AN UNNATURAL ACT

Many business executives operate under the false assumption that partnering skills are innate. These leaders regard themselves as great partners—now, if they could only "fix" everyone else. Partnering, however, is actually an unnatural act for most people. The relationship skills required for being a great partner and building a partnering culture are counterintuitive to much of what we've been taught, how we've been socialized, and how we've been rewarded both in our personal and professional lives. Take a close look at how the media constantly bombard us with messages that deride partnering in favor of going it alone. Think of a favorite movie hero. How much alliance building did he engage in to outsmart the bad guys? Not much, probably.

So it's not surprising that the Western command-and-control business model—so prevalent in global enterprises—for the most part portrays business heroes and heroines as strong, silent, independent, competitive types. Rugged individualists. According to this model, the "good guys" get the best of every deal, outsmart their partners as well as their competitors, and ride roughshod over anybody who gets in their way. Leadership as heroism. Winning isn't just everything, it's the only thing. Or is it? Such winner-take-all competitiveness may be necessary for a movie plot or for victory on a football field, but in the world of business, this scarcity mentality tends to focus on the short term and is destined to lead to failure.

In this book we have continued to stress a leader's role in building trust in an organization. However, during the past two decades the concept of trusting employees to pull their weight in tough times has fallen out of favor. Instead, many executives have focused on short-term strategies such as downsizing, outsourcing, and mergers and acquisitions to grow revenues. These revenue-enhancing tactics can deeply disturb the partnership between leaders and employees, and often create as many problems as they solve. It's a mistake to say these short-term strategies are inherently wrong. They're not. Rather, it's the way in which they have been implemented that undermines employee morale, costing companies billions in lost productivity and poor customer service, and resulting in the downfall of business empires. One need only review the litany of failed, or failing, business alliances—AOL and Time/Warner, AT&T and NCR, Exxon and Reliance Electric, FPL and Colonial Penn, IBM and Rolm, Mobil and Montgomery Ward, Novell and WordPerfect, to name a few.

Often, the underlying message leaders inadvertently send is that the needs of the business and the needs and desires of the employees are completely at odds, often irreconcilable. We do not believe this perspective to be the case. Businesses that have embedded a partnering culture within the organization have the relationship skills they need—both in their leaders and their employees—to weather these kinds of storms without fear. How? In the Dual Age of Information and Connections, businesses by necessity must reach out, form business relationships, profit from them, and move on quickly. Propagate connections. Having a culture that is grounded in trust, able to communicate, and focused on the future will give your enterprise a competitive advantage for doing just that. While competitors are squabbling over internal issues, baffled by confusing communications, and mired in mistrust, your Powerhouse Partner will be poised to take advantage of the ever-changing marketplace, leaving competitors behind wondering, "What happened?" Little would they suspect you have an enabling culture designed for just that strategic approach.

One possible unintended consequence of these often necessary actions is to create a gulf between leadership and employees. Employees sit paralyzed as they wait for the next shoe to drop. They feel as if they're being tagged as a part of the problem rather than being sought out as a potential part of the solution. Leaders often respond not by trying to understand but by fostering a climate of fear to force results. What they get instead is minimum compliance, not nearly enough to sustain any business for the long haul. Are we doomed to this lose-lose scenario? We don't believe it has to be this way. In this chapter we show you how leaders can attain the hard business results they require while keeping a productive and loyal workforce through the use of win-win attitudes and teamwork excellence.

A Quandary for Leaders

Never in modern business history have leaders been faced with such thorny dilemmas. Consumers want more for less, while top executives, shareholders, and "the street" demand ever-greater return on investment. This predicament is compounded by a workforce that expects more personal satisfaction from work and will leave in a heartbeat if their needs aren't being met, taking with them business strategies, product rollout plans, hard-earned customers, and relationships with partners, suppliers, and the community. And then they come back to poach other dissatisfied employees because they know exactly who they are and what it will take to get them to jump ship.

As if this challenge weren't enough, leaders must continue to make the transition into the Dual Age of Information and Connections. Although information and connections occur in abundance and grow exponentially, in a commodity-based economy scarcity rules, inasmuch as tangible resources are finite. This new economy operates on fundamentally different principles. In the Dual Age of Information and Connections, it's what we share that builds value. And the more we trust people, the more we are willing to share with them, and vice versa. Real wealth is generated by morphing two unrelated pieces of information or relationships into something new and of value to others. Remember the bank and the HR company? Remember the automobile manufacturer and the mobile phone company? They stopped fighting over how to slice the pie and made the pie bigger. Make bigger pies. Make sweeter pies. Make more pies. Make more bigger sweeter pies.

Striking a Balance

Many leaders think they can coerce results. They bully and intimidate, but in reality all they get is the minimum in cooperation and compliance. In the process they unwittingly set the stage for future failure by creating a cycle of conflict and mistrust that becomes increasingly harmful to the human energy of the business, resulting in a culture of losing. Compliance may produce short-term results, but in an era in which creativity sets one company apart from another, compliance isn't enough anymore. An enterprise needs all of its employees' physical, psychological, and creative energy to stand above the crowd.

Smart leaders reject the assertion that there is an inherent conflict between achieving business objectives and satisfying employees' needs. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a fundamental correlation between satisfied employees and satisfied customers. The key to any leader's success is striking a balance between getting results and satisfying employees' needs.