Hot Groups : Seeding Them, Feeding Them, and Using Them to Ignite Your Organization PDF
Preview Hot Groups : Seeding Them, Feeding Them, and Using Them to Ignite Your Organization
Hot Groups This page intentionally left blank Hot Groups Seeding Them, Feeding Them, and Using Them to Ignite Your Organization Jean Lipman-Blumen Harold J. Leavitt New York Oxford Oxford University Press 1999 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1999 by Jean Lipman-Blumen and Harold J. Leavitt Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lipman-Blumen, Jean Hot groups : seeding them, feeding them and using them to ignite your organization / by Jean Lipman-Blumen and Harold J. Leavitt p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-512686-6 1. Organizational effectiveness. 2. Group decision making. 3. Industrial efficiency. I. Leavitt, Harold J. II. Title. HD58.9.L42 1999 658.4'036—dc21 98-8524 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Gene Webb Dear Friend, Wise and Generous Colleague 1933-1995 This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword, by Tom Peters ix Preface xiii Part I: Hot Groups: What They Are and Why They're Hot Chapter 1 The Hot Group State of Mind: What Is It? Where Is It? Why Does It Matter? 3 Chapter 2 Hot Groups: Why Now? 17 Chapter 3 How Hot Groups Think: Left Brain? Right Brain? How About Both? 3 5 Chapter 4 How Hot Groups Work: Fast, Focused, and Wide Open 49 Part II: Who Leads Hot Groups? And Who Seeds New Ones? ChapterS Leaders of Hot Groups I: Three Kinds of Leadership 79 Chapter 6 Leaders of Hot Groups II: Some Options for the Leader of a New Group 99 Chapter 7 Leaders of Hot Groups III: Leaders Who Seed Many Crops of Hot Groups 125 Part III: How Do Hot Groups Operate? Chapter 8 Hot Groups' Structures and Strategies: How Do We Get There from Here? 147 Chapter 9 Hot Groups and the Organization: A Marriage of Inconvenience? 165 Chapter 10 Using Hot Groups to Improve the Organization: Some More Marriage Counseling 177 Chapter 11 Why Some Hot Groups Fizzle While Others Sizzle: Four Cautionary Tales 191 Chapter 12 Hot Groups and the Individual: What's in It for Me? And What's Not? 211 Chapter 13 The Organizational Surround I: Where and When Do Hot Groups Thrive? 225 Chapter 14 The Organizational Surround II: Hot Groups Also Grow in Unexpected Places 239 Part IV: An Optimistic View of What's Ahead Chapter 15 Things Change at Different Speeds 253 Chapter 16 Differential Rates of Change Augur Glad Tidings 265 Notes 283 Index 291 Foreword In a traditional industrial company—circa 1975—the ratio of stock mar- ket value (in dollars) to hard assets might run about one-to-one. Near the end of 1998, the equivalent ratio at Microsoft was 212-to-one. Yikes! Microsoft. Extreme? Yes. Yet indicative of the new age stars. Microsoft.. .a floating crap game of hot folks.. .working on hot pro- jects. Period. And that's precisely what makes Jean Lipman-Blumen and Hal Leavitt's book so timely.. .important.. .and, yes, hot. Hot Groups! Yes! Yes! Yes! I can honestly say my hands frequently shook as I read this book (and I hope yours do too). The global dance led by the new technologies is ripping up the old economy to shreds and replacing it with the new one at, literal- ly, the speed of light. Old firms are merging and consolidating and disappearing at a record clip. New firms are racing to the fore- ground. (At a record clip.) A Netscape is born, changes the world, and dies (bought out by America On Line), all in the space of two years. Oh yes, America On Line; last time I looked, its stock market value was about one-and-a-half times greater than that of General Motors. As I said, yikes! It is an age of speed. An age of impermanence. An age as never before of rapidly applied brainpower. (The chief of giant ABB [Asea Brown Boveri] recently described his firm as 300 tons of applied brainpower.)
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