Extensive research shows that when employees get hands-on managerial support, they perform better than when they're left to their own devices, but unnecessary or unwanted help can be demoralizing and counterproductive. So how do you intervene constructively? The authors share three key lessons learned during 10 years of study: (1) Step in only when people are engaged in a challenging task and ready to accept help; (2) clarify that your role is to offer assistance, not take over the project or judge anyone; and (3) align the rhythm of your involvement to employees' needs, determining whether the situation calls for intensive guidance in the short term or intermittent path clearing over a prolonged period. These strategies are especially valuable for helping teams that are physically separated, as so many are during the current pandemic.

Leaders can do few things more important than encouraging helping behavior within their organizations. In the highest-performing companies, it is a norm that colleagues support one another's efforts to do the best work they can. That has always been true for efficiency reasons, but collaborative helping becomes even more vital in an era of knowledge work, when positive business outcomes depend on high creativity in often very complex projects. A help-friendly organization has to be actively nurtured, however, because helpfulness among colleagues does not arise automatically: Competition, pride, or distrust may get in the way. The trickiness of this management challenge-to increase a discretionary behavior that by definition must be inspired-makes all the more impressive what the design firm IDEO has already achieved. Its help-seeking and help-giving culture is behind the firm's success. But how has IDEO managed to make helping the norm? To answer this question, the authors spent two years observing, interviewing people, and conducting surveys at one office of the firm. They discovered four keys to building a help-friendly organization that leaders of other organizations could learn and apply to similar effect.

As the 21st century unfolds, lone creators of new ideas are increasingly rare, as teams and larger groups within organizations become the dominant mode through which progress is made in much of the world. Appropriately, management scholars have been turning their attention to organizational creativity. One such form of creativity, 'improvisational creativity' involves simultaneously identifying new challenges and generating responses with little or no time to prepare. To facilitate improvisational creativity, one must acquire the expertise to operate fluently in a domain without also acquiring the lack of novelty that often accompanies increased expertise.