Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results

CHAPTER SIX

Lever 3: Build Nimble Networks

No Bloated Rolodexes

AT 4:30 P.M., Les Owen sat down in front of his Dell to go through his daily list of one hundred e-mails.¹ Owen, an engineer at BP’s oil pipeline unit in Anchorage, Alaska, was used to fielding inquiries from colleagues in myriad faraway places—a result of his twenty-six years of employment all over the world. He figured he was a natural source of help to colleagues. Outside his unassuming office, the northern sky began to darken as he checked each message. One, about lightning, caught his eye. Big thunder-and-lightning storms were no friend of oil pipelines. One time when lightning struck a Koch Industries facility in Texas, a pipe exploded, spilling ninety thousand gallons ...