At their best, the units in good trust-based organizations hardly have to be managed, but they do need a multiplicity of leaders. I once teased an English audience by comparing a team of Englishmen to a rowing crew on the river – eight men going backward as fast as they can without talking to each other, steered by the one person who can’t row! I thought it quite witty at the time, but I was corrected after the session by one of the participants, who had once been an Olympic oarsman. “How do you think we could go backward so: fast without communicating, steered by this little fellow in the stern, if we didn’t know each other very well, didn’t have total confidence to do our jobs and a shared commitment – almost a passion – for the same goal! It is the perfect formula for a team.”
