Page 193 - The Power to Change Anything

182 INFLUENCER

Interdependence. When a vital behavior requires several peo-
ple to work in concert—where no one person can succeed on
his or her own—you have to develop people’s ability to work
as a team. There was a time when highly skilled craftspeople
worked alone producing pots, candles, jewelry, and the like.
But today corporate success often depends on experts who are
at least as specialized as their predecessors, but who rely on one
another to complete their tasks.
For instance, a typical software development team consists
not only of code writers but also of designers, marketers, writ-
ers, and salespeople. At various stages in the development, all
have to connect, bring their piece of the project online, and,
at the interpersonal level, find a way to collaborate. Leaders
who fail to appreciate this concept are regularly disappointed
when their influence efforts bear no fruit.
We (the authors) once worked with a production team that
had decided to lower costs by shifting to just-in-time inventory.
This meant that no longer would the company maintain a stock
of parts and work-in-progress as the product made its way
through the production line. One expert would hand his or her
finished work to the next expert instead of placing it in a stack
that the next person would get to at his or her leisure. This new
design, of course, called for impeccable timing (each person’s
job needed to take the same amount of time as the person’s
before and after him or her). It also called for genuine collab-
oration. Any one person could slow down, speed up, take an
unscheduled break, or fail to meet a quality standard, causing
the previous and next person fits.
When we arrived to help with the project, the company had
learned that the old style of stacking expensive inventory
between employees had masked the workforce’s inability to
cooperate. Now that employees were immediately dependent
on the person before and after them, they were constantly bick-
ering, complaining, and asking to change positions in the line.
Supervisors would routinely intervene to help their direct