TWO:
It’s All In the Connections

This proposition is a slap in the face of “Everyone Should Be A Professional.” (Professionals – who are dedicated to the depth of their expertise – hate the fact that some slackers get by on “connections.”)

Some years ago, while working as a consultant to a large, staid insurance company, I sat in on a senior management meeting. The presenter put up a wall-sized organizational chart that showed every arm of the broad-reaching enterprise. She spared us what we thought would be several hours of defining the hundreds of boxes on the chart with a startling insight. She said that this company (which was known for investing mil-lions in every new management fad and scheme) had spent literally decades arranging the myriad boxes on the chart and making sure that everything was working properly within each of them. Her team had discovered that, no matter how well things work inside a box, if the lines between the boxes don’t work, the company doesn’t work. That’s what we mean by “the connections.”

We can see the consequences of over-specialization and professionalism. Things continually “fall between the cracks.” Businesses thwart fulfillment of customers’ immediate needs because “It’s not my job” or “You’ll have to call another department.” Deadly mistakes are made in hospitals because specialists are unaware of each other’s treatments of a single patient. We have all learned to demand to speak with a manager when we encounter these problems because we know that most workers do not have the authority to solve unusual problems, or problems that cross organizational borders. And, how often do we then hear that the manager, too, is powerless?

People do not like to be powerless in their jobs. Most people would rather solve the problems they are offered than hand them off. Our organizations constantly embarrass us with their inabilities (and refusals) to solve the most straightforward problems. Our organizations constantly make us look stupid as we try to explain why problems can’t be solved, or make us feel stupid with our lack of information about other parts of the business. These factors make us want to quit our jobs. It’s not stupid people that repeatedly create these situations, it’s those stupid systems and stupid jobs.

A small team of diverse people, given the authority to get results and access to needed information, can do what was thought impossible in traditional organizations. We’ve seen this time and time again, not with superstars or the company’s brightest managers, but with people who are living at the top of the bell curve: regular, normal folks. And, they have fun in the process!

Business success now depends on close connections between paying customers and the company. The connection is best created and maintained by small teams of people who are responsible for the relationships, and who have full, quick access to the information and resources of the company to make things work.

It’s all in the connections.