Page 190 - Make Work Great

Mobilizing Groups

with the requirements and constraints understood by the rest of the
group.
One person acting alone can’t even procure the permits required to
build a skyscraper, much less design or construct the actual building.
And it doesn’t matter whether you’re building a skyscraper, redesigning
a payroll system, manufacturing the next generation of smart phone, or
designing an optimal software user interface. Group work is required
in the production of complex results in the same way that fl our, water,
and yeast are required in the production of leavened bread.
Not coincidentally, group work is also essential to the produc-
tion of the change you’re making to your workplace culture. Could
there be a more complex result to pursue? Sooner or later, as a natu-
ral outcome of your role as culture builder, you’ll be required to go
beyond advising individuals and move into the realm of infl uencing
and directing groups of people. This can’t be helped! As your crystal
grows, you’ll be accomplishing more, taking on more complex assign-
ments, and receiving more requests for advice.

Groups: Your Next Frontier
Anytime you’re in a conversation with more than one other person,
you’re engaged in a group setting. Your need to understand and han-
dle group work well is a purely practical requirement for your contin-
ued success. Ideally, the groups with which you’re involved will also
begin to see and adopt the “group versions” of your new cultural pat-
terns. When they do, you’ll begin to see serious change in the world
around you. You’ll also experience what research has shown to be the
good news about learning and problem solving in groups: if allowed
suffi cient time and equipped with proper interactive processes, groups
outperform even their most capable individual members and gener-
ate ideas and solutions that go beyond what each member brings to
1
the table singularly. Good group work is essential in the crystalline
network!
In any event, you must keep your eye on what happens in groups,
because you’re in the business of role-modeling your new precedents

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