The New York City Partnership

At the end of the 1970s, New York City took its first steps back from the brink of economic chaos when, thanks to the Municipal Assistance Corporation, the city avoided financial bankruptcy. Guided by Mayor Ed Koch’s sharp tongue and humorous touch, some of the confidence returned to New York’s historically brash but recently battered spirit. The city, however, still faced a long economic recovery. Major businesses, for example, continued to flee, taking both employment and a chunk of the tax base with them. Plenty of skeptics predicted the city’s demise as the nation’s financial and business capital.

In this uncertain, fast-changing environment, many business leaders, including the CEOs of some of the nation’s largest enterprises, worried that the Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Council—the two primary organizations representing their interests in city affairs—were not as effective as required. So when George Champion, who had chaired both the chamber and the council for several years, decided to retire, a number of business and city leaders asked David Rockefeller to succeed Champion and to merge and renew the two institutions. Because of Rockefeller’s stature and respect, his long history of philanthropic activities, and his chairmanship of Chase Manhattan Bank, the executives thought that he was the only person who could forge the “common voice” for business they believed necessary to protect both the reputation and the reality of the city’s economic strength.

Luckily for New York and the business community, Rockefeller said yes to the job; just as luckily, he said no to the mission. Under his guidance, the Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Council did combine to support what became known as the New York City Partnership. But Rockefeller and the team of chief executives he shaped to lead this merger transformed their purpose from fostering a common business lobbying voice to creating a new organization “to help make New York City a better place to live, work, and do business.”

From the spring of 1979 through early 1981, Rockefeller’s team worked as hard at shaping their purpose and goals as they did at overcoming the resistance throughout the city, including at the chamber and council themselves, to assembling the considerable resources of the business community under a single banner. In addition to Rockefeller, the initial core team included Arthur Taylor, former president of CBS and “interim” president of the newly formed Partnership, as well as four CEOs: Richard Shinn (Metropolitan Life), Paul Lyet (Sperry-Rand), Ed Pratt (Pfizer), and Virgil Conway (Seaman’s Savings Bank). Before the team finished, however, others joined its ranks, including John Whitehead (Co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs) and Ellen Strauss (president of WMCA, and future president of the Partnership). Other civic-minded business executives, of course, played very important roles in both the formation and conduct of the Partnership. But their contributions came in the form of the money, resources, influence, and judgment that usually get associated with steering committees, boards of advisors, and advisory councils. By contrast, everyone on the core team, including Rockefeller himself, put themselves at risk and did the kind of hard work characteristic of real teams.

The core team traveled all over the city for meetings with civic and community leaders in order to test the Partnership’s mission against the most pressing needs and interests of the day. They also attended an endless series of breakfasts sponsored by Rockefeller to solicit comments and criticism from executives of large and small businesses alike. They lobbied city, state, and federal officials. They explored the experiences of business groups in other cities. And they continually tested, shaped, and argued among themselves over their purpose (“help solve some of the city’s key problems”) and approach (“prioritize problems for attack and then focus on a few”).

It was a classic team effort with the performance results to show for it. The team founded and institutionalized an entirely new concept for New York’s business leadership, pulling together more than a hundred CEOs and other major executives from big business, small business, community, and other social service groups. In addition, they sparked a number of initiatives aimed at alleviating serious concerns, including the creation of tens of thousands of summer jobs for young people, raising millions of dollars from private and government sources to fund thousands of units of affordable housing, establishing practical and effective neighborhood crime prevention networks, and executing a strategy for bringing jobs to the outer New York boroughs. While they did not solve all of the city’s critical problems, they made an important dent in some.

In all this, David Rockefeller was critical. He had been initially approached because of his stature, or what one team member called his “convening power.” And there is no question he did command attention and generate lots of money and general support for the Partnership. But getting his core team and dozens of other CEOs and well-known leaders to check their corporate egos at the door to work on urban problems did not happen simply because of Rockefeller’s raw power or prestige. It happened because he was a good team leader.

What Team Leaders Do and Do Not Do

Those who lead small groups must look to the specifics of the performance challenge to help them choose how best to lead. If the group can deliver performance as an effective working group through maximizing each individual’s contribution, then the leader can rely on the normal decision-making and delegation approaches often associated with good management. If, on the other hand, performance requires a team approach, then the leader cannot assume that good management will be enough. Neither the leader nor those he or she leads should expect the leader to make all the decisions about directions taken, how resources get deployed, and how individuals are performing. Instead, the leader must show—in everything he or she does and does not do—a belief in the team’s purpose and in the people who, individually and together, make up the team.

Moreover, the strength of a leader’s belief in what the team is all about can be incredibly powerful. During our research, we came across a compelling example of this in a report by Roger Mudd in the television series “Learning in America.” The program, “Schools at Work,” described four schools from different sections of the country, each of which was in a disadvantaged community, and each of which had achieved remarkable results:

“For so many years the achievement had been so-so, it had been accepted as the norm. . . . The first challenge was attendance—just getting these kids to school. Today, attendance is close to perfect—98 percent.”

“My first year, I think our scores at the sixth grade were at the forty-fourth percentile, which is totally unacceptable. . . . This last year we were at the ninety-seventh percentile—in all areas.”

“Math scores show the biggest turnaround. Seven years ago only half the students were achieving at or above grade level. Now more than 90 percent do!”

Behind these kinds of results, which were accomplished through the efforts of both principal/faculty and faculty/student teams, were deep-seated beliefs of the principal and faculty team leaders:

“. . . an embedded belief, an almost wordless devotion to the cause of public education and its worth to a democracy.”

“I don’t believe that any youngster should fail in public education in America. I don’t think that children fail, I believe that schools fail children. . . .”

“And we have a belief that unites us that all children can learn, (a belief that together) we can get the job done.”

It is easy to see how powerful beliefs like these motivate and energize potential team leaders to instinctively act in ways that create real teams. Similar beliefs, although sometimes less evangelical, characterize the best team leaders. As a result, they do not need remarkable leadership qualities, or even extensive training. They simply need to believe in their purpose and their people.

The power of such attitudes gets demonstrated time and time again in teams. Randy Geyer of the U. S. Army log cell had such beliefs. So did Mack Canfield of the Dallas Mafia, Doris Dunlap of the Tallahassee Democrat ELITE Team, William Janacek of the Deal-to-Steel Team, and Bill Greenwood of the Burlington Northern Intermodal Team. And so did David Rockefeller. From the outset, Rockefeller strongly believed in both the purpose and capabilities of his team. As with other effective team leaders, the stronger this belief was, the more it enabled him to instinctively strike the right balance between action and patience as he worked to do the six things necessary to good team leadership.

1. Keep the purpose, goals, and approach relevant and meaningful. All teams must shape their own common purpose, performance goals, and approach. While a leader must be a full working member of the team who can and should contribute to these, he or she also stands apart from the team by virtue of his or her selection as leader. Teams expect their leaders to use that perspective and distance to help the teams clarify and commit to their mission, goals, and approach.

Teams usually do not want leaders to go beyond this. As one of the regular members of the team, of course, a leader can make any and all specific suggestions. But when he or she wears the “leader’s” mantle, comments intended as suggestions may be interpreted as mandates. This is especially likely to happen in business contexts where most people are conditioned to hear “orders” when their managers speak. But if leaders specify too much about purpose, goals, and approach, they will, in effect, have used their distance from the team in a normal hierarchical as opposed to team fashion. By doing so, they may gain compliance to “their” purpose. But they are likely to lose commitment to a team purpose. This is especially true at the beginning of a potential team’s efforts when all eyes and ears are so keenly tuned to how the leader will use authority to build a team.

Rockefeller, for example, soon became unshakeable in his belief that the Partnership should solve problems and sponsor projects as well as lobby, and most of the core team agreed. Ed Pratt, however, did not. He caused the team to debate this issue for several months. In this, Pratt had Rockefeller’s open blessing. Why? Because Rockefeller also had an unshakeable belief in an approach based on candor and facts—not unlike how Bill Janacek anchored the Deal-to-Steel Team with his credo of “focus on the process, not the people.” Rockefeller instinctively knew that unless the team openly struggled with the issue, they would never develop the commitment required to make it happen. He also knew the team would not risk sharing their conflicting views unless he gave them the space and encouragement to do so. This paid off; Ed Pratt, for example, became one of the most committed members of the team.

While Rockefeller’s commitment to a problem-solving purpose for the Partnership was steadfast, he did not dictate or order the team to adopt it. Moreover, like all well-balanced team leaders, Rockefeller demonstrated both patience and silence when the team discussed the specifics of its purpose, goals, and approach beyond the overarching problem-solving theme itself. “All he did was sit there and wait until the problem homogenized,” recalls one observer. “He didn’t feel any great compulsion to force a solution before its time.” Agrees another, “It was almost like a shared leadership. David would just sit there and watch.”

2. Build commitment and confidence. Team leaders should work to build the commitment and confidence of each individual as well as the team as a whole. As we discussed earlier, there is an important difference between individual commitment and accountability versus mutual accountability. Both are needed for any group to become a real team. Thus, the leader must keep both the individual and the team in mind as he or she tries to provide positive, constructive reinforcement while avoiding intimidation.

Unfortunately, it is all too easy to coerce people in organizational settings, including small groups. Given his stature, for example, Rockefeller could have intimidated other CEOs. In that case, we suspect, things would have fallen apart fairly quickly because his team was entirely voluntary. Inside businesses, leaders of small groups who intimidate also come up short. The people involved may not have the exit options available to volunteers, but over time they will lose their enthusiasm and initiative when dealing with an intimidating leader. Certainly, they do not coalesce into a team. Either they never take the risks needed to build mutual trust and interdependence, or, if they do, they are not rewarded for it. Executives who rely on intimidation can get things done better in a hierarchy than in teams.

Positive and constructive reinforcement fuels the mutual accountability and confidence so critical to team performance. In fact, more than anything else, Rockefeller’s leadership of the Partnership is remembered for his remarkable habit of providing meaningful positive feedback. Another team leader who did this well was Steve Frangos of the Kodak Zebra Team mentioned in Chapter 3. When he assumed control of the black and white film manufacturing activities at Kodak, they were considered unexciting. Color was the place to be, and many people in black and white felt like second-class citizens. Frangos worked hard to transform this perception both among his core leadership team and the rest of the 1,500 people working in black and white. Using examples ranging from the Gulf War to life-saving surgeries, Frangos built a noble sense among his team that black and white products “were more important to society” than many other Kodak offerings.

Indeed, the Zebra theme itself created a fun yet performance-oriented team environment. Frango’s team created Zebra costumes, cheers, slogans, and songs to constantly reinforce their commitment to black and white products. This may seem hokey, but it worked for Frangos and the Zebra Team. According to one observer, “Frangos and the Zebra stuff eliminated the fear of failure and created a team where everybody stands on the shoulders of everybody else.”

3. Strengthen the mix and level of skills. Effective team leaders are vigilant about skills. Their goal is clear: ultimately, the most flexible and top-performing teams consist of people with all the technical, functional, problem-solving, decision-making, interpersonal, and teamwork skills the team needs to perform. To get there, team leaders encourage people to take the risks needed for growth and development. They also continually challenge team members by shifting assignment and role patterns.

This effort can involve tough choices. No team reaches its goal with a chronic skill gap relative to its performance objective. Rockefeller, for example, guided the core team to practice an unwritten but powerful rule that made membership, whether continuing or new, depend on tangible contributions to specific city problems. John Whitehead, for example, earned his membership in the core team by leading the economic development project that increased affordable back-office space in the city. Conversely, membership was denied (and in some cases taken away) from people who contributed little. Obviously, the rule tested commitment. But, it also tested and developed the skills needed to make something specific and meaningful happen in New York City’s difficult urban environment.

4. Manage relationships with outsiders, including removing obstacles. Team leaders are expected, by people outside as well as inside the team, to manage much of the team’s contacts and relationships with the rest of the organization. This calls on team leaders to communicate effectively the team’s purpose, goals, and approach to anyone who might help or hinder it. They also must have the courage to intercede on the team’s behalf when obstacles that might cripple or demoralize the team get placed in their way.

Almost always the mutual trust so critical to a team begins with the leader who must show that the team can depend on him or her to promote team performance. Greenwood of the Intermodal Team did this with the hub proposals, as did Janacek of Deal-to-Steel with the request for budget authority. So did Rockefeller. Early on, for example, Mayor Koch posed an obstacle to the Partnership because he may have felt threatened by them; he certainly felt strongly that they occasionally stepped out of bounds. “In the early days,” Koch recalls, “they were too full of themselves. They didn’t understand that they were not the answer to New York’s prayers. I was offended by their tone. So they changed.”

In fact what happened was that Rockefeller was savvy enough about government and urban affairs, and about Koch’s ego, to encourage the Partnership to strike the most constructive tone possible in their communications while simultaneously making sure the mayor appeared at key functions and was recognized for his mayoral leadership. It did not have to happen this way; Rockefeller could have taken on the mayor. By not doing so, he demonstrated again how patience can be the best guide for a team leader trying to further the team’s cause.

5. Create opportunities for others. Team performance is not possible if the leader grabs all the best opportunities, assignments, and credit for himself or herself. Indeed, the crux of the leader’s challenge is to provide performance opportunities to the team and the people on it. When the Dallas Mafia team leader Canfield made room for a more junior investment banker to lead a prestigious account, he did just that. So did Frangos at Kodak, when he encouraged a chemical engineer who “could not balance his checkbook at home” to take responsibility for preparing the Zebra Team’s $200 million budget. Stepping out of the way to provide opportunities to others, however, does not mean abdicating responsibility for guidance, monitoring, and control. Colonel Geyer, for example, regularly let members of the log cell brief the top brass, but always attended the meetings himself just in case they needed his help or support.

Rockefeller also emphasized opportunities for others. The active leadership role in the core group often shifted back and forth among the members, depending on the situation. Certainly Rockefeller was always the official leader, but he often displayed the wisdom to step back when others were in a position to lead key discussions or spearhead critical initiatives. For example, when some key CEOs began to waver in their support of the Partnership, Dick Shinn emerged as the team’s leader in bringing them back into the fold. When the specifics of formal organization structure were at issue, Arthur Taylor was usually the de facto leader. When critical priorities needed to be established, John Whitehead took the helm.

Rockefeller also created opportunities for members of the “extended team.” Arthur Barnes, president of the New York Urban Coalition, remembers advocating that the Partnership should address educational issues if it was to have credibility within working class communities. Several business executives opposed this, believing education was too controversial and should be excluded from the Partnership’s activities. Yet, to his surprise, Barnes prevailed—a fact he attributes to Rockefeller’s insistence, and the core team’s agreement, that everyone have an opportunity to speak out, and that the best arguments eventually succeed. “That was one of the proofs that this thing was real,” says Barnes. “You could persuade these guys if you had the facts.”

6. Do real work. Everyone on a real team, including the leader, does real work in roughly equivalent amounts. Team leaders do have a certain distance from the team by virtue of their position, but they do not use that distance “just to sit back and make decisions.” Team leaders must contribute in whatever way the team needs, just like any other member. Moreover, team leaders do not delegate the nasty jobs to others. Where personal risks are high or “dirty work” is required, the team leader should step forward.

Like all good team leaders, Rockefeller quickly made it clear that no task was too humble or insignificant for him to do just because of his rank as leader, not to mention his stature in the city and the world. He attended the vision-shaping breakfasts, community outreach meetings, lobbying efforts, and fundraising dinners that provided context and direction to the Partnership. He even spent hours personally making sure that seating arrangements at large events did not juxtapose two clashing personalities. Most of all, he made it evident that his most precious resource—his own time—was available to anyone with Partnership business.

Throughout the preceding paragraphs we have highlighted what leaders do and have drawn comparisons and contrasts with what they do not do. There are, however, two critical things real team leaders never do: they do not blame or allow specific individuals to fail, and they never excuse away shortfalls in team performance. This, again, is behavior that most of us admire and can practice. But organizations built on individual instead of mutual accountability often foster the reverse. Too often, when expected results do not materialize, individuals get singled out for blame, or outside forces like the economy, the government, or the weather get identified as the cause. By contrast, real team leaders honestly believe that success or failure is a team event. No outside obstacle is an excuse for team failure, and no individuals fail. Only the team can fail. The leader assumes that the team’s task includes overcoming whatever obstacles get in its way. The best illustration of the power of this attitude is in the following quote from the Roger Mudd PBS series described earlier:

Here’s a school where 90 percent of the youngsters have some form of public assistance . . . many of the youngsters come from single-parent families, teenage mothers, all the factors that educators have used to explain away failure exist in this school today. And these youngsters can outperform the best and brightest in any school in America. (Emphasis added.)

Conclusion

Obviously, a team leader critically influences whether a potential team will mature into a real team or even a high-performance team. It is common sense, then, that picking people with the proven or potential capacity to lead a team will enhance the chances of team performance. In particular, it is important to avoid individuals who, for whatever reasons, have unbending attitudes contrary to the team approach. Such people are a distinct minority, but appointing them as team leaders is a mistake. Unless a leader believes in a team’s purpose and the people on the team, he or she cannot be effective.

Too many managers, however, behave as though the selection of a team leader is the only thing that matters. In doing so, they ignore critical aspects of team leadership we have observed. First, over-worrying the selection unduly constrains the choice. Lots of different kinds of people can be effective team leaders; unlike corporate leadership, guiding a team is not the special reserve of a select few. A Randy Geyer can do it as well as a David Rockefeller.

Second, focusing on selection alone abdicates the responsibility to help the leader after he or she has started. Most people, whether from the assembly line or the board room, must develop as team leaders on the job. Their habitual response when tapped as leaders of small groups, at least in business contexts, is to try to be a good manager by making all the decisions and delegating and evaluating all individual responsibilities. This can be effective in working groups, but team leadership demands a different set of attitudes and behaviors. Most people can learn them—indeed, most of us have practiced them at least occasionally by the time we are adults. But the attitudes and behaviors of a team leader are unlikely to be our first instinctive response when we are selected; we usually will have to relearn and reapply them.

Moreover, and perhaps more subtly, each team requires a different balance between action and patience. Keeping each element of the team’s basics relevant is a moving target. It requires the leader’s constant attention if he or she is to build commitment and confidence, strengthen the mix and level of skills, manage relationships with outsiders, remove obstacles, and still do real work within the team. Because each team differs in its performance challenge, composition, and approach, the job of the leader needs to change over time. Hence, team leaders always need to grow after they are selected.

Accordingly, managers and others often should pay more attention to helping team leaders perform than selecting them. They can do this by conscientiously monitoring the performance of the team, the elements that indicate where the team is on the performance curve, and the team leader’s attitude and behavior toward the team’s purpose and the team itself. Periodically assessing the team against the criteria listed at the end of Chapter 3 will help anyone, whether part of the team or not, evaluate team performance and effectiveness. Asking the following questions can help evaluate the team leader’s attitude, behavior, and effectiveness:

1. Has the leader adopted a team or a working group approach? Does the leader:
   1. make all important decisions?
   2. make all work assignments?
   3. make all evaluations of individuals?
   4. ensure work is conducted primarily on the basis of individual accountability?
   5. do any “real work” beyond decision making, delegating, and agenda setting?
2. Is the leader striving for the right balance between action and patience within the team? Does the leader:
   1. promote constructive conflict and resolution?
   2. use distance and perspective to keep the team’s actions and directions relevant? Intimidate anyone on the team?
   3. constantly challenge the team to sharpen its common purpose, goals, and approach?
   4. inspire trust in people by acting in concert with the team’s purpose and the team?
   5. create opportunities for others, sometimes at his or her own expense?
3. Does the leader articulate a team purpose and act to promote and share responsibility for it? Does the leader:
   1. think about and describe his or her assignment in individual or hierarchical versus team terms?
   2. identify and act to remove barriers to team performance?
   3. blame individuals for failure to perform, either within or beyond the team?
   4. excuse away performance shortfalls by pointing to “uncontrollable” outside forces?

That team leaders can and do learn on the job is illustrated well by Steve Frangos of the Kodak Zebra Team. Throughout his career, Frangos was known as someone with good interpersonal skills. Yet, by Frangos’s own admission, when he took on the manufacturing job he still believed in the command-and-control approach to management. “I was taught,” he says, “that you couldn’t be a good manager unless you control everything and everyone.” In this, he was not unlike Janacek of Deal-to-Steel, Mott of the Tallahassee Democrat, and many other ultimately effective team leaders who started off by asserting too much control over their potential teams.

Luckily, says Frangos, he learned the value of giving up control—albeit in a rather unexpected way involving room assignments at an off-site. Frangos believed he needed to make the assignments in order to satisfy everyone, but his attempted solutions failed miserably. Late the first night, his group was unhappy, and Frangos was pacing the halls in his pajamas. Two people finally told him to go to bed, and that they would take over the job—which they did and did better than Frangos. It was a trivial incident, but played a big part in turning around Frangos’s attitude and behavior.

Frangos started to move to one side while still exerting a guiding hand over the group. This took many forms, from literally sitting at the side instead of the head of a table to formally reorganizing the manufacturing unit to delegate more control and initiative to the team. Over time, Frangos became as conscious of what he did not do or say as a team leader as what he did. For example, in one meeting we observed, he leaned over to us and mentioned, “I have opinions on all this, but I’m not saying anything.”

All this involved risk to Frangos. He had to consciously modify his long-standing managerial approach. Moreover, he had to do so in a job some people were surprised he was given. Frangos had come through the ranks on the less technical finishing side of the film business versus the more complex sensitizing side. Accordingly, it was unusual for him to be named chief of manufacturing—sensitizing people typically called the shots, not the “whack it, hack it, pack it” guys from finishing.

Team members, however, including those in the technically difficult sensitizing area, did not mistake Frangos’s silence for weakness or indecision. They knew he had an unshakeable commitment to the team’s purpose of putting black and white film back on the Kodak map and to the team’s specific performance goals regarding cycle time, inventory, customer satisfaction, on-time delivery, and productivity. But they also knew—and appreciated deeply—that Frangos wanted the team, not himself, to lead black and white’s resurgence.

In the ultimate accolade to the team leader who has struck the right balance between action and patience, one of the Zebras says of Frangos, “So much of what we have been able to do comes from the fact that Steve has let us be what we want to be.” Frangos himself favors a quote from the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu to describe his view of team leadership: “As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate. When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’”