The Power of People (How Magpie Began)

Strategies are most effective when they are participative, not commanded and controlled

We are never successful alone. The way our brains are wired, we often like to associate greatness and significant achievements with an individual — a leader, a star, a superhuman, a superhero. While these individuals are incredibly important and often serve as symbols of success, they are only part of the equation. Thomas Edison alone did not invent the light bulb, the symbol of innovation. Steve Jobs alone did not give us the iPod, the iPad and the iPhone. They had teams of brilliant minds working together, leveraging their strengths, and thinking adaptively before these ideas could become reality. Who knows how much of what we attribute to minds like Edison’s and Jobs’ actually should be credited to the ideas of their team members.

The light bulb story, in brief, is an interesting one. Edison employed teams of Menlo Park “muckers,” who were young, smart and motivated by the idea of apprenticing for the famed inventor. They were often recent grads of college or technical degree programs looking to develop their own reputations (think trade schools in the 1870s, not the technical degrees of today). They were excited to work in the most innovative places surrounded by other smart people that they could “geek out” with. (If you’re like me, that might call to mind much of Silicon Valley and the global Tech community today.)

As many people know, Edison’s was not the only light bulb being created. Two breakthroughs, by teams Edison created, were key to its success. First was the recognition that an entire system, not just a bulb, needed to be developed and installed. Next was the decision to create teams to focus on key components of that system. For example, there was a team focused on alkaline storage batteries. Another team was responsible for what some consider the breakthrough: a carbonized bamboo filament inside the bulb that became the key to commercialization, given its price and performance.

We could dissect the iPod as well, but I don’t need to belabor the point. There are articles from Wired and others dating back 15 years that can tell you more about the work of Ben Knauss, Tony Fadell and others who had roles perhaps greater than Jobs in making that product a reality. Instead, I’d rather change gears and pose a few questions.  

Can you be a leader if you have no supporters? Can your idea be successful without a great team to execute it? We celebrate the successes, but how many other light bulbs and portable mp3 players failed because they lacked the right team? Most academics, thought leaders, researchers, writers and organizational psychologists who have written about the topic today seem to agree that better ideas come from collecting a variety of perspectives (particularly if they are representative of the market or population impacted) and building on them. It’s why brainstorming and catalytic questioning have become so popular in working sessions today. It’s why there is a movement toward improv-based ideation and conversations that are “yes, and” as opposed to “no” or “yes, but.” Yet the focus here is still on generating ideas. Many companies still believe that it’s the lack of innovative ideas that create the greatest barrier to their future success. I disagree.

I believe, instead, that it’s the ability of a group of people to come together in ways that leverage their collective strengths that makes a team and eventually a company successful. Investing in creating teams that can develop ideas, bring them to fruition and adapt along the way as new challenges and constraints arise will allow teams and companies to succeed. Arguably, that is the case already for companies that started with empowerment as a foundational employee right. It’s the sharing and building of ideas by teams of people who trust each other and are working together as one unit that creates success. It’s developing strategies to compete in the market that are based on the capabilities of the people (not the outcomes one desires) that creates repeatable yet immutable successes for companies.

For much of my career I was a powerless leader. As a management consultant, I worked on a lot of proposals to firms for new business. Creating those pitches was often the work of junior associates who had 80-hour-a-week jobs and could contribute time above that to proposal work to separate themselves out as higher performers in year-end reviews and pay discussions. That resulted in a lot of volunteers wanting to put their name on something while doing the minimum amount of work for it. As a result, running point on these proposals taught me how to leverage the strengths and skillsets of different individuals in ways that minimized their efforts while maximizing our output. After all, a losing proposal doesn’t look good for anyone. It was in these roles that I first learned what it meant to be a servant leader, helping and supporting team members as opposed to dictating to them and controlling them.

It was easy to bring this approach to managing consulting teams. In that world, I was surrounded by smart people who were achievement oriented and looking to impress. So, instead of deciding that I needed to own the story and control the outcome, I would work collaboratively with my team members to develop the story and let them choose what they wanted to work on. That gave me the leftovers, which I always wanted. If the people around me are happy and engaged, my work was easier and less stressful than if they were not. I’d rather use meetings to share ideas and positive experiences than to focus on criticism and infighting. So, that’s what we did. Every day, we shared our work with one another to ensure alignment. My feedback was no more valuable than any others — and I explicitly solicited feedback from all team members on my own contributions to make sure they believed that. The results speak for themselves: I have led many successful projects for a variety of clients. My colleagues routinely requested me as their team manager. I can proudly say that no client has ever been disappointed by or critical of the work these teams have done. The only disappointment I have was learning that a former employer lost a client when I left the role; my replacement didn’t want to work in that way.

It was harder to bring this approach to my work as a manager and practitioner in a company because motivations are different for people who were put in roles than they are for people who try and sell themselves to get onto a project. For managers, there are no project start and end dates, so transitioning work and styles for existing team members is challenging. There are a number of psychological and neurochemical barriers to changing how people work that take patience and persistence to work through. Yet, I am proud to say that it can be done. It takes a lot of work every day, but followers can become empowered thinkers.

It is because of my former colleagues and that experience that I decided to start Magpie Insights. I wanted to share the MAGpie framework that I developed with other managers who may be struggling to motivate their own team members. (You can read more about the framework here.)

So, what does this all mean? After 20 years of studying research in psychology, influence and motivation — and of observing people managers and being a people manager myself — I have come to believe that we underestimate the power of people. Strategies fail when the people tasked with executing them lack the capabilities to deliver. Strategies are successful when they are adopted and adapted by the people who have the right mix of capabilities to not only deliver, but also improve upon the ideas along the way — and be empowered to do so. It’s the people, not the strategy that determine success.

Magpie Insights is devoted to helping organizations develop strategies that are rooted in the capabilities (or power) of its people and therefore improve organizational efficiency, generate higher profits, and build employee engagement and retention. I’ll be periodically posting thoughts on the Magpie-Insights.com blog (Musings and Insights), LinkedIn, Medium and elsewhere to share ideas about how we might think and work differently in the future. I hope you will read them and, if anything resonates, reach out! I’d love to hear your thoughts, talk through your ideas and discuss any questions that you have! After all, without ideas, we don’t have insight. Without insight, we cannot adapt.  

- Jarret