Page 194 - The Power to Change Anything

Find Strength in Numbers 183

reports work through problems, but they ended up spending
most of their time refereeing heated arguments.
It turns out that the company wasn’t prepared to shift to a
just-in-time system because it didn’t possess the social capital
to collaborate. When executives purposefully built interde-
pendence into the work design, it quickly revealed that employ-
ees lacked interpersonal problem-solving skills along with the
ability to hold one other accountable. Working in isolation had
atrophied their ability to interact effectively. No longer did
employees “work and play well” with their friends.
The company was unable to implement the new inventory
system until each employee had been trained in interpersonal
problem solving. Interdependence calls for individuals to share
ideas, provide materials, lend a hand, subordinate one’s per-
sonal needs to the needs of the group, and otherwise willingly
and ably collaborate. Leaders who don’t continually help inter-
dependent employees learn new and better ways to work in tan-
dem tend to routinely suffer from rivalry, and are never able to
make full use of their valuable social capital.

Novelty. Tanika’s group demonstrates another circumstance
that calls for the power of social capital. Tanika and the other
members of her borrower group were certainly not specialists,
and they faced problems that were completely new to them.
Fortunately, the toys-for-hair plan the five came up with grew
out of the best thinking of the group. No one person had exactly
the right idea, but as one partial idea was added upon and then
changed again, each person helped create a strategy that, if left
to her own devices, none would have invented.
When facing changing, turbulent, or novel times—calling
for novel solutions—multiple heads can be better than one. By
demanding that no budding entrepreneur work alone, Dr. Yunus
ensures that his microcredit clients always work in teams, think
in teams, and meet every single week and brainstorm as teams.
Grameen Bank counts on synergy through forced interaction.