CEOs Sometimes Need Outside Help

We know we want leaders who are smart, decisive, transformative, and possessed of a singular vision. But there’s an often-overlooked factor that can make the difference between success and failure: a leader’s ability to go far outside the organization—mobilizing networks of critical expertise—to get help in solving problems.

Outside the organization? Why would the CEO of a huge corporation with vast capabilities need to look elsewhere for assistance? If outside help is truly needed, doesn’t that say something pretty negative about the CEO’s own staff and existing supply chain?

The reality today is that businesses, governments, and nonprofits are so complex and often must move so quickly that in many cases, finding answers to difficult questions requires tapping experts, service providers, and innovators scattered all over the world.

As Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, pointed out years ago, “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people don’t work for you.”

Malaysian authorities’ initial failure to track and recover Flight 370 shows how a lack of outside help can impede solutions during a crisis. National and airline leaders weren’t able to adjust to the fluid and complex situation by engaging external resources in the critical first hours and days after the plane’s disappearance. Collaboration and coordination eventually improved, but still faltered at times.

By contrast, consider the 2010 Chilean mining disaster, which resulted in the triumphant rescue of 33 miners trapped underground. As Faaiza Rashid, Amy C. Edmondson, and Herman B. Leonard found, Chilean president Sebastian Piñera immediately and effectively mobilized not just the critical government ministries and industry executives but also a variety of outside experts across the globe—from an Australian mapping software company to UPS. At the mine site, project leader André Sougarret sought assistance while managing the boundaries of the rescue effort to screen out contributors who lacked expertise or workable proposals. Together the officials and engineers overcame unprecedented technical challenges and brought about a rescue that most observers hardly thought possible.

A growing number of organizations now routinely draw on timely assistance beyond their own boundaries to pursue innovation, solve business or social problems, or expand ventures. These initiatives go well beyond the largely transactional exchanges promoted through crowd-sourcing approaches.

They are also quite different from CEOs’ typical outreach to various stakeholders, people who are already invested in or connected with the company. Sometimes the experts are freelancers or employees in other businesses; sometimes they’re in governments, NGOs, or academia. If the challenge at hand is industrywide, they might even be competitors. As a result, today’s leaders need to be good at building connections with a variety of outsiders beyond the usual value chains.

But making contacts is just the first, and often the least important, step in tapping experts. In my observations over the past several years, I’ve seen that effective CEOs don’t just sign up contractors; they lead in a way that mobilizes a network. They create energy, a sense of purpose, and even something of a community among people over whom they have no control. These groups of experts blur the distinctions between insiders and outsiders. How do they do it?

It often starts with greater humility. Compared with internally focused leaders, mobilizers simply have to be more humble. Even paid outsiders usually have plenty of other projects to work on, so mobilizers can’t just issue demands. They need to show much more respect and at times even deference toward these outsiders. But they can’t be shrinking violets either; they must have a confident, positive outlook and provide a strong sense of purpose and direction. Take NASA’s Mike Ryschkewitsch, who headed NASA’s Flight Readiness Review for Space Shuttle missions. He had the critical but delicate leadership role of facilitating networks of internal and external technicians, specialists, and managers to address final technical problems and approve launches in the wake of the Columbia disaster in 2003. An accomplished NASA leader, he gained the respect of all constituencies by deferring to superior expertise in the room (but he also moved decisively to close off debate when he sensed the collective was ready for a decision).

This humility often leads mobilizers to be more imaginative about what’s possible, and who can help. During the Chilean mine rescue, a key breakthrough came from a 24-year-old field engineer who showed up at the site on his own. To take a corporate example, Alan Mulally’s pioneering transformation of the fortress-like Ford organization was fueled in part collaborating with outsiders, seeking insights from regulators, investment bankers, and consumer automotive researchers, as well as major customers and car dealers. The overhaul even benefited from occasional conversations with Mulally’s counterpart at General Motors.

Finally, they tend to have an eye for networks of networks. Like good chess players, mobilizers think a few moves ahead. That means not just identifying network contributors who might help a project, but also looking to see what networks each network might bring along. In assembling a highly effective intelligence network during the Iraq War, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal brought together siloed units from historically competitive branches of military service and government. That in itself was a major accomplishment. But instead of being satisfied with having a few representatives from each unit, he encouraged all participants to draw from their related networks of intelligence, both in Washington and on the ground in the Middle East. McChrystal’s success was marked by the steady growth of participants in the network’s regular knowledge-sharing videoconferences.

The importance of these skills in recruiting outsiders and keeping them engaged will become increasingly critical in large organizations as advancing technology makes business ever more complex, global, and interdependent.

This blog first appeared on Harvard Business Review on 6/19/2014.

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