Serendipitous to the opening chapter of the book, The Mona Lisa Is So Small, I was at the Museé de Louvre visiting the magnificent collection of Italian masters when I received notification of a copy of Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization (Wiley 2013). My reaction was quite sympathetic to Mr. Pontecraft’s own experience per his introduction: Upon entry, crowds of people & tour groups would rush right away upstairs to see the Mona Lisa first and foremost ignoring master works all around for notoriety. Popularity by itself is not leadership in my view.
[Personally, I was enamored by the enormity of the Veronese Paolo Caliari’s, The Wedding Feast at Cana at the opposite end of the same room, for the fascinating amount of networking that occurs in any political wedding ceremony.]
Flat Army covers a lot of interesting idea sources from both the immediate management and social science fields but also a good deal of history and culture. From the idea of Guanxi to the Multilevel Neural Network of North East Italy; from the Christmas Truce of 1914 on the Western Front in World War I, to the sociology of why bus riders won’t share seats; from JP Rangaswami’s thoughts on trust, to Leo Apotheker’s brief but tumultuous and guarded reign at HP.
The core of this book is about shaping one’s self as a leader. This is a complicated subject, regardless of the overflow of simplistic answers that you can find in business literature; for example, the plethora of Top10s and Top5 things that ‘can make you a better leader’. Developing one’s self is a combination of attitude, relationships, and practice; but most of all it is the skill to be honestly introspective of one’s own actions and behavior, with an independent eye. Can you be the observer while also in action?
Flat Army is a guide to what you should be looking for in your attitude and action. These are principles for a changing world where leadership is not automatic, imbued simply by rank or privilege.
Mr. Pontefract proses an actionable framework on how to become effective leader of a flat army—a cohort of horizontal connectedness, an armada of many moving together as a collective one. The book offers a proposed leadership model combining three categories: Connected Leader Attributes, a Participative Leader Framework, and a Collaborative Leader Action Model.
There is substantial detail here, so I will focus on a high level. The Connected Leader Attributes are what others refer to as leadership competencies. The book describes these 15 attributes—for example, Trusting, Involving, Empathizing, Developing and Communicating are the attributes of becoming a connected leader—each with its own supporting anecdote or data points. They are descriptions of why each attribute matters in its own right, although the book doesn’t clearly describe the matrix of dependencies between these attributes, or which ones matter more in one scenario versus another. One can only assume that a leader must develop themselves in all the attributes in some measure.
To describe his Participative Leader Framework, Mr. Pontefract first asks us to use a particular lens when we view this idea. The lens is a combination of four ideas:
a) Neighbor networks (Prof Ronald S. Burt of Univ. of Chicago Booth School of Business) – Success comes from relying on those you work with most often, rather than weak ties, as this is how the most work gets done in organizations
b) Pay it forward – Learn to give without expecting to get and ask them to give forward, because it benefits all in the end
c) Guanxi – reciprocity as a cultural value in your organization
d) Autopoiesis – rely on a system that assembles its own process for production over time, rather than engineered-in-advance process
Interestingly, Pay-it-forward is a parallel concept to Communal Sharing while Guanxi is similar to Equality Matching, both of which are described in my article on Prof Alan Fiske’s Four Elementary Forms of Sociality. These principles guide the actual framework for a leader to C.A.R.E.:
a) Continuous (change is the norm);
b) Authentic (contributions and working relationships with those close to you);
c) Reciprocal (behavior either in return or forward to another person or team);
d) Educating (yourself through your network continuously).
At Canadian communications company TELUS, the leaders and employees take to heart the idea to CARE and build authentic networks of relationships so they can learn and educate themselves in reciprocity. The author describes different sizeable groups that have emerged such as the 3000 member women’s professional development group, or the LBGT group named Spectrum. The power of network relationships is underscored with the citation of Lynn Wu of MIT’s “Value of Social Network” paper that shows direct evidence for an increase in financial performance based on authentic strong cross-organizational relationships.
The Collaborative Leader Action Model is perhaps the most practical part of the book with a focus on how a leader should approach working with their network. I’ve reproduced the CLAM model in Figure 1. It begins with Connect when a new idea or project has been initiated, and follows clockwise per the diagram.
The progression is easy to understand. You start by connecting with others about the seed idea behind a project. Collect all opinions, comments and suggestions. Communicate the proposed way forward you have chosen based on the collected information. Create and collaborate on the activity to achieve the project. Confirm that the creation is what the participants, idea submitters and stakeholders had in mind. Then make sure you congratulate and identify those involved.
Each part is significant in itself. The emphasis is not who initiated the idea, on the creation process, or on who gets to share the final results. It involves all the elements together, and also follows the Connected Leader attributes and the principles of C.A.R.E. proposed earlier.
What I’d suggest is to not jump straight to the action aspect, the CLAM, because the real work is in shaping yourself per the attributes and to practice the principles outlined. This is something that others participate and can give you feedback, but only you can change yourself in such ways.
Mr. Pontefract’s book, Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization, takes a deep look at the gestalt of leadership both in one’s self and in how one collaborates with others. There is plenty to learn and practice, as well as the inspiration to guide.
