The bigger an organisation becomes the more likely it is to fracture into fiefdoms and turf wars. An important challenge for leaders is to create a strong, shared culture where people are unified, to avoid a political and potentially adverse environment.
In today’s fast-paced business world, the more trust you have across your organisation, the faster you can operate.
In the race to build our careers, we default into doing what we learnt at school – by building our skills and knowledge. We assume that being smart and capable, the veritable A grade student who tops the class will help us on our career journey.
Thousands of years ago, when humans roamed the African savannah, it was in our best interests to live in tribes. Being part of a tribe allowed us to sleep soundly knowing that others were looking out for man-eating saber-toothed tigers. If we became too sick to hunt, we knew our fellow tribe members would help us out. We could trust that other people would look out for us and they could trust that we would look after them. A solitary human would never have survived that hostile environment.