Few things leaders can do are more important than encouraging helping behavior within their organizations. In the top-performing companies it is a norm that colleagues support one another’s efforts to do the best work possible. That has always been true for pragmatic reasons: If companies were to operate at peak efficiency without what organizational scholars call “citizenship behavior,” tasks would have to be optimally assigned 100% of the time, projects could not take any unexpected turns, and no part of any project could go faster or slower than anticipated. But mutual helping is even more vital in an era of knowledge work, when positive business outcomes depend on creativity in often very complex projects. Beyond simple workload sharing, collaborative help comes to the fore—lending perspective, experience, and expertise that improve the quality and execution of ideas.
IDEO’s Culture of Helping
Leaders can do few things more important than encouraging helping behavior within their organizations. In the highest-performing companies, it is a norm that colleagues support one another’s efforts to do the best work they can. That has always been true for efficiency reasons, but collaborative helping becomes even more vital in an era of knowledge work, when positive business outcomes depend on high creativity in often very complex projects.
A help-friendly organization has to be actively nurtured, however, because helpfulness among colleagues does not arise automatically: Competition, pride, or distrust may get in the way. The trickiness of this management challenge—to increase a discretionary behavior that by definition must be inspired—makes all the more impressive what the design firm IDEO has already achieved. Its help-seeking and help-giving culture is behind the firm’s success. But how has IDEO managed to make helping the norm? To answer this question, the authors spent two years observing, interviewing people, and conducting surveys at one office of the firm. They discovered four keys to building a help-friendly organization that leaders of other organizations could learn and apply to similar effect.