Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get Unstuck to Get Results

CHAPTER 6

Designing for Mutual Learning

Who do you think plays the most influential role in a ship’s performance? Most people would name the captain, the engineer, or the navigator. But I’d argue that the most influential role is the ship’s architect—the designer. How the architect designs the ship determines how fast and far it can travel, how quickly it can turn, and how well it can protect its crew while withstanding rough seas. The design determines the limits of the ship’s performance. Of course, the talent of the crew and the way they work together determine how close they can get to reaching the limits of the design. But no matter how good the captain and crew are, they can’t perform better than the ship’s design allows. To do that, they ...