Clinking and Drinking

Many of you are no doubt familiar with Malcolm Gladwell, and sometime earlier in this thread we briefly talked about the roles of Connector, Maven, and Salesperson.  We also talked a lot about the inherent importance of networks of people inside businesses, government organization, and educational institutions to the overall economy of an area.  And we talked about Dunbar’s Number and the notion of limits to personal interactions.

Of course most of us aren’t 100% examples of any of Gladwell’s categories, notwithstanding that there are probably more minor roles and subtypes.  Still, I think there is some additional insight we can suss out of Gladwell’s personalities as they apply to networks of people.

Let’s say we want to drive change in our metropolis, in some meaningful way.  We know it will take action and commitment be various people, most of whom we don’t yet know.  We know it will take lots of discussions, including marketing the approach.  I’m pretty sure it’ll take some sharp people and application of technology as well, and some coordination of all the above.

We all also know why this will be hard to accomplish, as various layers of misunderstanding, cross-purposes, politics, inertia, and competing priorities will contribute viscosity to the process.  Undoubtedly each of us has examples from our work lives of committees and groups that struggled to attain success even in a more focused environment.  So why is this?

Part of the reason any such project goes slowly is that for each added stakeholder there is an intellectual on-boarding phase before they can contribute their skills, and with each added stakeholder there are more interconnections to manage as well.  One way to think about such a problem is the “clinking and drinking” aspect of a happy hour.

Let’s say we’re having a reception, and each person who comes in has to pour a drink, introduce themselves to each of the previous participants, and clink glasses before they can settle down to chat and drink.  If you start with four people at a table, it goes quickly as all can say their names in quick succession, do a 4-way “cheers” clink, and get down to drinking.  For our example, this is pretty much what Mavens want to do – skip much of the people problems and get down to business.

As more people come in, though, the pattern changes.  When the 21^st guest arrives, they have to shake hands with 20 people, clink 20 drinks, and then find a spot at a table.  Plus, by now each of our professional drinkers who just wants to imbibe will have been interrupted for an introduction 20 times as well.  By the time the 90-100^th participants arrive, everybody will be spending more time clinking than drinking. 

Of course in real-world situations the team-building and on-boarding phase (“clinking”) of a project and the development or operations part of doing the work (“drinking”) overlap, and for some people their whole job is really more about people and they are professional “clinkers”. 

For any major effort, building the team is part of the struggle, and getting the structure of the organization right is a component of that effort.  It doesn’t matter if the broader team is built of volunteers, politicians, teachers, entrepreneurs, or technologists; the team will still need some sort of structure.  A good team structure promotes clarity of goals, coherent and concerted action, reasonably good efficiency, and good feedback loops (accurate and low delay).    This is not at all easy for most people, including most executives (or even most militaries), to accomplish, and many of us know what poor teams are like, with uncertain and contrary goals, inconsistent and cross-purpose actions, poor visibility, and a general feeling of slogging through mud.  This latter case is what we want to avoid, and yet it’s an ever-present risk for a broad initiative that involves multiple bureaucracies.