What can you do as a team leader to create such an intelligence system for your team? First, liberate as much information as you possibly can. Think about all the sources of information you have, and make as many of them as possible available to your team, on demand. Planning systems constrain information to those who “need to know.” Intelligence systems don’t— they liberate as much information as possible, as fast as possible. So don’t worry too much at first about whether your team will understand the data or be able to make use of it. If you think the information will help your people gain a better understanding of their real world in real time, share it. ...

Second, watch carefully to see which data your people find useful. Don’t worry too much about making all this data simple or easy to consume, or about packaging it for people, or weaving it together to form a coherent story. The biggest challenge with data today isn’t making sense of it—most of us deal with complexity all the time, and are pretty good at figuring out what we need to know and where to find it. No, the biggest challenge with data today is making it accurate—sorting the signal from the noise. This is much harder, and much more valuable for our teams. So be extremely vigilant about accuracy; watch which information your people naturally gravitate toward; and then, over time, increase the volume, depth, and speed of precisely that sort of data.

Third, trust your people to make sense of the data. Planning systems take the interpretation of the data away from those on the front lines, and hand it off to a select few, who analyze it and decipher its patterns, and then construct and communicate the plan. Intelligence systems do precisely the opposite—because the “intelligence” in an intelligence system lies not in the select few, but instead in the emergent interpretive powers of all front-line team members. You are not the best sense maker. They are.

You should talk to people and make connections because you’re naturally curious. You want to know how other teams at your company work and what people do. You want to talk to your competitors because you’re all working to solve the same problems and they’re taking a different approach. You want your projects to be successful, so you don’t just talk to your immediate teammates at lunch—you grab lunch with your partners, your customers, their

customers, their partners. You talk to everyone: get their ideas and their perspectives. In doing so you may be able to help someone or make a friend or strike up an interesting conversation.

Here are seven suggestions, based on what we’ve learned from Nucor and Southwest:

1. Recraft the mission statement for your unit or, if possible, the entire organization, in a way that makes it emotionally resonant for every team member and gives people a common cause.

1. Do whatever you can to provide team members with the skills and information they need to collaborate and exercise their collective judgment. Help them become less reliant on their managers.

1. In interpersonal encounters, look for opportunities to reveal something of yourself, and encourage others to do the same. Have a tender heart for those who are struggling with issues outside of work.

1. Ask your team to identify areas where greater autonomy would help 38 them deliver a better customer experience or improve operations, and then carefully expand their decision-making prerogatives.

1. Institute team-based goals and rewards as a way of encouraging mutual accountability.

1. Cultivate mutual respect by creating opportunities for individuals to shadow other jobs, and work to reduce distinctions of rank and hierarchy wherever possible.

1. Hire for compassion, follow the golden rule, and celebrate acts of kindness.

There are many ways you can begin syndicating the work of managing to your team. Here are a few.

Setting Direction

1. Ask your team to define its shared mission. Give them time to brainstorm answers to questions like, “What’s our value proposition?” “How should we measure the success of our team?” and “What are the most important things we could do to increase our impact?”

1. Hold a monthly half-day session to discuss business unit or corporate-level strategy. Ask your colleagues to identify what they could do to support the overall mission.

1. If your company has a formal planning process, ask your team to take the lead in defining priorities, setting milestones, and developing budgets.

With frontline employees and customers, ask the Start/Stop/Keep questions. With middle management, require a standard SWOT and inquire about their top three priorities for the quarter or year.

And demand that the senior team go deeper and broader using the SWT.