Leading outside the lines: How to Mobilize the (in)Formal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results

THE ELEMENTS OF INTEGRATION

We generally use the word balance when we mean that the influences of the formal and informal mechanisms remain distinct but work together. We use the word integrate when we mean that the formal and informal mechanisms have somehow combined to achieve an overall influence where the distinct contributions of formal and informal are hard to separate. Don’t worry too much about this distinction—it’s a subtlety, but we want to be explicit for those who puzzle over these kinds of things.

Getting informal and formal mechanisms to integrate is tricky, and the shifting balance point between the informal and formal organization is but one part of this challenge. The inherent leadership bias to overrely on the formal, plus ...