The Fall of the Alphas: The New Beta Way to Connect, Collaborate, Influence---and Lead

INTRODUCTION

A TALE OF TWO CULTURES

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way—

—CHARLES DICKENS, A Tale of Two Cities

Today’s American corporate world is a tale of two cultures. One, more traditional and common, is centralized and hierarchical. I call it Alpha. The other, smaller and rarer, is decentralized, horizontal, and inclusive. I call this one Beta. Probably the best way to understand their differences would be to observe the two, side by side. Doing so in the real world is physically impossible, and doing so in this book would only result in a tedious series of case studies. Instead, let me take you with me on hypothetical visits to a pair of representative companies, and describe what I see and hear (or don’t see and don’t hear) that helps me characterize them as either Alpha or Beta.

We begin our tour with an imaginary media company, headquartered in a major metropolitan area. It’s located in a new building in a posh, up-and-coming neighborhood filled with other gleaming corporate towers.

Since the neighborhood is relatively new and composed primarily of high-rise buildings, it’s noticeably lacking in small businesses such as restaurants, bars, diners, grocery stores, or dry cleaners. Instead of sidewalk food carts, a small number of licensed kiosks provide food, drinks, and snacks. Enormous plazas designed for public use surround the office buildings. Cars, trucks, and all incoming deliveries are funneled discreetly into underground garages. There’s a nearby bus stop and train station.

The ground floor of the media company consists of a towering atrium lobby with a trickling waterfall on one side. Elevators lead to a mezzanine level dotted with smaller suites, most of which belong to doctors, lawyers, and accountants. To board the elevators that take you to the highest floors of the office tower, you need to navigate not one but two security checkpoints. To my right is a bank of local elevators that make stops at most floors. To my left are the express elevators that whisk visitors to a handful of high floors, all of which house the most senior leadership of the tenant firms.

Even though it’s the morning rush, and the right-side elevator bank is teeming with sharply dressed, coffee-toting men and women, the express elevator that takes me up to the CEO’s office is empty. When the doors slide open onto the twenty-sixth floor, I cross over into a seating area of matching chesterfield couches, across from which is an imposing wooden dais with the company’s name emblazoned on the front. Behind the dais sit two stylish, well-coiffed women and two no-nonsense-looking men, the latter pair sporting short-cropped-bordering-on-Navy-SEAL haircuts. On the walls behind them is artwork depicting the company’s numerous media properties, from cable TV to Web sites to radio stations to newspapers and magazines to broadband service.

After greeting me, one of the women asks me to take a seat as I wait for someone to guide me to the CEO’s office. It’s clear this is the default protocol for everyone, including employees, who also require a guide to escort them back into the inner sanctum. Directly inside the imposing wooden doors is a second sitting area whose furniture and décor precisely match the setup of the outer lobby, including an identical set of chesterfield couches. Surrounding each area are four scaled-down versions of the outer lobby dais. A woman stands behind each dais, her job being to usher visitors from the outer lobby to this inner lobby. Just as before, I’m invited to take a seat, and five minutes later, a young man who introduces himself as the CEO’s executive assistant leads me back to the appropriate office.

Inside the CEO’s suite, I’m walked through a cluster of linked cubicles that adjoin four rooms: a restroom, a coffee room complete with a fridge and microwave, a technology center with printers and copiers, and a conference lounge with a round table and four chairs. The CEO’s office dominates one entire corner of the floor. My guide opens the door and announces my name.

The CEO rises from behind the glass Bauhaus-style desk and we shake hands. She appears to be in her mid-fifties, and her perfectly fitted, basic black suit is understated and elegant. She motions me over to one of the three Le Corbusier chairs arrayed in front of her desk before retaking her own seat.

Let’s call the CEO Sherri Rosen. In anticipation of our meeting, naturally I’d done my due diligence. A graduate of one of the Seven Sisters, with a degree in communications, Sherri went on to get her MBA at an Ivy League university. She started off her career as a successful marketing executive for a book publisher, and then became CEO of a start-up specialty cable channel. Her success there led to her being recruited to take the CEO spot at this enormous multichannel media organization.

Sherri explains that she’s seeking advice in recruiting staff and management for the company’s recently created digital media division. In describing what exactly she is looking for, Sherri focuses on the efforts and personalities of the new executive vice-president who heads the digital division and of the veteran head of the company’s human resources department. As I keep probing for information, I discover that the digital VP works in one of the adjoining office suites, alongside the VPs in charge of the company’s broadcast and print divisions and the other C-level executives. The HR executive works on a different floor altogether.

After getting an informal sense of the structure of the organization and a taste of its culture, I ask to meet the new digital VP. It turns out he’s not in the office that day, so his assistant sets up a meeting between the two of us later that week. Next I ask for a tour of the offices of the new digital division. At first Sherri suggests that her executive assistant serve as my guide, but very gently I request that she show me around the offices herself. It will make a difference, I say.

As we make our way to the internal stairway that connects the executive floor to the other floors, Sherri points out the dining room and conference room that are reserved exclusively for the officers who toil on the executive floor. Up the staircase and emerging onto another level, all of a sudden I’m confronted by a radically different floor plan, this one made up of a giant, endless labyrinth of workstations. Interspersed among the cubicles are various coffee/lunch areas, while restrooms and technical rooms surround the stairs and the elevators. Small, enclosed offices curl around the outside walls, and every single corner is dominated by a glass-walled conference room.

Sherri’s executive assistant accompanies us every step of the way, discreetly keeping everybody on course. Based on the reactions of the employees in the cubicles, it’s obvious that a CEO walkabout isn’t an everyday occurrence. The word ripples through the floor: The boss is here. At one point, Sherri pauses in front of a cubicle in the digital division area. Glancing at the plaque on the wall, Sheri introduces me to the employee sitting there, then asks the clearly rattled young woman to tell me exactly what she does. Haltingly, the young woman proceeds to offer up a novice-level description of her responsibilities as a Web site designer, using terms like graphic interface and hypertext. When I ask her to tell me more about the company, I can’t help but notice she uses the word great! a lot.

After a few more similarly uncomfortable meet-and-greets, I ask to meet the head of human resources. His office is on yet another floor, one similar in design and atmosphere to the one we just left. A distinguished-looking man in his early sixties, he’s taken aback but not flustered by our unscheduled appearance, and seems eager to discuss recruiting strategies and tactics. When I ask that Sherri, her executive assistant, and the head of the digital division also sit in on the meeting, the CEO looks surprised. So does her assistant, who suggests we assemble in the executive conference room. I successfully press for an off-site meeting instead.

*   *   *

Now let’s pay a visit to the second hypothetical company, this one an outdoor equipment company that sells exclusively online. The company has its headquarters in a sprawling single-story building in an underpopulated region on the outskirts of a college town.

Because it’s a rural setting, there are no other businesses nearby. The company’s glass-and-steel building sits on a parklike setting, with hiking and biking trails winding through fields, streams, ponds, and stands of trees. There’s a large parking lot about a quarter mile from the building itself, with a minibus shuttle that goes back and forth from the lot to the main building. The parking lot abuts a pair of tennis courts and a basketball court. There’s a municipal bus stop in front of the building itself.

A young man posted at a lectern just inside the door greets me when I enter. Wearing a wireless headset and wielding a tablet computer, he introduces himself, asks my name, and invites me to take a look around while I wait for my host, the CEO of the company, to arrive.

In the lobby behind us is a series of market-style stalls housing a dry cleaner and a small drugstore satellite, as well as a number of food vendors. Directly across the lobby is a day care center, a well-equipped gym such as you’d find in a hotel, and a cafeteria offering a limited, healthy menu. From what I can see, the rest of the building appears to be a haphazard collection of individual workstations, large and small conference areas and equipment hubs filled with printers, copiers, whiteboards, microwaves, coffeemakers, and refrigerators.

There’s no discernible pattern to how the people here appear to be interacting. Some are working on their own, while others are operating in small teams. To a man or a woman, the employees seem relaxed but purposeful. Noticing a stranger in the building, many nod or smile or say hello, and a couple stop to ask if I’m lost and can they help me? Just then Jim Campbell, the CEO, shows up.

As usual, I had spent a couple of weeks before my visit researching the company and its leaders. Jim is a graduate of the nearby university and he combined a computer design education with a passion for the outdoors in founding his company, which is now five years old. He started his career by working first for a retail cooperative, and then for a large outdoor equipment manufacturer. Along the way, he developed a design for an ergonomic, electronics-friendly backpack that attracted the attention of some angel investors, whose seed money enabled him to launch his business. Based on how he’s dressed, it’s hard to distinguish Jim from his employees. In fact, as far as I can tell, each employee is dressed in chinos or jeans, sneakers or hiking shoes, and one of four different-colored tennis shirts embossed with the company’s logo. In my pressed business suit, I’m feeling slightly overdressed.

Jim gives me a quick tour of the premises, taking especial pride in the cafeteria, whose chef is an old college friend who once ran a local vegetarian restaurant. Next, he leads me to his workplace. Instead of a glass-walled corner office, Jim runs his company out of a centrally located workstation no different from any of the others in the building (though I have to say it’s messier than most). He introduces me to his executive assistant, Claire, who’s hard at work at an adjacent workstation, and the three of us make our way to a nearby round table.

As Claire sets up her laptop and I set down my briefcase, Jim takes coffee orders, then disappears to fetch us the drinks. Once he returns, he pulls up a chair and explains the reason for our meeting. It seems the company’s pack and bag business has been extremely successful, but Jim and his management team believe the company needs to add a line of more fashionable products for urban adventurers, in his words. Problem is, neither he nor his current staffers know enough about that market to supervise the development and rollout of a new product line. Jim also strongly believes the design and marketing team for the new line should be located in an urban environment. That way, the surroundings can influence the team’s work just as the current team draws inspiration from living and working in a country setting. The second issue? Jim is nervous that the company’s current culture won’t translate to an urban workforce and environment. Which is where I come in. Can I help Jim and his team define and clarify the existing culture, and develop ways his team can apply it to a different place and population?

With this mission in mind, I ask Jim to tell me more about his executive team and the company’s overall structure. Immediately Claire pulls up an organization chart on her laptop. Rather than an organizational model that looks like a tree, it’s a collection of individual hub-and-spoke charts with interconnected lines. I like to joke that the chart changes so often that no one here ever bothers printing it out, Jim says. After all, the company is made up of project and product teams of designers, marketers, and salespeople. Some people work on more than one team; others work on just one. The only group that seems semipermanent consists of HR, Finance, and IT, and is internally dubbed Support Team.

After taking in all this information, I ask Jim if he’d be willing to take me on a tour of the premises. Claire politely bows out, leaving Jim as my sole guide. Together, we wind our way through assorted workstations and conference areas. The only organized element of the floor plan, so far as I can tell, is a number of intersecting hallways marked by red tape on the floor that are clear of any furniture and equipment, and that lead to exit doors.

Few employees take any special notice of the CEO as Jim shepherds me through the company. Those who do greet him by name, and ask about this or that product or initiative. In turn, Jim not only seems to know everyone’s name, but he also appears familiar with whatever issues they bring to his attention. Before long, we run into David, the company’s chief strategist, whom Jim has named to head up the project team in charge of developing plans for the new product line. David tells me that the entire project team consists of four people: himself, the head of HR, a marketing colleague who’s willing to relocate to an urban setting, and a designer who had done the opposite, by relocating from a metropolitan area to take a job here with Jim’s company.

We set up a meeting two weeks hence, at which time I’ll present them with some ideas.

As Jim walks me back to the lobby, he invites me to come back later that afternoon for a company outing. I’m sorely tempted and wish my schedule allowed it, but instead I head home.

Now, obviously I’ve used some hyperbole to emphasize the differing behaviors, environments, and cultures between these two completely invented companies. But these contrasts encompass the wide range of difference I encounter regularly in my business. I spend a great deal of my daily work life studying, understanding, diagnosing, and helping repair the core cultures of organizations. That’s because I’m a corporate anthropologist.

ONE

CORPORATE ANTHROPOLOGY

I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps, I run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing bigfoot slam dunk rainmaker with a proactive outreach. A raging workaholic; a working rageaholic. Out of rehab, and in denial. I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant, and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up, you can’t dumb me down. ’Cause I’m tireless, and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta blockers.

—GEORGE CARLIN, Life Is Worth Losing

For thousands of years, groups of people have looked to a single strongman for leadership. Families had patriarchs. Tribes had chieftains. Villages had lords. Nations had kings, prime ministers, presidents. Over time, this ancient model defined by one powerful figure dominating the rest of the group has been applied to practically every sphere where groups of individuals work together. Cities have mayors. Armies have generals. Teams have quarterbacks. Nuclear families have fathers. And corporations have CEOs. In the 1940s, we came up with a catchall description for this ubiquitous archetype. We dubbed these strongmen Alpha males, a term we borrowed from studies of the animal world.

For all of prehistory, human societies were egalitarian, collaborative communities of hunters and gatherers. The typically male role of hunter wasn’t valued any more or any less than the typically female role of gatherer. Both provided sustenance for the tribe. In fact, considering that females were the source of life itself, societies revered matriarchs as much as they did patriarchs. It wasn’t until the development of agriculture and the necessity of being able to plow for crops that physically stronger males began to dominate. The adoption of agriculture also meant that tribes became rooted, rather than nomadic. In turn, fixed locations led to greater population density and heightened competition—competition, I might add, that led to hierarchical rather than collaborative group dynamics.

When society morphed from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age, the leadership paradigm failed to evolve along with it. In fact, during the Industrial Age, the Alpha model became even more ingrained. Although working on an assembly line did not require physical strength, labor became firmly divided along gender lines. Men worked outside the home; women worked inside the home. If circumstances obliged females to seek outside employment, they did so in roles that mirrored their by-now-customary roles: cook, maid, laundress, seamstress. For most of the Industrial Age, in fact, the only professions that welcomed females were those requiring the role of nurturer: teacher and nurse.

In the 1980s, when women began to collapse gender barriers and occasionally assume an exalted profesional status, they were dubbed Alpha females. This very minor tweaking of the name made sense, considering that the behaviors and attitudes of many Alpha women were indistinguishable from men heading up similar groups. Many of these women had decided that the only way they could succeed professionally was by becoming exactly like men. They surrendered most vestiges of their femininity. They desexualized themselves. The wore tailored shirts and even female neckties that both mimicked and parodied a traditional male wardrobe. Books from that 1980s era had titles like Games Mother Never Taught You: Corporate Gamesmanship for Women, which counseled women entering the workplace to avoid any and all so-called subservient positions. Among other things, women were advised never to take notes, as their colleagues might then perceive them as secretarial. (Today, I’m constantly reminding young women of the power inherent in minutes-taking. The way I see it, aggregating the sum of organizational data is about as far as you can get from