Exploring With the Business Pioneer

In his book Pioneering Organizations, Larry Davis examines the entrepreneurial spirit and how you can inject your own workforce with that kind of enthusiasm. After reviewing the book, I looked forward to the opportunity to talk to Davis and really get to the bottom of his ideas. Here's what he had to say.

gantthead: You say that leaders must practice "convergent leadership."  How would you define "convergent leadership"?

Larry Davis: Typically in organizations, whether for profit or not, a conflict of interests exists; some needs are met at the expense of others. Convergent leaders are those who understand that optimum levels of commitment and innovation will not occur under those circumstances and therefore work to achieve a convergence of the interests of all involved or impacted by the organization.

g: What practices or policies, common to IS organizations, really get in the way of convergence?

LD: I think that one that I have seen more commonly is the piecing out of work into little pieces, which not only isolates people, but leads to a behavior that I have seen in IS more than anywhere else:  keeping secrets.  Employees protecting their jobs by keeping information from people they don't know.  They don't share knowledge as other professional groups, and yet they are in a fast-changing field--changing faster than any other.  That tendency [to keep secrets] is hardly ever discussed.  I have had to break open this situation before.

Everyone loves it when they are able to speak openly.  People know where all the pieces fit.  People know how to do teamwork.  We have been doing it since the cave days.  This assigning into little pieces of work really screws that up.

Ironically, it's more of a fatal error in [the IS] field than it is in something like mechanics.