At the movies and on television, we all love heroes.  As chaos reigns, the hero swoops in to save the day and restore order.  Their heroics make for great entertainment, but heroics are lousy business.  Any leader worth the name knows that heroics are bad news in the real world.   The appearance of a hero always means that something has gone wrong.  The degree of the heroics is often in direct proposition to the mess needing to be cleaned up.  While we celebrate the work (and often the courage) of heroes, we know that their actions shouldn’t have been necessary.

In Hollywood, the hero’s actions are usually a response to a villain’s deliberate attempts to do wrong.  Most workplace heroes are battling something less nefarious but much more common – human error.  These human errors often come in the form of unintended consequences, poor judgment, failures to follow process, or simple mistakes.  Worst case they stem from incompetence or laziness.  Rarely do we confront someone who is intentionally creating problems for personal gain.  Unlike fictional heroes, we aren’t dealing with evil geniuses bent on world domination.

The only thing that most workplace heroes have in common with fictional super-heroes is that one of their biggest obstacles are unwitting accomplices.  That is, the need for heroics is often driven by a collection of human errors that combine to create a crisis.  Whether it is ignorance, naiveté, laziness, or poor judgment, the failures that produce the need for heroics don’t happen in isolation or all at once.  They are rarely the result of one monumental event.  They are usually a function of numerous small issues that build on one another to create the crisis.

What if we could stop the chain of small events early enough to prevent the need for heroics?  Think of the savings produced by avoiding the need for heroics.  The financial and human impact of heroics is usually high.  The clean up and rework is inefficient and frustrating.  It hurts the bottom line and morale.

So how can we avoid the need for heroics?  We start by promoting and rewarding collaboration.  Collaboration allows us to replace heroics with “co-heroics. “  The most successful organizations are highly collaborative.  Their leaders encourage and promote individual and collective self-awareness.  They don’t deny their individual differences or promote homogeneity.  Rather, they embrace differences and take advantage of them.

This type of high-value collaboration starts with individual leaders understanding and embracing their strengths, weakness, likes and dislikes.  Once they know themselves, they can begin to know each other.  By knowing one another, leaders can engage where they can leverage their strengths, while leaning on others to compensate for weaknesses.   How often have you heard criticisms like, “He is great at seeing the problems, but he never comes up with any solutions?” Or this mixed message: “She delivered a great solution, but we had to point out the problem that was staring her in the face. “

Collaborative organizations recognize that success comes from getting the right people in the right roles, and they foster a culture that values the contribution each makes.  The leaders in collaborative organizations know that some people are great at recognizing and understanding problems and breakdowns.  Others are great at transforming problems into opportunities.  Others can plan, execute, or implement workable solutions, and still others are best suited to take advantage of  the solutions in production.  Together they produce positive change.   They all play their part and add value, because they are doing what they do best.

Collaborative organizations don’t try to make everyone good at everything. They play to their collective strengths and compensate for their individual weaknesses.  They encourage people to do what they enjoy most, especially when that enjoyment overlaps with what they do well.  Collaborative organizations aren’t perfect.  They haven’t discovered a workplace paradise where everyone is always happy, fulfilled and successful.  They haven’t found the silver bullet that prevents crisis, but they are better prepared to deal with it when it occurs.

Even in the most collaborative culture, people must do work that is boring or lead efforts in areas that are not their strengths.  That’s life; however, these organizations recognize that these mismatches are suboptimal, and they are more likely to lead to breakdowns that require heroics.  By focusing on keeping everyone doing the right work, they promote collaboration.  The people who lead highly collaborative organizations understand that heroes provide great entertainment, but in the real world they would rather see coheroics.