Megacommunity Leadership
The megacommunity™ leader truly has the power to shape the future—providing, of course, that he or she has the right tools.
With little fanfare and almost no media coverage, one of the world’s leading public health crises is on its way towards joining smallpox and polio in the medical waste-bin of history. While the solution to this crisis may be as simple as a grain of salt, implementing it has required an innovative and interconnected approach to leadership that spans every sector of society.
Iodine Deficiency Disorder (IDD) is the world’s leading—and most preventable—cause of brain damage, affecting 740 million people across the globe. In Africa, close to 30 per cent of children under the age of five are iodine deficient, with symptoms ranging from the enlarged thyroid gland known as goiter to severe mental and physical stunting.
But in the past decade, thanks to a dedicated “megacommunity” of leaders from corporations, NGOs, governments and multilateral organizations, the number of countries where iodine deficiency is a public health problem has been cut in half—and continues to drop. Companies such as Unilever have partnered with health ministries, international and local NGOs and the media in order to produce, distribute and promote the use of low-cost iodized salt. In so doing, they have significantly lowered the incidence of IDD in vulnerable countries.
A Megacommunity approach—in which organizations unite across sectors to reach goals they cannot achieve alone—is becoming increasingly necessary in meeting the challenges of our interconnected world.
Indeed, in this era of rapid globalization and growth, solutions to the challenges that face us demand a revolution in perspective; a true shift in consciousness. Leading voices in business, government and civil society must join together in order to forge common agendas and pursue large-scale change. As such, megacommunity leadership calls for a new approach—one that is inclusive, boundary-crossing, savvy and adaptable.
The megacommunity is a collaboration; as such, there is no single, overarching CEO of the endeavor. So who, exactly, are we referring to when we say, “megacommunity leader”?
The first category of megacommunity leaders includes those senior leaders of organizations (i.e., CEOs, directors, chairmen, government officials) who become engaged in a megacommunity. These leaders have a unique responsibility: their full-hearted participation is crucial, since it ensures that their organizations will be fully participative. If a senior leader isn’t visibly committed to an endeavor, the rest of the organization may not view it as a priority. And if the leader does not tangibly endorse a solution, it may not fly, if only because people may feel vulnerable in applying their own time and resources to it.
However, the inverse is also true: if a megacommunity only has the participation of one senior leader from an organization, it will find itself in a somewhat vulnerable position, much like what happens in a network if it’s too single-hub dependent.
To be sure, each member organization must offer someone who has the authority to commit resources—whether financial, technical, intellectual or emotional. But senior leaders, of course, aren’t the only ones with that ability—which brings us to our next category.
This second type of leader is one who plays the role of formal liaison to the megacommunity. He or she has the authority to interact with the megacommunity as well as the responsibility to carry the plans and lessons of megacommunity back to its base organization.
While there are slight differences between what the megacommunity needs from senior leaders as opposed to liaisons, we’ve come up with several key attributes that largely apply to both. Taken together, they offer a model for a new, collaborative type of leadership: one that can truly galvanize and affect large-scale change.
A Spirit of Inclusiveness
The key word in the megacommunity is “partnership.” Stakeholders join a community precisely because they realize that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts“ and that strength lies in leveraging diverse capabilities and perspectives—especially when tackling global issues.
Indeed, a megacommunity is a living embodiment of an “us and them” strategy, as opposed to an “us versus them” strategy. Organizations joining a megacommunity recognize that finding sustainable solutions to complex issues will require bringing multiple frames of reference and multiple capabilities to bear. Therefore, it is essential that a megacommunity leader value inclusiveness.
“We could not have achieved success in Ghana without UNICEF and the Ghana Health Service. It is these kinds of cross sector collaborations and partnerships that are key to business tackling societal issues,” Unilever’s Group Chief Executive Patrick Cescau has said. “This was a win-win. UNICEF and the Ghanaian Ministry of Health achieved their public health goals of increasing iodine consumption. Unilever Ghana was able to open up a new market.”
This sort of “win-win,” mentality is essential to the megacommunity leader. Within the megacommunity, the working assumption is that a solution exists that has critical benefits for everyone—whether they be investors, union leaders, landowners, neighbors or constituents. In addition, the inclusive leader must realize there is a material—and psychological—benefit in having a real empathy for the constraints that each sector faces when attempting to operate in a globalized world. He or she must be willing to see new possibilities in new combinations of partners, across many different sectors.
In short, the megacommunity leader needs to have a real commitment to cross-sector engagement.
In 2006, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg demonstrated this type of commitment when he announced an ambitious urban renewal program for New York City. The program, called PlaNYC 2030, set out to tackle three critical issues facing the city’s future: exploding population growth, dangerously aging infrastructure and mounting environmental issues, including climate change. PlaNYC 2030’s goal was to prepare New York for long-term, sustainable growth, and, as such, addressed key facets of the urban environment: housing stock, transportation, energy, water supply, air quality and land use. Its initiatives—aimed at reducing carbon emissions by 30 per cent by 2030—represent the broadest attack on global warming ever undertaken by a city.
To develop the plan, Mayor Bloomberg established a top-notch Sustainability Advisory Board, comprised of a diverse group of leaders from the private sector, grassroots community groups, environmental organizations, academia and organized labor. Twenty different city agencies weighed in with technical advice. In addition, the City partnered with the Earth Institute at Columbia University, which provided scientific research and advice on climate change-related issues.
Another broad coalition of over 70 civic, environmental, business, labor, religious, public health and community groups that dubbed itself the Campaign for New York’s Future came together in order to provide political and communal support for PlaNYC 2030 and encourage public debate around it. To further ensure civic participation, several major corporate foundations signed on to underwrite GreeNYC, a multimedia consumer education campaign on sustainable living.
“Bloomberg is very entrepreneurial in his mindset—partly because of his background,” says David Maurrasse, Strategic Advisor to Columbia University's Earth Institute and founder of the University’s Center for Innovation in Social Responsibility (CISR). “His instinct is to say, ‘OK, if I can’t figure out a way to address this totally within the parameters of the city government, I’m going to go out there and find other parties in the city who have an interest in these issues, and reach out to them.”
Tri-Sector Exposure
Mayor Bloomberg is just one example of an increasing number of “multiparty” or “integrative” leaders, whose careers have taken them through all three sectors. Before serving as mayor of New York City, Bloomberg was the founder and CEO of Bloomberg L.P., and a board member of Johns Hopkins University.
Other leaders who fall into this ever-burgeoning category include Ann Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF (who was the first woman to serve as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and before that practiced corporate law); Richard Parsons, CEO of Time-Warner (who worked in the Gerald Ford Administration and chaired the Apollo Theater Foundation) and Renato Ruggiero (who served as Italy’s minister of foreign affairs and World Trade Organization director-general, and is currently the chairman of Citigroup in Switzerland).
Indeed, in addition to a commitment to cross-sector engagement, successful megacommunity leaders increasingly have tri-sector exposure. Their experience working in the private, public and civil sectors gives them business acumen, a keen sense of civic issues, and a balanced view of bureaucracy. They understand that tri-sector access is a source of dramatic advantage for themselves and their organizations. Since a great megacommunity leader needs to embrace the challenge of working in more complex spheres of influence, the most successful leaders of the future may very well be those with career paths that wind through business, government, and the civil sectors.
“One of the first things I tell our MPA students,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and Intl Affairs at Princeton University, “is that the career path in government has changed. Most of them will hold multiple jobs. They should think about the issues they’re interested in—whether human rights, the environment, HIV/AIDS, energy or geopolitics—and then pursue those issues in the private sector, the government sector, and the non-profit sector, with maybe 10 or 15 years in each sector. Only if you move among them do you meet the people and learn the culture of all three sectors. And only then can you bring all three groups together to work on these issues.”
Communication and Navigation Skills
The quality of leadership within a megacommunity—whether it be a global undertaking like the battle against Iodine Deficiency Disorder or a local effort, like PlaNYC—is the key factor in turning intention into tangible results. And since megacommunity leaders can no longer solve problems by simply telling people what to do within the walls of their own organizations, their success largely depends on their ability to influence others outside their domains, uniting them around a common goal.
John Ruggie, the director of the Center for Business and Government at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, says, “Life in a world of sustainable globalization is a permanent negotiation.”
Megacommunity leaders must have superb communication skills. In fact, these skills—the ability to speak, negotiate, and listen effectively, in all the varied contexts of cross-sector collaboration and decision-making—may be the most important single set of personal assets possessed by a megacommunity leader.
Within their own organizations, megacommunity leaders have a huge communications role. They are continually called upon to make the megacommunity’s case, advocating for the cause at hand and galvanizing support among their constituencies. From a corporate CEO’s perspective, it’s essential to be able to articulate to shareholders and employees the ways in which participating in a megacommunity will further their financial objectives. How does engagement in the partnership relate to the purpose and bottom line of the company? How will it further the company’s goals? Will it put precious resources to good use? The head of an NGO, on the other hand, might need to articulate the benefits derived from being involved with organizations previously seen as adversaries, while the government liaison must defuse suspicion about the private sector’s involvement, while demonstrating clear value to the public interest.
Then there is the need to communicate within the megacommunity itself. And here, really, is the heart of what is means to be a megacommunity leader: after all, how effective can a partnership be if its members can’t communicate?
In order to communicate effectively, a megacommunity leader needs information. He or she must know something about the other members’ previous experiences, their concerns, and how those concerns might color the debates over particular issues. Leaders in a megacommunity understand how people will perceive, interpret and act upon their messages. They must also understand the particular cultural and organization constructs that other members operate within.
The key, says David Maurrasse, is to “be comfortable communicating across the board with different people who may have different training and modes of operation, and who may not work in the same speed or in same way and may not be as collaborative. Being able to understand how to work with people who operate within different cultural, institutional and professional settings is absolutely essential, as is being able to communicate across boundaries and think outside the context of one’s particular framework.”
The successful megacommunity leader is one who stimulates the need and desire to collaborate, invents strategies that work for everybody, and keeps motivation high among members. In that way, megacommunity leadership is a lot about navigation—keeping sight of a distant target while dealing with the ebbs and flows of daily activity.
At the same time, it is about also being highly sensitive to the way others perceive your motivations, intentions, and attitude.
In the words of Edwin Friedman, “Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.”
An Adaptable, Non-imperial Approach
Indeed, a megacommunity leader must have a keen understanding that the enterprise at hand cannot be a solo show, driven by a single imperial personality. Instead of the hierarchical, military style of leadership prevalent in a “command and control” environment, the megacommunity leader is accessible, humble and a “team player.” He or she involves the community in an effort to “co-create” solutions, instead of appearing to impose them.
Adaptability, or openness to influence, is another characteristic of a good megacommunity leader. As George Yong-Boon Yeo, Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs notes, “you have to be a student first.” A successful megacommunity leader is curious about the world around him or her, and eager to discover new and compelling ideas and solutions.
In fact, he or she is downright passionate about it.
Presence, Passion and Sustainable Thinking
While the ideal megacommunity leader has many attributes—humility, generosity, insight, creativity, patience, resolve and determination are but a few—none are more important than passion. After all, it is next to impossible to inspire others as a leader if you are not passionate yourself. One ironclad rule about the megacommunity is that it can not truly become viable until leaders make it part of their personal agenda.
As Warren Bennis has noted, "Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens, people feel centered and that gives their work meaning."
So a megacommunity leader must not simply possess passion: he or she must be able to bring it out in others. Passion, after all, is contagious. The challenge is how to use personal passion as a catalyst and driver of institutional commitment and large-scale change. Part of that, certainly, is the ability to spot and foster talent. A successful megacommunity leader will pick smart, talented people who are themselves proficient in the art of consensus-building—and will provide those people with the resources necessary to launch and implement an idea. Those people will share the leader’s focus on a sustainable future, and will be able to rally others around a common goal for the future.
Ann Veneman, UNICEF’s Executive Director, has stressed that her organization is "focused on partnerships and leveraging resources. Common goals such as the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) can provide a rallying point for partners."
This focus on partnerships as a means to attain and sustain a sustainable future can create a consensus where one might not have existed before.
“The groups in our coalition may have some differences on the issues of the day,” said Gene Russianoff, senior attorney for NYPIRG, a member of the Campaign for New York’s Future. “But we’ve all come together around PlaNYC’s aim that our children inherit a city that has healthy air to breathe and clean water to drink and safe streets to cross and the space and economy to grow responsibly.”
In other words, to ensure a sustainable future. And that—precisely that—is where megacommunities hold the most promise: in an increasingly complex and interconnected world, the megacommunity allows us to face our most critical challenges with the best of society’s resources and talent. The megacommunity leader, therefore, truly has the power to shape the future—providing, of course, that he or she has the right tools.
story posted January 22, 2009
