Each factor
Even the simple question of whether to go to a could have pushed him toward a separate
movie tonight involves deciding, at the very decision on how to address the challenge. But
least, which movie to see, which theater to go he delayed making decisions and considered
to, and which showing to attend. The order in the relationships between these issues as he
which you make these decisions will affect slowly moved toward the creation of a new
the outcome. For example, you may not be business model, one based on the belief that
able to see your preferred movie if you’ve dominant market share would be critical to
already decided you need to be back in time to Red Hat’s success.
relieve a babysitter who has plans for later in
the evening. When you’re trying to invent a Achieving resolution. All of these stages—
new business model, the number of decision- determining what is salient, analyzing the
making variables explodes. And with that causal relationships between the salient
comes the impulse not only to establish a strict factors, examining the architecture of the
sequence in which issues will be considered problem—lead to an outcome. Too often, we
but also to dole out pieces of a decision so that accept an unpleasant trade-off with relatively
various parties—often, different corporate little complaint, since it appears to be the best
functions—can work on them separately. alternative. That’s because by the time we
have reached this stage, our desire for simplic-
What usually happens is that everyone loses ity has led us to ignore opportunities in the
sight of the overriding issue, and a mediocre previous three steps to discover interesting
outcome results. Suppose that Bob Young had and novel ways around the trade-off. Instead
delegated to different functional heads ques- of rebelling against the meager and unattrac-
tions concerning the pricing, enhancement,

page 80 harvard business review • june 2007

How Successful Leaders Think

tive alternatives, instead of refusing to settle son that life is about accepting unattractive
for the best available bad choice, the conven- trade-offs. Fundamentally, the conventional
tional thinker shrugs and asks, “What else thinker prefers to accept the world just as it is,
could we have done?” whereas the integrative thinker welcomes the
challenge of shaping the world for the better.
“Much else,” the integrative thinker says. A
leader who embraces holistic rather than seg- Given the benefits of integrative thinking,
mented thinking can creatively resolve the you have to ask, “If I’m not an integrative
tensions that launched the decision-making thinker, can I learn to be one?” In F. Scott
process. The actions associated with the search Fitzgerald’s view, only people with “first-rate
for such resolution—creating delays, sending intelligence” can continue to function while
teams back to examine things more deeply, holding two opposing ideas in their heads.
generating new options at the 11th hour—can But I refuse to believe that the ability to
appear irresolute from the outside. Indeed, the use our opposable minds is a gift reserved
integrative thinker may even be dissatisfied for a small minority of people. I prefer the
with the fresh batch of options he’s come up view suggested by Thomas C. Chamberlin, a
with, in which case he may go back and start nineteenth-century American geologist and
over. When a satisfactory outcome does emerge, former president of the University of Wiscon-
though, it is inevitably due to the leader’s refusal sin. More than 100 years ago, Chamberlin
to accept trade-offs and conventional options. wrote an article in Science magazine proposing
the idea of “multiple working hypotheses” as
The outcome in the case of Red Hat was an improvement over the most commonly em-
completely unconventional—not many com- ployed scientific method of the time: testing
panies suddenly decide to give away their the validity of a single hypothesis through
products—and ultimately successful. Young’s trial and error. Chamberlin argued that his ap-
gradual realization that only one player in his proach would provide more accurate explana-
industry would have leverage with and support tions of scientific phenomena by taking into
from corporate customers—and that such le- account “the co-ordination of several agencies,
verage and support could reap attractive service which enter into the combined result in
revenues from totally free software—shaped varying proportions.” While acknowledging
the dramatically creative decision he made. the cognitive challenges posed by such an
approach, Chamberlin wrote that it “devel-
The thinking that he intuitively engaged in ops a habit of thought analogous to the
is very different from the thinking that pro- method itself, which may be designated a
duces most managerial decisions. But, he said, habit of parallel or complex thought. Instead
his experience was hardly unique: “People are of a simple succession of thoughts in linear
often faced with difficult choices—for instance, order…the mind appears to become possessed
‘Do I want to be the high-quality, high-cost of the power of simultaneous vision from
supplier or the low-quality, low-cost supplier?’ different standpoints.”
We’re trained to examine the pros and cons of
such alternatives and then pick one of them. Similarly, I believe that integrative thinking
But really successful businesspeople look at is a “habit of thought” that all of us can con-
choices like these and say, ‘I don’t like either sciously develop to arrive at solutions that would
one.’” Using that recurring phrase, he added: otherwise not be evident. First, there needs to
“They don’t accept that it’s an ‘either-or.’” be greater general awareness of integrative
thinking as a concept. Then, over time, we can
Born and Bred teach it in our business schools—an endeavor
that colleagues and I are currently working on.
The consequences of integrative thinking and At some point, integrative thinking will no
conventional thinking couldn’t be more dis- longer be just a tacit skill (cultivated know-
tinct. Integrative thinking generates options ingly or not) in the heads of a select few.
and new solutions. It creates a sense of limitless
possibility. Conventional thinking glosses over Reprint R0706C
potential solutions and fosters the illusion that To order, see the next page
creative solutions don’t actually exist. With or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500
integrative thinking, aspirations rise over time. or go to www.hbrreprints.org
With conventional thinking, they wear away
with every apparent reinforcement of the les-

harvard business review • june 2007 page 81

How Successful Leaders Think

Further Reading

ARTICLE
The Seasoned Executive’s Decision-
Making Style
by Kenneth R. Brousseau, Michael J. Driver,
Gary Hourihan, and Rikard Larsson
Harvard Business Review
February 2006
Product no. R0602F
The authors affirm the importance of “integra-
tive thinking” to leadership success. But they
also argue that integrative thinking may not
always create advantage for lower-level man-
agers. At lower levels, the job is to get widgets
out the door (or solve glitches on the spot).
Action is at a premium. At higher levels, the
job involves making decisions about which
widgets or services to offer and how to de-
velop them. To climb the corporate ladder
and be effective in new roles, managers must
change their decision-making styles. Making
decisions like a full-fledged senior executive
too soon can hurl an ambitious manager right
off the fast track. And it’s just as destructive to
act like a first-line supervisor after being
bumped up to senior management. By under-
standing the distinguishing characteristics of
four different decision-making styles, manag-
ers can ensure that they use the right ones
during each stage in their career.

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Teams whose members come Managing
from different nations and Multicultural Teams
backgrounds place special
demands on managers— by Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and Mary C. Kern
especially when a feuding
team looks to the boss for help
with a conflict.

Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article:

87 Article Summary
The Idea in Brief—the core idea
The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work

89 Managing Multicultural Teams

97 Further Reading
A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further
exploration of the article’s ideas and applications

Reprint R0611D page 85

Managing Multicultural Teams

The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice • Differing attitudes toward hierarchy. Team
members from hierarchical cultures expect
If your company does business internation- FOUR BARRIERS to be treated differently according to their
ally, you’re probably leading teams with status in the organization. Members from
members from diverse cultural back- The following cultural differences can cause egalitarian cultures do not. Failure of some
grounds. Those differences can present destructive conflicts in a team: members to honor those expectations can
serious obstacles. For example, some cause humiliation or loss of stature and
members’ lack of fluency in the team’s • Direct versus indirect communication. credibility.
dominant language can lead others to Some team members use direct, explicit
underestimate their competence. When such communication while others are indirect, • Conflicting decision-making norms.
obstacles arise, your team can stalemate. for example, asking questions instead of Members vary in how quickly they make
pointing out problems with a project. decisions and in how much analysis they
To get the team moving again, avoid inter- When members see such differences as require beforehand. Someone who prefers
vening directly, advise Brett, Behfar, and violations of their culture’s communication making decisions quickly may grow frus-
Kern. Though sometimes necessary, your norms, relationships can suffer. trated with those who need more time.
involvement can prevent team members
from solving problems themselves—and • Trouble with accents and fluency. Mem- FOUR INTERVENTIONS
learning from that process. bers who aren’t fluent in the team’s
dominant language may have difficulty Your team’s unique circumstances can help
Instead, choose one of three indirect inter- communicating their knowledge. This can you determine how to respond to multicul-
ventions. When possible, encourage team prevent the team from using their expertise tural conflicts. Consider these options:
members to adapt by acknowledging cul- and create frustration or perceptions of
tural gaps and working around them. If incompetence.
your team isn’t able to be open about their
differences, consider structural interven- Intervention Type When to Use Example
tion (e.g., reassigning members to reduce
COPYRIGHT © 2007 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. interpersonal friction). As a last resort, use Adaptation: Members are willing An American engineer working on a team that included
an exit strategy (e.g., removing a member working with or to acknowledge Israelis was shocked by their in-your-face, argumentative
from the team). around differences cultural differences style. Once he noticed they confronted each other
and figure out how to and not just him—and still worked well together—he
There’s no one right way to tackle multicul- live with them. realized confrontations weren’t personal attacks and
tural problems. But understanding four accepted their style.
barriers to team success can help you begin Structural The team has
evaluating possible responses. intervention: obvious subgroups, An international research team’s leader realized that
reorganizing to or members cling to when he led meetings, members “shut down” because
reduce friction negative stereotypes they felt intimidated by his executive status. After he
of one another. hired a consultant to run future meetings, members
Managerial participated more.
intervention: Rarely; for instance,
making final a new team A software development team’s lingua franca was
decisions without needs guidance English, but some members spoke with pronounced
team involvement in establishing accents. The manager explained they’d been chosen
productive norms. for their task expertise, not fluency in English. And she
directed them to tell customers: “I realize I have an
Exit: voluntary or Emotions are running accent. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, just stop
involuntary removal high, and too much me and ask questions.”
of a team member face has been lost on
When two members of a multicultural consulting
both sides to salvage team couldn’t resolve their disagreement over how to
the situation. approach problems, one member left the firm.

page 87

Teams whose members come from different nations and backgrounds
place special demands on managers—especially when a feuding team
looks to the boss for help with a conflict.

Managing
Multicultural Teams

by Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and Mary C. Kern

COPYRIGHT © 2006 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. When a major international software devel- details that the team should have been able to
oper needed to produce a new product handle itself. The manager became so bogged
quickly, the project manager assembled a down by quotidian issues that the project ca-
team of employees from India and the United reened hopelessly off even the most pessimis-
States. From the start the team members tic schedule—and the team never learned to
could not agree on a delivery date for the work together effectively.
product. The Americans thought the work
could be done in two to three weeks; the Indi- Multicultural teams often generate frus-
ans predicted it would take two to three trating management dilemmas. Cultural dif-
months. As time went on, the Indian team ferences can create substantial obstacles to
members proved reluctant to report setbacks effective teamwork—but these may be sub-
in the production process, which the Ameri- tle and difficult to recognize until significant
can team members would find out about only damage has already been done. As in the
when work was due to be passed to them. case above, which the manager involved told
Such conflicts, of course, may affect any team, us about, managers may create more prob-
but in this case they arose from cultural differ- lems than they resolve by intervening. The
ences. As tensions mounted, conflict over de- challenge in managing multicultural teams
livery dates and feedback became personal, effectively is to recognize underlying cul-
disrupting team members’ communication tural causes of conflict, and to intervene in
about even mundane issues. The project ways that both get the team back on track
manager decided he had to intervene—with and empower its members to deal with
the result that both the American and the future challenges themselves.
Indian team members came to rely on him
for direction regarding minute operational We interviewed managers and members of
multicultural teams from all over the world.
These interviews, combined with our deep

harvard business review • november 2006 page 89

Managing Multicultural Teams

Jeanne Brett is the DeWitt W. research on dispute resolution and teamwork, Japanese customer-data system explained the
Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished led us to conclude that the wrong kind of man- problems her team was having this way: “In
Professor of Dispute Resolution and agerial intervention may sideline valuable Japan, they want to talk and discuss. Then we
Organizations and the director of the members who should be participating or, take a break and they talk within the organi-
Dispute Resolution Research Center at worse, create resistance, resulting in poor team zation. They want to make sure that there’s
Northwestern University’s Kellogg performance. We’re not talking here about re- harmony in the rest of the organization. One
School of Management in Evanston, specting differing national standards for doing of the hardest lessons for me was when I
Illinois. Kristin Behfar is an assistant business, such as accounting practices. We’re thought they were saying yes but they just
professor at the Paul Merage School of referring to day-to-day working problems meant ‘I’m listening to you.’”
Business at the University of California among team members that can keep multicul-
at Irvine. Mary C. Kern is an assistant tural teams from realizing the very gains they The differences between direct and indirect
professor at the Zicklin School of Busi- were set up to harvest, such as knowledge of communication can cause serious damage
ness at Baruch College in New York. different product markets, culturally sensitive to relationships when team projects run into
customer service, and 24-hour work rotations. problems. When the American manager
quoted above discovered that several flaws
The good news is that cultural challenges in the system would significantly disrupt com-
are manageable if managers and team mem- pany operations, she pointed this out in an
bers choose the right strategy and avoid e-mail to her American boss and the Japanese
imposing single-culture-based approaches on team members. Her boss appreciated the
multicultural situations. direct warnings; her Japanese colleagues were
embarrassed, because she had violated their
The Challenges norms for uncovering and discussing prob-
lems. Their reaction was to provide her with
People tend to assume that challenges on mul- less access to the people and information
ticultural teams arise from differing styles of she needed to monitor progress. They would
communication. But this is only one of the probably have responded better if she had
four categories that, according to our research, pointed out the problems indirectly—for
can create barriers to a team’s ultimate suc- example, by asking them what would happen
cess. These categories are direct versus indi- if a certain part of the system was not func-
rect communication; trouble with accents and tioning properly, even though she knew full
fluency; differing attitudes toward hierarchy well that it was malfunctioning and also what
and authority; and conflicting norms for the implications were.
decision making.
As our research indicates is so often true,
Direct versus indirect communication. communication challenges create barriers to
Communication in Western cultures is typi- effective teamwork by reducing information
cally direct and explicit. The meaning is on sharing, creating interpersonal conflict, or
the surface, and a listener doesn’t have to both. In Japan, a typical response to direct
know much about the context or the speaker confrontation is to isolate the norm violator.
to interpret it. This is not true in many other This American manager was isolated not just
cultures, where meaning is embedded in the socially but also physically. She told us, “They
way the message is presented. For example, literally put my office in a storage room,
Western negotiators get crucial information where I had desks stacked from floor to ceil-
about the other party’s preferences and prior- ing and I was the only person there. So they
ities by asking direct questions, such as “Do totally isolated me, which was a pretty loud
you prefer option A or option B?” In cultures signal to me that I was not a part of the inside
that use indirect communication, negotiators circle and that they would communicate with
may have to infer preferences and priorities me only as needed.”
from changes—or the lack of them—in the
other party’s settlement proposal. In cross- Her direct approach had been intended to
cultural negotiations, the non-Westerner can solve a problem, and in one sense, it did, be-
understand the direct communications of the cause her project was launched problem-
Westerner, but the Westerner has difficulty free. But her norm violations exacerbated
understanding the indirect communications the challenges of working with her Japanese
of the non-Westerner. colleagues and limited her ability to uncover
any other problems that might have derailed
An American manager who was leading a the project later on.
project to build an interface for a U.S. and

page 90 harvard business review • november 2006

Managing Multicultural Teams

Trouble with accents and fluency. Although discussed only inconsequential current events Team members who are
the language of international business is En- and sports, in case any of the Koreans spoke uncomfortable on flat
glish, misunderstandings or deep frustration Spanish. Members of the team who didn’t teams may, by deferring
may occur because of nonnative speakers’ speak Spanish pretended to participate, to to higher-status
accents, lack of fluency, or problems with trans- the great amusement of their teammates. teammates, damage their
lation or usage. These may also influence This approach proved effective: It conveyed to stature and credibility—
perceptions of status or competence. the Koreans in an appropriately indirect way and even face
that their caucuses in Korean were frustrating humiliation—if most of
For example, a Latin American member of and annoying to the other side. As a result, the team is from an
a multicultural consulting team lamented, both teams cut back on sidebar conversations. egalitarian culture.
“Many times I felt that because of the lan-
guage difference, I didn’t have the words to say Differing attitudes toward hierarchy and
some things that I was thinking. I noticed that authority. A challenge inherent in multicul-
when I went to these interviews with the U.S. tural teamwork is that by design, teams have
guy, he would tend to lead the interviews, a rather flat structure. But team members
which was understandable but also disappoint- from some cultures, in which people are
ing, because we are at the same level. I had treated differently according to their status in
very good questions, but he would take an organization, are uncomfortable on flat
the lead.” teams. If they defer to higher-status team
members, their behavior will be seen as ap-
When we interviewed an American mem- propriate when most of the team comes from
ber of a U.S.-Japanese team that was assessing a hierarchical culture; but they may damage
the potential expansion of a U.S. retail chain their stature and credibility—and even face
into Japan, she described one American team- humiliation—if most of the team comes from
mate this way: “He was not interested in the an egalitarian culture.
Japanese consultants’ feedback and felt that
because they weren’t as fluent as he was, they One manager of Mexican heritage, who was
weren’t intelligent enough and, therefore, working on a credit and underwriting team
could add no value.” The team member de- for a bank, told us, “In Mexican culture, you’re
scribed was responsible for assessing one as- always supposed to be humble. So whether
pect of the feasibility of expansion into Japan. you understand something or not, you’re sup-
Without input from the Japanese experts, posed to put it in the form of a question. You
he risked overestimating opportunities and have to keep it open-ended, out of respect. I
underestimating challenges. think that actually worked against me, be-
cause the Americans thought I really didn’t
Nonfluent team members may well be the know what I was talking about. So it made
most expert on the team, but their difficulty me feel like they thought I was wavering on
communicating knowledge makes it hard my answer.”
for the team to recognize and utilize their ex-
pertise. If teammates become frustrated or When, as a result of differing cultural
impatient with a lack of fluency, interper- norms, team members believe they’ve been
sonal conflicts can arise. Nonnative speakers treated disrespectfully, the whole project can
may become less motivated to contribute, or blow up. In another Korean-U.S. negotiation,
anxious about their performance evaluations the American members of a due diligence
and future career prospects. The organiza- team were having difficulty getting informa-
tion as a whole pays a greater price: Its invest- tion from their Korean counterparts, so they
ment in a multicultural team fails to pay off. complained directly to higher-level Korean
management, nearly wrecking the deal. The
Some teams, we learned, use language dif- higher-level managers were offended because
ferences to resolve (rather than create) ten- hierarchy is strictly adhered to in Korean or-
sions. A team of U.S. and Latin American ganizations and culture. It should have been
buyers was negotiating with a team from a their own lower-level people, not the U.S.
Korean supplier. The negotiations took place team members, who came to them with a
in Korea, but the discussions were conducted problem. And the Korean team members
in English. Frequently the Koreans would were mortified that their bosses had been
caucus at the table by speaking Korean. The involved before they themselves could brief
buyers, frustrated, would respond by appear- them. The crisis was resolved only when high-
ing to caucus in Spanish—though they

harvard business review • november 2006 page 91

Managing Multicultural Teams

level U.S. managers made a trip to Korea, first step. The more crucial step is assessing
conveying appropriate respect for their the circumstances—or “enabling situational
Korean counterparts. conditions”—under which the team is work-
ing. For example, does the project allow any
Conflicting norms for decision making. flexibility for change, or do deadlines make
Cultures differ enormously when it comes to that impossible? Are there additional re-
decision making—particularly, how quickly sources available that might be tapped? Is
decisions should be made and how much the team permanent or temporary? Does the
analysis is required beforehand. Not surpris- team’s manager have the autonomy to make a
ingly, U.S. managers like to make decisions decision about changing the team in some
very quickly and with relatively little analysis way? Once the situational conditions have
by comparison with managers from other been analyzed, the team’s leader can identify
countries. an appropriate response (see the exhibit
“Identifying the Right Strategy”).
A Brazilian manager at an American com-
pany who was negotiating to buy Korean prod- Adaptation. Some teams find ways to work
ucts destined for Latin America told us, “On with or around the challenges they face,
the first day, we agreed on three points, and on adapting practices or attitudes without mak-
the second day, the U.S.-Spanish side wanted to ing changes to the group’s membership or
start with point four. But the Korean side assignments. Adaptation works when team
wanted to go back and rediscuss points one members are willing to acknowledge and
through three. My boss almost had an attack.” name their cultural differences and to assume
responsibility for figuring out how to live with
What U.S. team members learn from an ex- them. It’s often the best possible approach to a
perience like this is that the American way problem, because it typically involves less
simply cannot be imposed on other cultures. managerial time than other strategies; and be-
Managers from other cultures may, for exam- cause team members participate in solving the
ple, decline to share information until they problem themselves, they learn from the pro-
understand the full scope of a project. But cess. When team members have this mind-set,
they have learned that they can’t simply ig- they can be creative about protecting their
nore the desire of their American counter- own substantive differences while acceding to
parts to make decisions quickly. What to do? the processes of others.
The best solution seems to be to make minor
concessions on process—to learn to adjust to An American software engineer located
and even respect another approach to deci- in Ireland who was working with an Israeli
sion making. For example, American manag- account management team from his own
ers have learned to keep their impatient company told us how shocked he was by the
bosses away from team meetings and give Israelis’ in-your-face style: “There were defi-
them frequent if brief updates. A comparable nitely different ways of approaching issues and
lesson for managers from other cultures is to discussing them. There is something pretty
be explicit about what they need—saying, common to the Israeli culture: They like to ar-
for example, “We have to see the big picture gue. I tend to try to collaborate more, and it
before we talk details.” got very stressful for me until I figured out
how to kind of merge the cultures.”
Four Strategies
The software engineer adapted. He im-
The most successful teams and managers we posed some structure on the Israelis that
interviewed used four strategies for dealing helped him maintain his own style of being
with these challenges: adaptation (acknowl- thoroughly prepared; that accommodation
edging cultural gaps openly and working enabled him to accept the Israeli style. He
around them), structural intervention (chang- also noticed that team members weren’t
ing the shape of the team), managerial inter- just confronting him; they confronted one
vention (setting norms early or bringing in a another but were able to work together effec-
higher-level manager), and exit (removing a tively nevertheless. He realized that the con-
team member when other options have frontation was not personal but cultural.
failed). There is no one right way to deal with
a particular kind of multicultural problem; In another example, an American member
identifying the type of challenge is only the of a postmerger consulting team was frus-

page 92 harvard business review • november 2006

Managing Multicultural Teams

trated by the hierarchy of the French com- attention from political scientists and from
pany his team was working with. He felt that government officials dealing with multicul-
a meeting with certain French managers who tural populations that want to protect their
were not directly involved in the merger cultures rather than integrate or assimilate. If
“wouldn’t deliver any value to me or for pur- the team had relied exclusively on the Ameri-
poses of the project,” but said that he had cans’ “forge ahead” approach, it might not
come to understand that “it was very impor- have recognized the pitfalls that lay ahead
tant to really involve all the people there” if and might later have had to back up and start
the integration was ultimately to work. over. Meanwhile, the UK members would
have been gritting their teeth and saying “We
A U.S. and UK multicultural team tried to told you things were moving too fast.” If the
use their differing approaches to decision team had used the “Let’s think about this” UK
making to reach a higher-quality decision. approach, it might have wasted a lot of time
This approach, called fusion, is getting serious

Identifying the Right Strategy

The most successful teams and managers we interviewed use four strategies for dealing with problems: adaptation (acknowledging cultural
gaps openly and working around them), structural intervention (changing the shape of the team), managerial intervention (setting norms
early or bringing in a higher-level manager), and exit (removing a team member when other options have failed). Adaptation is the ideal strat-
egy because the team works effectively to solve its own problem with minimal input from management—and, most important, learns from the
experience. The guide below can help you identify the right strategy once you have identified both the problem and the “enabling situational
conditions” that apply to the team.

REPRESENTATIVE ENABLING SITUATIONAL STRATEGY COMPLICATING
PROBLEMS CONDITIONS Adaptation FACTORS

• Conflict arises from decision- • Team members can attribute a • Team members must
making differences challenge to culture rather than be exceptionally aware
• Misunderstanding or stone- personality • Negotiating a common
walling arises from commu- • Higher-level managers are not understanding takes
nication differences available or the team would be time
embarrassed to involve them

• The team is affected by emo- • The team can be subdivided Structural • If team members aren’t
tional tensions relating to flu- to mix cultures or expertise Intervention carefully distributed, sub-
ency issues or prejudice groups can strengthen
• Tasks can be subdivided preexisting differences
• Team members are inhibited
by perceived status differ- • Subgroup solutions
ences among teammates have to fit back together

• Violations of hierarchy have • The problem has produced Managerial • The team becomes
resulted in loss of face a high level of emotion Intervention overly dependent
on the manager
• An absence of ground rules • The team has reached
is causing conflict a stalemate • Team members may
be sidelined or resistant
• A higher-level manager is able
and willing to intervene

• A team member cannot ad- • The team is permanent rather Exit • Talent and training
just to the challenge at hand than temporary costs are lost
and has become unable to
contribute to the project • Emotions are beyond the point
of intervention

• Too much face has been lost

harvard business review • november 2006 page 93

Managing Multicultural Teams

trying to identify every pitfall, including team members got to know and respect
the most unlikely, while the U.S. members everyone else on the team.
chomped at the bit and muttered about anal-
ysis paralysis. The strength of this team was The subgrouping technique involves risks,
that some of its members were willing to however. It buffers people who are not work-
forge ahead and some were willing to work ing well together or not participating in
through pitfalls. To accommodate them all, the larger group for one reason or another.
the team did both—moving not quite as fast as Sooner or later the team will have to assem-
the U.S. members would have on their own and ble the pieces that the subgroups have come
not quite as thoroughly as the UK members up with, so this approach relies on another
would have. structural intervention: Someone must be-
come a mediator in order to see that the
Structural intervention. A structural inter- various pieces fit together.
vention is a deliberate reorganization or re-
assignment designed to reduce interpersonal Managerial intervention. When a manager
friction or to remove a source of conflict behaves like an arbitrator or a judge, making
for one or more groups. This approach can be a final decision without team involvement,
extremely effective when obvious subgroups neither the manager nor the team gains
demarcate the team (for example, headquar- much insight into why the team has stale-
ters versus national subsidiaries) or if team mated. But it is possible for team members to
members are proud, defensive, threatened, use managerial intervention effectively to
or clinging to negative stereotypes of one sort out problems.
another.
When an American refinery-safety expert
A member of an investment research team with significant experience throughout East
scattered across continental Europe, the UK, Asia got stymied during a project in China,
and the U.S. described for us how his man- she called in her company’s higher-level
ager resolved conflicts stemming from status managers in Beijing to talk to the higher-
differences and language tensions among the level managers to whom the Chinese refin-
team’s three “tribes.” The manager started by ery’s managers reported. Unlike the Western
having the team meet face-to-face twice a team members who breached etiquette by
year, not to discuss mundane day-to-day prob- approaching the superiors of their Korean
lems (of which there were many) but to iden- counterparts, the safety expert made sure to
tify a set of values that the team would use to respect hierarchies in both organizations.
direct and evaluate its progress. At the first
meeting, he realized that when he started to “Trying to resolve the issues,” she told us,
speak, everyone else “shut down,” waiting to “the local management at the Chinese refin-
hear what he had to say. So he hired a con- ery would end up having conferences with
sultant to run future meetings. The con- our Beijing office and also with the upper
sultant didn’t represent a hierarchical threat management within the refinery. Eventually
and was therefore able to get lots of participa- they understood that we weren’t trying to in-
tion from team members. sult them or their culture or to tell them they
were bad in any way. We were trying to help.
Another structural intervention might be They eventually understood that there were
to create smaller working groups of mixed significant fire and safety issues. But we actu-
cultures or mixed corporate identities in order ally had to go up some levels of management
to get at information that is not forthcoming to get those resolved.”
from the team as a whole. The manager of
the team that was evaluating retail opportu- Managerial intervention to set norms early
nities in Japan used this approach. When she in a team’s life can really help the team start
realized that the female Japanese consultants out with effective processes. In one instance
would not participate if the group got large, reported to us, a multicultural software devel-
or if their male superior was present, she opment team’s lingua franca was English, but
broke the team up into smaller groups to try some members, though they spoke grammati-
to solve problems. She used this technique cally correct English, had a very pronounced
repeatedly and made a point of changing the accent. In setting the ground rules for the
subgroups’ membership each time so that team, the manager addressed the challenge
directly, telling the members that they had
been chosen for their task expertise, not their

page 94 harvard business review • november 2006

Managing Multicultural Teams

fluency in English, and that the team was vene early and set norms; teams and managers One team manager
going to have to work around language prob- who structure social interaction and work to addressed the language
lems. As the project moved to the customer- engage everyone on the team; and teams that challenge directly, telling
services training stage, the manager advised can see problems as stemming from culture, the members that they
the team members to acknowledge their not personality, approach challenges with had been chosen for their
accents up front. She said they should tell cus- good humor and creativity. Managers who task expertise, not their
tomers,“I realize I have an accent. If you don’t have to intervene when the team has reached fluency in English, and
understand what I’m saying, just stop me and a stalemate may be able to get the team mov- that the team would have
ask questions.” ing again, but they seldom empower it to help to work around
itself the next time a stalemate occurs. problems.
Exit. Possibly because many of the teams we
studied were project based, we found that When frustrated team members take some
leaving the team was an infrequent strategy time to think through challenges and possible
for managing challenges. In short-term situa- solutions themselves, it can make a huge dif-
tions, unhappy team members often just ference. Take, for example, this story about a
waited out the project. When teams were per- financial-services call center. The members of
manent, producing products or services, the the call-center team were all fluent Spanish-
exit of one or more members was a strategy of speakers, but some were North Americans
last resort, but it was used—either voluntarily and some were Latin Americans. Team perfor-
or after a formal request from management. mance, measured by calls answered per hour,
Exit was likely when emotions were running was lagging. One Latin American was taking
high and too much face had been lost on both twice as long with her calls as the rest of the
sides to salvage the situation. team. She was handling callers’ questions ap-
propriately, but she was also engaging in chit-
An American member of a multicultural chat. When her teammates confronted her for
consulting team described the conflict be- being a free rider (they resented having to
tween two senior consultants, one a Greek make up for her low call rate), she immedi-
woman and the other a Polish man, over how ately acknowledged the problem, admitting
to approach problems: “The woman from that she did not know how to end the call
Greece would say, ‘Here’s the way I think we politely—chitchat being normal in her cul-
should do it.’ It would be something that she ture. They rallied to help her: Using their
was in control of. The guy from Poland would technology, they would break into any of her
say, ‘I think we should actually do it this way calls that went overtime, excusing themselves
instead.’ The woman would kind of turn red to the customer, offering to take over the call,
in the face, upset, and say, ‘I just don’t think and saying that this employee was urgently
that’s the right way of doing it.’ It would needed to help out on a different call. The
definitely switch from just professional differ- team’s solution worked in the short run, and
ences to personal differences. the employee got better at ending her calls in
the long run.
“The woman from Greece ended up leaving
the firm. That was a direct result of probably In another case, the Indian manager of a
all the different issues going on between multicultural team coordinating a company-
these people. It really just wasn’t a good fit. wide IT project found himself frustrated
I’ve found that oftentimes when you’re in when he and a teammate from Singapore met
consulting, you have to adapt to the culture, with two Japanese members of the coordinat-
obviously, but you have to adapt just as much ing team to try to get the Japan section to
to the style of whoever is leading the project.” deliver its part of the project. The Japanese
members seemed to be saying yes, but in the
••• Indian manager’s view, their follow-through
Though multicultural teams face challenges was insufficient. He considered and rejected
that are not directly attributable to cultural the idea of going up the hierarchy to the Japa-
differences, such differences underlay what- nese team members’ boss, and decided in-
ever problem needed to be addressed in many stead to try to build consensus with the whole
of the teams we studied. Furthermore, while Japanese IT team, not just the two members
serious in their own right when they have a on the coordinating team. He and his Sin-
negative effect on team functioning, cultural gapore teammate put together an eBusiness
challenges may also unmask fundamental
managerial problems. Managers who inter-

harvard business review • november 2006 page 95

Managing Multicultural Teams

road show, took it to Japan, invited the whole
IT team to view it at a lunch meeting, and
walked through success stories about other
parts of the organization that had aligned
with the company’s larger business priorities.
It was rather subtle, he told us, but it worked.
The Japanese IT team wanted to be spot-
lighted in future eBusiness road shows. In the
end, the whole team worked well together—
and no higher-level manager had to get
involved.

Reprint R0611D
To order, see the next page
or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500
or go to www.hbrreprints.org

page 96 harvard business review • november 2006

Managing Multicultural Teams

Further Reading

ARTICLES Cultural Intelligence
Making Differences Matter: A New by P. Christopher Earley and
Paradigm for Managing Diversity Elaine Mosakowski
by David A. Thomas and Robin J. Ely Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review October 2004
September 1996 Product no. R0410J
Product no. 96510

You can strengthen your teams’ ability to use Team members can further strengthen their
the adaptation process suggested by Brett, adaptation skills by developing their cultural
Behfar, and Kern by fostering a working envi- intelligence. 1) Look for clues to the shared
ronment in which cultural differences are understandings that define another culture.
valued. To cultivate such an environment: 1) For example, do people from that culture tend
Encourage open discussion of cultural back- to be strict or flexible about deadlines? Are
grounds. For instance, a food company’s they receptive to highly imaginative ideas, or
Chinese chemist draws on her cooking, not do they prefer more conservative thinking? 2)
her scientific, experience to solve a soup- Adopt the habits and mannerisms of people
flavoring problem. 2) Eliminate forms of from other cultures. You’ll discover in an
dominance—by hierarchy, function, race, elemental way what it’s like to be them. And
gender, and so forth—that inhibit team you’ll demonstrate respect for their ways. 3)
members’ full contribution. 3) Acknowledge Cultivate confidence that you can overcome
and swiftly resolve the inevitable tensions that multicultural obstacles and setbacks and that
arise when employees from different back- you’re capable of understanding people from
grounds share ideas and emotions. unfamiliar cultures.

Oil and Wasser
by Byron Reimus
Harvard Business Review
May 2004
Product no. R0405X

To Order In this fictional case study, executives from an
English firm and a German company who are
For Harvard Business Review reprints and seeking a supposed “merger of equals” must
subscriptions, call 800-988-0886 or resolve cross-cultural tensions threatening the
617-783-7500. Go to www.hbrreprints.org deal. Four experts provide suggestions. For
example, develop a new shared vision and
For customized and quantity orders of common strategic goals for the project (such
Harvard Business Review article reprints, as“Beat the competition and become number
call 617-783-7626, or e-mail one”) that rise above national differences.
[email protected] Cultivate personal relationships with the
“other” to eliminate stereotypes, by getting
together in relaxed, shoptalk-free social
settings. When you get to know one another
as individuals, it becomes easier to let go of
negative stereotypes.

page 97

www.hbrreprints.org

Great leaders tap into the What Great
needs and fears we all share. Managers Do
Great managers, by contrast,
perform their magic by by Marcus Buckingham
discovering, developing, and
celebrating what’s different
about each person who works
for them. Here’s how they do
it.

Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article:

101 Article Summary
The Idea in Brief—the core idea
The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work

103 What Great Managers Do

113 Further Reading
A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further
exploration of the article’s ideas and applications

Reprint R0503D page 99

What Great Managers Do

The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice

You’ve spent months coaching that em- A closer look at the three tactics:
ployee to treat customers better, work
more independently, or get organized— CAPITALIZE ON EMPLOYEES’ STRENGTHS
all to no avail.
First identify each employee’s unique strengths: Walk around, observing people’s reactions to
How to make better use of your precious events. Note activities each employee is drawn to. Ask “What was the best day at work you’ve
time? Do what great managers do: Instead had in the past three months?” Listen for activities people find intrinsically satisfying.
of trying to change your employees, iden-
tify their unique abilities (and even their Watch for weaknesses, too, but downplay them in your communications with employees. Offer
eccentricities)—then help them use those training to help employees overcome shortcomings stemming from lack of skills or knowledge.
qualities to excel in their own way. Otherwise, apply these strategies:

You’ll need these three tactics: • Find the employee a partner with complementary talents. A merchandising manager who
couldn’t start tasks without exhaustive information performed superbly once her supervisor
• Continuously tweak roles to capitalize (the VP) began acting as her “information partner.” The VP committed to leaving the manager
on individual strengths. One Walgreens a brief voicemail update daily and arranging two “touch base” conversations weekly.
store manager put a laconic but highly
organized employee in charge of re- • Reconfigure work to neutralize weaknesses. Use your creativity to envision more effective
stocking aisles—freeing up more socia- work arrangements, and be courageous about adopting unconventional job designs.
ble employees to serve customers.
ACTIVATE EMPLOYEES’ STRENGTHS
• Pull the triggers that activate employ-
ees’ strengths. Offer incentives such as The ultimate trigger for activating an employee’s strengths is recognition. But each employee
time spent with you, opportunities to plays to a different audience. So tailor your praise accordingly.
work independently, and recognition in
COPYRIGHT © 2005 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. forms each employee values most. IF AN EMPLOYEE VALUES PRAISE HIM BY. . .
RECOGNITION FROM. . . Publicly celebrating his achievement in front of coworkers
• Tailor coaching to unique learning His peers Telling him privately but vividly why he’s such a valuable team
styles. Give “analyzers” the information You member
they need before starting a task. Start Giving him a professional or technical award
“doers” off with simple tasks, then Others with similar expertise Posting a photo of him and his best customer in the office
gradually raise the bar. Let “watchers” Customers
ride shotgun with your most experi-
enced performers. TAILOR COACHING TO LEARNING STYLE
Adapt your coaching efforts to each employee’s unique learning style:
The payoff for capitalizing on employees’
unique strengths? You save time. Your peo- IF AN EMPLOYEE IS . . . COACH HIM BY. . .
ple take ownership for improving their
skills. And you teach employees to value An “analyzer”—he requires exten- • Giving him ample classroom time
differences—building a powerful sense of sive information before taking on a • Role-playing with him
team. task, and he hates making mistakes • Giving him time to prepare for challenges

A “doer”—he uses trial and error to • Assigning him a simple task, explaining the desired outcomes,
enhance his skills while grappling and getting out of his way
with tasks • Gradually increasing a task’s complexity until he masters his role

A “watcher”—he hones his skills by • Having him “shadow” top performers.
watching other people in action

page 101

Great leaders tap into the needs and fears we all share. Great managers,
by contrast, perform their magic by discovering, developing, and
celebrating what’s different about each person who works for them.
Here’s how they do it.

What Great
Managers Do

by Marcus Buckingham

COPYRIGHT © 2005 ONE THING PRODUCTIONS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. “The best boss I ever had.” That’s a phrase are uniform and move in the same way; they
most of us have said or heard at some point, are interchangeable. You need to plan and
but what does it mean? What sets the great coordinate their movements, certainly, but
boss apart from the average boss? The litera- they all move at the same pace, on parallel
ture is rife with provocative writing about the paths. In chess, each type of piece moves in a
qualities of managers and leaders and different way, and you can’t play if you don’t
whether the two differ, but little has been know how each piece moves. More impor-
said about what happens in the thousands of tant, you won’t win if you don’t think care-
daily interactions and decisions that allows fully about how you move the pieces. Great
managers to get the best out of their people managers know and value the unique abili-
and win their devotion. What do great man- ties and even the eccentricities of their em-
agers actually do? ployees, and they learn how best to integrate
them into a coordinated plan of attack.
In my research, beginning with a survey
of 80,000 managers conducted by the Gallup This is the exact opposite of what great lead-
Organization and continuing during the past ers do. Great leaders discover what is universal
two years with in-depth studies of a few top and capitalize on it. Their job is to rally people
performers, I’ve found that while there are toward a better future. Leaders can succeed in
as many styles of management as there are this only when they can cut through differ-
managers, there is one quality that sets truly ences of race, sex, age, nationality, and person-
great managers apart from the rest: They dis- ality and, using stories and celebrating heroes,
cover what is unique about each person and tap into those very few needs we all share. The
then capitalize on it. Average managers play job of a manager, meanwhile, is to turn one
checkers, while great managers play chess. person’s particular talent into performance.
The difference? In checkers, all the pieces Managers will succeed only when they can

harvard business review • march 2005 page 103

What Great Managers Do

Marcus Buckingham (info@ identify and deploy the differences among peo- tomer buying patterns (at the end of summer,
onethinginc.com) is a consultant and ple, challenging each employee to excel in his for example, the stores will replace sun creams
speaker on leadership and manage- or her own way. This doesn’t mean a leader and lip balms with allergy medicines). A revi-
ment practices. He is the coauthor of can’t be a manager or vice versa. But to excel at sion is a less time-consuming but more fre-
First, Break All the Rules (Simon & one or both, you must be aware of the very dif- quent version of the same thing: Replace these
Schuster, 1999) and Now, Discover ferent skills each role requires. cartons of toothpaste with this new and im-
Your Strengths (Free Press, 2001). This proved variety. Display this new line of deter-
article is copyright 2005 by One Thing The Game of Chess gent at this end of the row. Each aisle requires
Productions and has been adapted some form of revision at least once a week.
with permission from Buckingham’s What does the chess game look like in action?
new book, The One Thing You Need to When I visited Michelle Miller, the manager In most Walgreens stores, each employee
Know (Free Press, March 2005). who opened Walgreens’ 4,000th store, I found “owns” one aisle, where she is responsible not
the wall of her back office papered with work only for serving customers but also for facing
schedules. Michelle’s store in Redondo Beach, the merchandise, keeping the aisle clean and
California, employs people with sharply differ- orderly, tagging items with a Telxon gun, and
ent skills and potentially disruptive differ- conducting all resets and revisions. This ar-
ences in personality. A critical part of her job, rangement is simple and efficient, and it af-
therefore, is to put people into roles and shifts fords each employee a sense of personal re-
that will allow them to shine—and to avoid sponsibility. But Michelle decided that since
putting clashing personalities together. At the Jeffrey was so good at resets and revisions—
same time, she needs to find ways for individu- and didn’t enjoy interacting with customers—
als to grow. this should be his full-time job, in every single
aisle.
There’s Jeffrey, for example, a “goth rocker”
whose hair is shaved on one side and long It was a challenge. One week’s worth of revi-
enough on the other side to cover his face. sions requires a binder three inches thick. But
Michelle almost didn’t hire him because he Michelle reasoned that not only would Jeffrey
couldn’t quite look her in the eye during his in- be excited by the challenge and get better and
terview, but he wanted the hard-to-cover night better with practice, but other employees
shift, so she decided to give him a chance. would be freed from what they considered a
After a couple of months, she noticed that chore and have more time to greet and serve
when she gave Jeffrey a vague assignment, customers. The store’s performance proved her
such as “Straighten up the merchandise in right. After the reorganization, Michelle saw
every aisle,” what should have been a two-hour not only increases in sales and profit but also in
job would take him all night—and wouldn’t be that most critical performance metric, cus-
done very well. But if she gave him a more spe- tomer satisfaction. In the subsequent four
cific task, such as “Put up all the risers for months, her store netted perfect scores in Wal-
Christmas,” all the risers would be symmetri- greens’ mystery shopper program.
cal, with the right merchandise on each one,
perfectly priced, labeled, and “faced” (turned So far, so very good. Sadly, it didn’t last. This
toward the customer). Give Jeffrey a generic “perfect” arrangement depended on Jeffrey re-
task, and he would struggle. Give him one that maining content, and he didn’t. With his suc-
forced him to be accurate and analytical, and cess at doing resets and revisions, his confi-
he would excel. This, Michelle concluded, was dence grew, and six months into the job, he
Jeffrey’s forte. So, as any good manager would wanted to move into management. Michelle
do, she told him what she had deduced about wasn’t disappointed by this, however; she was
him and praised him for his good work. intrigued. She had watched Jeffrey’s progress
closely and had already decided that he might
And a good manager would have left it at do well as a manager, though he wouldn’t be a
that. But Michelle knew she could get more particularly emotive one. Besides, like any
out Jeffrey. So she devised a scheme to reassign good chess player, she had been thinking a
responsibilities across the entire store to capi- couple of moves ahead.
talize on his unique strengths. In every Wal-
greens, there is a responsibility called “resets Over in the cosmetics aisle worked an em-
and revisions.” A reset involves stocking an ployee named Genoa. Michelle saw Genoa as
aisle with new merchandise, a task that usually something of a double threat. Not only was
coincides with a predictable change in cus- she adept at putting customers at ease—she re-
membered their names, asked good questions,

page 104 harvard business review • march 2005

What Great Managers Do

was welcoming yet professional when answer- Genoa configuration has probably outlived its
ing the phone—but she was also a neatnik. usefulness, and Michelle has moved on to de-
The cosmetics department was always per- sign other effective and inventive configura-
fectly faced, every product remained aligned, tions. The ability to keep tweaking roles to cap-
and everything was arranged just so. Her aisle italize on the uniqueness of each person is the
was sexy: It made you want to reach out and essence of great management.
touch the merchandise.
A manager’s approach to capitalizing on dif-
To capitalize on these twin talents, and to ferences can vary tremendously from place to
accommodate Jeffrey’s desire for promotion, place. Walk into the back office at another Wal-
Michelle shuffled the roles within the store greens, this one in San Jose, California, man-
once again. She split Jeffrey’s reset and revision aged by Jim Kawashima, and you won’t see a
job in two and gave the “revision” part of it to single work schedule. Instead, the walls are
Genoa so that the whole store could now bene- covered with sales figures and statistics, the
fit from her ability to arrange merchandise at- best of them circled with red felt-tip pen, and
tractively. But Michelle didn’t want the store to dozens of photographs of sales contest win-
miss out on Genoa’s gift for customer service, ners, most featuring a customer service repre-
so Michelle asked her to focus on the revision sentative named Manjit.
role only between 8:30 AM and 11 AM, and after
that, when the store began to fill with custom- Manjit outperforms her peers consistently.
ers on their lunch breaks, Genoa should shift When I first heard about her, she had just won
her focus over to them. a competition in Walgreens’ suggestive selling
program to sell the most units of Gillette de-
She kept the reset role with Jeffrey. Assis- odorant in a month. The national average was
tant managers don’t usually have an ongoing 300; Manjit had sold 1,600. Disposable cam-
responsibility in the store, but, Michelle rea- eras, toothpaste, batteries—you name it, she
soned, he was now so good and so fast at tear- could sell it. And Manjit won contest after con-
ing an aisle apart and rebuilding it that he test despite working the graveyard shift, from
could easily finish a major reset during a five- 12:30 AM to 8:30 AM, during which she met sig-
hour stint, so he could handle resets along with nificantly fewer customers than did her peers.
his managerial responsibilities.
Manjit hadn’t always been such an excep-
By the time you read this, the Jeffrey– tional performer. She became stunningly suc-

The Research book—managing, leading, and sustained in- details of their actions and their choices. Why
dividual success—I first identified one or two did Myrtle Potter repeatedly turn down pro-
To gather the raw material for my book The people in various roles and fields who had motions before taking on the challenge of
One Thing You Need to Know: About Great Man- measurably, consistently, and dramatically turning around that failing drug? Why did
aging, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual outperformed their peers. These individuals Terry Leahy rely more on the memories of his
Success, from which this article has been included Myrtle Potter, president of commer- working-class upbringing to define his com-
adapted, I chose an approach that is rather cial operations for Genentech, who trans- pany’s strategy than on the results of cus-
different from the one I used for my previous formed a failing drug into the highest selling tomer surveys or focus groups? Manjit works
books. For 17 years, I had the good fortune to prescription drug in the world; Sir Terry the night shift, and one of her hobbies is
work with the Gallup Organization, one of Leahy, the president of the European retail- weight lifting. Are those factors relevant to
the most respected research firms in the ing giant Tesco; Manjit, the customer service her performance? What were these special
world. During that time, I was given the op- representative from Jim Kawashima’s top- people doing that made them so very good at
portunity to interview some of the world’s performing Walgreens store in San Jose, Cali- their roles?
best leaders, managers, teachers, salespeo- fornia, who sold more than 1,600 units of
ple, stockbrokers, lawyers, and public ser- Gillette deodorant in one month; and David Once these many details were duly noted
vants. These interviews were a part of large- Koepp, the prolific screenwriter who penned and recorded, they slowly came together to
scale studies that involved surveying groups such blockbusters as Jurassic Park, Mission: reveal the “one thing” at the core of great
of people in the hopes of finding broad pat- Impossible, and Spider-Man. managing, great leading, and sustained indi-
terns in the data. For my book, I used this vidual success.
foundation as the jumping-off point for What interested me about these high
deeper, more individualized research. achievers was the practical, seemingly banal

In each of the three areas targeted in the

harvard business review • march 2005 page 105

What Great Managers Do

cessful only when Jim, who has made a habit long, the pictures of Manjit began to include
of resuscitating troubled stores, came on other employees from the store, too. After a
board. What did Jim do to initiate the change few months, the San Jose location was ranked
in Manjit? He quickly picked up on her idio- number one out of 4,000 in Walgreens’ sugges-
syncrasies and figured out how to translate tive selling program.
them into outstanding performance. For exam-
ple, back in India, Manjit was an athlete—a Great Managers Are Romantics
runner and a weight lifter—and had always
thrilled to the challenge of measured perfor- Think back to Michelle. Her creative choreog-
mance. When I interviewed her, one of the first raphy may sound like a last resort, an attempt
things out of her mouth was, “On Saturday, I to make the best of a bad hire. It’s not. Jeffrey
sold 343 low-carb candy bars. On Sunday, I sold and Genoa are not mediocre employees, and
367. Yesterday, 110, and today, 105.” I asked if capitalizing on each person’s uniqueness is a
she always knows how well she’s doing. “Oh tremendously powerful tool.
yes,” she replied. “Every day I check Mr. K’s
charts. Even on my day off, I make a point to First, identifying and capitalizing on each
come in and check my numbers.” person’s uniqueness saves time. No employee,
however talented, is perfectly well-rounded.
Manjit loves to win and revels in public rec- Michelle could have spent untold hours coach-
ognition. Hence, Jim’s walls are covered with ing Jeffrey and cajoling him into smiling at,
charts and figures, Manjit’s scores are always making friends with, and remembering the
highlighted in red, and there are photos docu- names of customers, but she probably would
menting her success. Another manager might have seen little result for her efforts. Her time
have asked Manjit to curb her enthusiasm for was much better spent carving out a role that
the limelight and give someone else a chance. took advantage of Jeffrey’s natural abilities.
Jim found a way to capitalize on it.
Second, capitalizing on uniqueness makes
But what about Jim’s other staff members? each person more accountable. Michelle didn’t
Instead of being resentful of Manjit’s public just praise Jeffrey for his ability to execute spe-
recognition, the other employees came to un- cific assignments. She challenged him to make
derstand that Jim took the time to see them as this ability the cornerstone of his contribution
individuals and evaluate them based on their to the store, to take ownership for this ability,
personal strengths. They also knew that Man- to practice it, and to refine it.
jit’s success spoke well of the entire store, so
her success galvanized the team. In fact, before Third, capitalizing on what is unique about
each person builds a stronger sense of team,
because it creates interdependency. It helps

The Elusive “One Thing”

It’s bold to characterize anything as the expla- situations. Take leadership as an example. ling insight should be more powerful. It
nation or solution, so it’s a risky move to Lately, much has been made of the notion should show you how to get exponential im-
make such definitive assertions as “this is the that there is no one best way to lead and that provement. For example, good managing is
one thing all great managers do.” But with instead, the most effective leadership style the result of a combination of many ac-
enough research and focus, it is possible to depends on the circumstance. While there is tions—selecting talented employees, setting
identify that elusive “one thing.” no doubt that different situations require dif- clear expectations, catching people doing
ferent actions from a leader, that doesn’t things right, and so on—but none of these
I like to think of the concept of “one thing” mean the most insightful thing you can say factors qualifies as the “one thing” that great
as a “controlling insight.” Controlling insights about leadership is that it’s situational. With managers do, because even when done well,
don’t explain all outcomes or events; they enough focus, you can identify the one thing these actions merely prevent managers from
serve as the best explanation of the greatest that underpins successful leadership across chasing their best employees away.
number of events. Such insights help you all situations and all styles.
know which of your actions will have the Finally, the controlling insight must guide
most far-reaching influence in virtually every Second, a controlling insight must serve as action. It must point to precise things that
situation. a multiplier. In any equation, some factors can be done to create better outcomes more
will have only an additive value: When you consistently. Insights that managers can act
For a concept to emerge as the single con- focus your actions on these factors, you see on—rather than simply ruminate over—are
trolling insight, it must pass three tests. First, some incremental improvement. The control- the ones that can make all the difference.
it must be applicable across a wide range of

page 106 harvard business review • march 2005

What Great Managers Do

people appreciate one anothers’ particular Make the most of strengths. It takes time
skills and learn that their coworkers can fill in and effort to gain a full appreciation of an em-
where they are lacking. In short, it makes peo- ployee’s strengths and weaknesses. The great
ple need one another. The old cliché is that manager spends a good deal of time outside
there’s no “I” in “team.” But as Michael Jordan the office walking around, watching each per-
once said, “There may be no ‘I’ in ‘team,’ but son’s reactions to events, listening, and taking
there is in ‘win.’” mental notes about what each individual is
drawn to and what each person struggles with.
Finally, when you capitalize on what is There’s no substitute for this kind of observa-
unique about each person, you introduce a tion, but you can obtain a lot of information
healthy degree of disruption into your world. about a person by asking a few simple, open-
You shuffle existing hierarchies: If Jeffrey is in ended questions and listening carefully to the
charge of all resets and revisions in the store, answers. Two queries in particular have
should he now command more or less respect proven most revealing when it comes to iden-
than an assistant manager? You also shuffle ex- tifying strengths and weaknesses, and I recom-
isting assumptions about who is allowed to do mend asking them of all new hires—and revis-
what: If Jeffrey devises new methods of reset- iting the questions periodically.
ting an aisle, does he have to ask permission to
try these out, or can he experiment on his To identify a person’s strengths, first ask,
own? And you shuffle existing beliefs about “What was the best day at work you’ve had in
where the true expertise lies: If Genoa comes the past three months?” Find out what the per-
up with a way of arranging new merchandise son was doing and why he enjoyed it so much.
that she thinks is more appealing than the Remember: A strength is not merely some-
method suggested by the “planogram” sent thing you are good at. In fact, it might be
down from Walgreens headquarters, does her something you aren’t good at yet. It might be
expertise trump the planners back at corpo- just a predilection, something you find so in-
rate? These questions will challenge Wal- trinsically satisfying that you look forward to
greens’ orthodoxies and thus will help the doing it again and again and getting better at it
company become more inquisitive, more intel- over time. This question will prompt your em-
ligent, more vital, and, despite its size, more ployee to start thinking about his interests and
able to duck and weave into the future. abilities from this perspective.

All that said, the reason great managers To identify a person’s weaknesses, just in-
focus on uniqueness isn’t just because it vert the question: “What was the worst day
makes good business sense. They do it because you’ve had at work in the past three months?”
they can’t help it. Like Shelley and Keats, the And then probe for details about what he was
nineteenth-century Romantic poets, great doing and why it grated on him so much. As
managers are fascinated with individuality for with a strength, a weakness is not merely
its own sake. Fine shadings of personality, something you are bad at (in fact, you might
though they may be invisible to some and frus- be quite competent at it). It is something that
trating to others, are crystal clear to and highly drains you of energy, an activity that you never
valued by great managers. They could no more
ignore these subtleties than ignore their own What You Need to Know
needs and desires. Figuring out what makes About Each of Your Direct Reports
people tick is simply in their nature.
What are his or her strengths?
The Three Levers
What are the triggers that activate
Although the Romantics were mesmerized by those strengths?
differences, at some point, managers need to
rein in their inquisitiveness, gather up what What is his or her learning style?
they know about a person, and put the em-
ployee’s idiosyncrasies to use. To that end,
there are three things you must know about
someone to manage her well: her strengths,
the triggers that activate those strengths, and
how she learns.

harvard business review • march 2005 page 107

What Great Managers Do

Fine shadings of look forward to doing and that when you are weakness where a role requires strength. In
personality, though they doing it, all you can think about is stopping. such cases, there are four approaches for over-
may be invisible to some coming weaknesses. If the problem amounts to
and frustrating to others, Although you’re keeping an eye out for a lack of skill or knowledge, that’s easy to solve:
are crystal clear to and both the strengths and weaknesses of your em- Simply offer the relevant training, allow some
highly valued by great ployees, your focus should be on their time for the employee to incorporate the new
managers. strengths. Conventional wisdom holds that skills, and look for signs of improvement. If her
self-awareness is a good thing and that it’s the performance doesn’t get better, you’ll know
job of the manager to identify weaknesses and that the reason she’s struggling is because she
create a plan for overcoming them. But re- is missing certain talents, a deficit no amount
search by Albert Bandura, the father of social of skill or knowledge training is likely to fix.
learning theory, has shown that self-assurance You’ll have to find a way to manage around
(labeled “self-efficacy” by cognitive psycholo- this weakness and neutralize it.
gists), not self-awareness, is the strongest pre-
dictor of a person’s ability to set high goals, to Which brings us to the second strategy for
persist in the face of obstacles, to bounce back overcoming an employee weakness. Can you
when reversals occur, and, ultimately, to find her a partner, someone whose talents are
achieve the goals they set. By contrast, self- strong in precisely the areas where hers are
awareness has not been shown to be a predic- weak? Here’s how this strategy can look in ac-
tor of any of these outcomes, and in some tion. As vice president of merchandising for
cases, it appears to retard them. the women’s clothing retailer Ann Taylor, Judi
Langley found that tensions were rising be-
Great managers seem to understand this in- tween her and one of her merchandising man-
stinctively. They know that their job is not to agers, Claudia (not her real name), whose ana-
arm each employee with a dispassionately ac- lytical mind and intense nature created an
curate understanding of the limits of her overpowering “need to know.” If Claudia
strengths and the liabilities of her weaknesses learned of something before Judi had a chance
but to reinforce her self-assurance. That’s why to review it with her, she would become deeply
great managers focus on strengths. When a frustrated. Given the speed with which deci-
person succeeds, the great manager doesn’t sions were made, and given Judi’s busy sched-
praise her hard work. Even if there’s some ex- ule, this happened frequently. Judi was con-
aggeration in the statement, he tells her that cerned that Claudia’s irritation was unsettling
she succeeded because she has become so good the whole product team, not to mention earn-
at deploying her specific strengths. This, the ing the employee a reputation as a malcontent.
manager knows, will strengthen the em-
ployee’s self-assurance and make her more op- An average manager might have identified
timistic and more resilient in the face of chal- this behavior as a weakness and lectured Clau-
lenges to come. dia on how to control her need for informa-
tion. Judi, however, realized that this “weak-
The focus-on-strengths approach might cre- ness” was an aspect of Claudia’s greatest
ate in the employee a modicum of overconfi- strength: her analytical mind. Claudia would
dence, but great managers mitigate this by em- never be able to rein it in, at least not for long.
phasizing the size and the difficulty of the So Judi looked for a strategy that would honor
employee’s goals. They know that their pri- and support Claudia’s need to know, while
mary objective is to create in each employee a channeling it more productively. Judi decided
specific state of mind: one that includes a real- to act as Claudia’s information partner, and
istic assessment of the difficulty of the obstacle she committed to leaving Claudia a voice mail
ahead but an unrealistically optimistic belief in at the end of each day with a brief update. To
her ability to overcome it. make sure nothing fell through the cracks, they
set up two live “touch base” conversations per
And what if the employee fails? Assuming week. This solution managed Claudia’s expec-
the failure is not attributable to factors beyond tations and assured her that she would get the
her control, always explain failure as a lack of information she needed, if not exactly when
effort, even if this is only partially accurate. she wanted it, then at least at frequent and
This will obscure self-doubt and give her some- predictable intervals. Giving Claudia a partner
thing to work on as she faces up to the next neutralized the negative manifestations of her
challenge.

Repeated failure, of course, may indicate

page 108 harvard business review • march 2005

strength, allowing her to focus her analytical The most powerful trigger by far is recogni- What Great Managers Do
mind on her work. (Of course, in most cases, tion, not money. If you’re not convinced of page 109
the partner would need to be someone other this, start ignoring one of your highly paid
than a manager.) stars, and watch what happens. Most managers
are aware that employees respond well to rec-
Should the perfect partner prove hard to ognition. Great managers refine and extend
find, try this third strategy: Insert into the em- this insight. They realize that each employee
ployee’s world a technique that helps accom- plays to a slightly different audience. To excel
plish through discipline what the person can’t as a manager, you must be able to match the
accomplish through instinct. I met one very employee to the audience he values most. One
successful screenwriter and director who had employee’s audience might be his peers; the
struggled with telling other professionals, such best way to praise him would be to stand him
as composers and directors of photography, up in front of his coworkers and publicly cele-
that their work was not up to snuff. So he de- brate his achievement. Another’s favorite audi-
vised a mental trick: He now imagines what ence might be you; the most powerful recogni-
the “god of art” would want and uses this imag- tion would be a one-on-one conversation
inary entity as a source of strength. In his where you tell him quietly but vividly why he
mind, he no longer imposes his own opinion is such a valuable member of the team. Still
on his colleagues but rather tells himself (and another employee might define himself by his
them) that an authoritative third party has expertise; his most prized form of recognition
weighed in. would be some type of professional or techni-
cal award. Yet another might value feedback
If training produces no improvement, if only from customers, in which case a picture of
complementary partnering proves impracti- the employee with her best customer or a let-
cal, and if no nifty discipline technique can be ter to her from the customer would be the best
found, you are going to have to try the fourth form of recognition.
and final strategy, which is to rearrange the
employee’s working world to render his weak- Given how much personal attention it re-
ness irrelevant, as Michelle Miller did with Jef- quires, tailoring praise to fit the person is
frey. This strategy will require of you, first, the mostly a manager’s responsibility. But organi-
creativity to envision a more effective arrange- zations can take a cue from this, too. There’s
ment and, second, the courage to make that ar- no reason why a large company can’t take this
rangement work. But as Michelle’s experience individualized approach to recognition and
revealed, the payoff that may come in the form apply it to every employee. Of all the compa-
of increased employee productivity and en- nies I’ve encountered, the North American di-
gagement is well worth it. vision of HSBC, a London-based bank, has
done the best job of this. Each year it presents
Trigger good performance. A person’s its top individual consumer-lending perform-
strengths aren’t always on display. Sometimes ers with its Dream Awards. Each winner re-
they require precise triggering to turn them ceives a unique prize. During the year, manag-
on. Squeeze the right trigger, and a person ers ask employees to identify what they would
will push himself harder and persevere in the like to receive should they win. The prize value
face of resistance. Squeeze the wrong one, is capped at $10,000, and it cannot be re-
and the person may well shut down. This can deemed as cash, but beyond those two restric-
be tricky because triggers come in myriad and tions, each employee is free to pick the prize
mysterious forms. One employee’s trigger he wants. At the end of the year, the company
might be tied to the time of day (he is a night holds a Dream Awards gala, during which it
owl, and his strengths only kick in after 3 PM). shows a video about the winning employee
Another employee’s trigger might be tied to and why he selected his particular prize.
time with you, the boss (even though he’s
worked with you for more than five years, he You can imagine the impact these personal-
still needs you to check in with him every ized prizes have on HSBC employees. It’s one
day, or he feels he’s being ignored). Another thing to be brought up on stage and given yet
worker’s trigger might be just the opposite— another plaque. It’s another thing when, in ad-
independence (she’s only worked for you for dition to public recognition of your perfor-
six months, but if you check in with her even mance, you receive a college tuition fund for
once a week, she feels micromanaged).

harvard business review • march 2005

What Great Managers Do your child, or the Harley-Davidson motorcycle out of his way. Then gradually increase the de-
page 110 you’ve always dreamed of, or—the prize every- gree of each task’s complexity until he has mas-
one at the company still talks about—the air- tered every aspect of his role. He may make a
line tickets to fly you and your family back to few mistakes along the way, but for the doer,
Mexico to visit the grandmother you haven’t mistakes are the raw material for learning.
seen in ten years.
Finally, there’s watching. Watchers won’t
Tailor to learning styles. Although there learn much through role-playing. They won’t
are many learning styles, a careful review of learn by doing, either. Since most formal train-
adult learning theory reveals that three styles ing programs incorporate both of these ele-
predominate. These three are not mutually ex- ments, watchers are often viewed as rather
clusive; certain employees may rely on a com- poor students. That may be true, but they
bination of two or perhaps all three. Nonethe- aren’t necessarily poor learners.
less, staying attuned to each employee’s style
or styles will help focus your coaching. Watchers can learn a great deal when they
are given the chance to see the total perfor-
First, there’s analyzing. Claudia from Ann mance. Studying the individual parts of a task
Taylor is an analyzer. She understands a task is about as meaningful for them as studying
by taking it apart, examining its elements, and the individual pixels of a digital photograph.
reconstructing it piece by piece. Because every What’s important for this type of learner is the
single component of a task is important in her content of each pixel, its position relative to all
eyes, she craves information. She needs to ab- the others. Watchers are only able to see this
sorb all there is to know about a subject before when they view the complete picture.
she can begin to feel comfortable with it. If she
doesn’t feel she has enough information, she As it happens, this is the way I learn. Years
will dig and push until she gets it. She will read ago, when I first began interviewing, I strug-
the assigned reading. She will attend the re- gled to learn the skill of creating a report on a
quired classes. She will take good notes. She person after I had interviewed him. I under-
will study. And she will still want more. stood all the required steps, but I couldn’t
seem to put them together. Some of my col-
The best way to teach an analyzer is to give leagues could knock out a report in an hour;
her ample time in the classroom. Role-play for me, it would take the better part of a day.
with her. Do postmortem exercises with her. Then one afternoon, as I was staring morosely
Break her performance down into its compo- into my Dictaphone, I overheard the voice of
nent parts so she can carefully build it back up. the analyst next door. He was talking so rapidly
Always allow her time to prepare. The ana- that I initially thought he was on the phone.
lyzer hates mistakes. A commonly held view is Only after a few minutes did I realize that he
that mistakes fuel learning, but for the ana- was dictating a report. This was the first time I
lyzer, this just isn’t true. In fact, the reason she had heard someone “in the act.” I’d seen the
prepares so diligently is to minimize the possi- finished results countless times, since reading
bility of mistakes. So don’t expect to teach her the reports of others was the way we were sup-
much by throwing her into a new situation and posed to learn, but I’d never actually heard an-
telling her to wing it. other analyst in the act of creation. It was a
revelation. I finally saw how everything should
The opposite is true for the second domi- come together into a coherent whole. I re-
nant learning style, doing. While the most member picking up my Dictaphone, mimick-
powerful learning moments for the analyzer ing the cadence and even the accent of my
occur prior to the performance, the doer’s neighbor, and feeling the words begin to flow.
most powerful moments occur during the
performance. Trial and error are integral to If you’re trying to teach a watcher, by far
this learning process. Jeffrey, from Michelle the most effective technique is to get her out
Miller’s store, is a doer. He learns the most of the classroom. Take her away from the man-
while he’s in the act of figuring things out for uals, and make her ride shotgun with one of
himself. For him, preparation is a dry, uninspir- your most experienced performers.
ing activity. So rather than role-play with
someone like Jeffrey, pick a specific task within •••
his role that is simple but real, give him a brief We’ve seen, in the stories of great managers
overview of the outcomes you want, and get like Michelle Miller and Judi Langley, that at
the very heart of their success lies an apprecia-

harvard business review • march 2005

What Great Managers Do

tion for individuality. This is not to say that are. These differences of trait and talent are Differences of trait and
managers don’t need other skills. They need to like blood types: They cut across the superficial talent are like blood
be able to hire well, to set expectations, and to variations of race, sex, and age and capture the types: They cut across the
interact productively with their own bosses, essential uniqueness of each individual. superficial variations of
just to name a few. But what they do—instinc- race, sex, and age and
tively—is play chess. Mediocre managers as- Like blood types, the majority of these dif- capture each person’s
sume (or hope) that their employees will all be ferences are enduring and resistant to change. uniqueness.
motivated by the same things and driven by A manager’s most precious resource is time,
the same goals, that they will desire the same and great managers know that the most effec-
kinds of relationships and learn in roughly the tive way to invest their time is to identify ex-
same way. They define the behaviors they ex- actly how each employee is different and then
pect from people and tell them to work on be- to figure out how best to incorporate those en-
haviors that don’t come naturally. They praise during idiosyncrasies into the overall plan.
those who can overcome their natural styles to
conform to preset ideas. In short, they believe To excel at managing others, you must bring
the manager’s job is to mold, or transform, that insight to your actions and interactions.
each employee into the perfect version of the Always remember that great managing is
role. about release, not transformation. It’s about
constantly tweaking your environment so that
Great managers don’t try to change a per- the unique contribution, the unique needs,
son’s style. They never try to push a knight to and the unique style of each employee can be
move in the same way as a bishop. They know given free rein. Your success as a manager will
that their employees will differ in how they depend almost entirely on your ability to do
think, how they build relationships, how altru- this.
istic they are, how patient they can be, how
much of an expert they need to be, how pre- Reprint R0503D
pared they need to feel, what drives them, To order, see the next page
what challenges them, and what their goals or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500
or go to www.hbrreprints.org

harvard business review • march 2005 page 111

What Great Managers Do

Further Reading

ARTICLES people’s batteries again and again, you’ll en-
How to Motivate Your Problem People able them to activate their own internal gen-
by Nigel Nicholson erators. Your employees’ enthusiasm and
Harvard Business Review commitment will rise—along with your com-
January 2003 pany’s overall performance.
Product no. R0301D

Nicholson provides additional guidelines for Managing Away Bad Habits
identifying the activities your people find in- by James Waldroop and Timothy Butler
trinsically satisfying and unleashing employ- Harvard Business Review
ees’ internal drive: 1) Through informal con- September–October 2000
versations, discern what drives an employee, Product no. R00512
what’s blocking those drives, and what could
happen if blockages were removed. 2) Con- Waldroop and Butler further examine strate-
sider how you or the organizational situation gies for helping employees overcome weak-
(a tough restructuring, for example) might be nesses that can’t be addressed through skills
inadvertently blocking the person’s motiva- training. The authors identify common “bad
tion. 3) Affirm the employee’s value to your habits” and offer antidotes. For example, with
company. 4) Test hunches about ways to co- “Heroes”—employees who drive themselves
opt the person’s passion for productive ends. too hard and focus too much on the short
One manager found that a talented but reti- term—point out the costs of burnout and en-
cent and angry employee was strongly moti- courage them to assess themselves for symp-
vated by his peers’ respect. The manager toms of overload. For“Bulldozers”—those who
asked him to consider becoming an adviser run roughshod over others but who get a lot
and technical coach for his unit—then asked done—point out how many enemies they’ve
him for ideas on how the new arrangement made and role-play conciliatory conversations
might work. with their victims. For “Pessimists”—people
who emphasize the downside of change—
One More Time: How Do You Motivate teach them to objectively evaluate the pros
Employees? and cons of proposed ideas and the risks of
by Frederick Herzberg doing nothing.
Harvard Business Review
January 2003
Product no. R0301F

To Order In this classic article, originally published in
1968, Herzberg focuses on the importance of
For Harvard Business Review reprints and tweaking job roles to capitalize on individual
subscriptions, call 800-988-0886 or employees’ strengths. To boost motivation,
617-783-7500. Go to www.hbrreprints.org consider giving people responsibility for a
complete process or unit of work. Enable peo-
For customized and quantity orders of ple to take on new, more difficult tasks they
Harvard Business Review article reprints, haven’t handled before. And assign individu-
call 617-783-7626, or e-mail als specialized tasks that allow them to be-
[email protected] come experts. Your reward? You’ll have more
time to spend on your real job: developing
your staff rather than simply checking their
work. Rather than trying to recharge your

page 113