By encouraging employees to both seek and provide help, rewarding givers, and screening out takers, companies can reap significant and lasting benefits. A McKinsey Quarterly article.

 

Wharton Prof Adam Grant (author of bestseller Give & Take) highlights the competitive advantage of giving….or collaborating, helping.  In this article Grant tells us that in a Harvard study of the US intellignce system they found “the single strongest predictor of group effectiveness was the amount of help that analysts gave to each other.” And further that “just knowing the amount of help-giving that occurred allowed the Harvard researchers to predict the effectiveness rank of nearly every unit accurately.”

The benefits of giving/helping are many.  Yet corporate cultures don’t always promote this and Grant tells us that reward systems implemented to promote helping can backfire as people have difficulty changing their methods from competition to cooperation.  Enabling a giving culture must be done strategically and in steps.

Good stuff.  I’d love to hear from others on steps they have taken to promote giving and cooperation.

See on www.mckinsey.com