Creating a Tipping Point
Ideas and knowledge reside in people. The culture of a company is
essentially its habits—norms of behaviors and values. Companies,
like individuals, have good and bad habits. In his best seller The
Tipping Point,Malcolm Gladwell describes large-scale changes as
“epidemics.”^4 These epidemics are often brought on by small things
that represent a “tipping point,” and then things move very
quickly. Leaders can create a culture of sharing ideas and knowl-
edge if they establish the necessary conditions of a tipping point.
Following Goldman Sachs’s IPO, the partnership started to lose its
famous ability to leverage its knowledge and team-based culture
around the world. Company directors Henry Paulson, John Thain,
and John Thornton established the Pine Street leadership initia-
tive (Goldman’s first offices were on Pine Street, around the corner
from Wall Street) to rekindle a sense of partnership and to reestab-
lish the value of “culture carriers” in the company. They hired
Steve Kerr, the former head of GE Crotonville, to make visible
their promise of rapidly deploying intensive leadership and coach-
ing for senior partners. By acting quickly, they achieved a tipping
point that turned the tide on company morale and partner perfor-
mance at a critical moment in the company’s history.
The Goldman Sachs experience showed that it takes respon-
sive and insightful leaders to harness and leverage the power of a
marketplace for ideas in an organization. From their past success at
focusing the partnership and teamwork on the most critical orga-
nization campaigns, these leaders know the value of creating
“tipping points” to propel the company forward.
Recasting the Learning and Talent Management
Far too often, corporate universities, skills courses, topical initia-
tives, and recruiting drives think that their own brochure, a Web
site, and a new competence framework can suffice for a company-
wide learning and development strategy. When each division pro-
duces its own brand, when ideas are not shared and knowledge is
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