Secrets of Creative Collaboration, “The Lone Ranger is dead.” In
order to lead a Great Group, a leader need not possess all the in-
dividual skills of the group members. What he or she must have
are vision, the ability to rally the others, and integrity. Such lead-
ers also need superb curatorial and coaching skills—an eye for
talent, the ability to recognize correct choices, contagious opti-
mism, a gift for bringing out the best in others, the ability to facil-
itate communication and mediate conflict, a sense of fairness,
and, as always, the kind of authenticity and integrity that creates
trust. Nothing about the world today is simpler than it was or
slower than it was, which makes the ability to collaborate and fa-
cilitate great collaboration more vital than ever.
Two recent events seem especially relevant to leadership today.
The first is 9/11. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Cen-
ter and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, changed American
life as profoundly as the attack on Pearl Harbor. Those of us who
think fulltime about leadership and change have long argued that
the pace of change continues to accelerate and that we must find
ways to embrace and celebrate it. But some change is hard to
love, and 9/11 is a prime example. Since the Great Depression,
the United States has been a place of growing security. No war
has been fought on American soil since the Civil War. For all its
inequality and racism, the nation has been a place of remarkable
freedom and acceptance of diversity. The attacks of 9/11 made
the United States seem far less safe. In 2002, the terrorist bomb-
ing of a night club in Bali, clearly aimed at Westerners, and a se-
ries of sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, further
eroded America’s sense of itself as a secure nation. We are still
coming to terms with 9/11, trying to find meaning in the thou-
sands of casualties, digging in its rubble for lessons that will trans-
form it into something more than a senseless catastrophe.Introduction to the Revised Edition, 2003xxiii0465014088_fm.qxd:0738208175_fm.qxd 12/2/08 2:52 PM Page xxiii