The hot European

Mahatma Gandhi urged us to 'be the change we want to see in the world': good advice that is hard to follow. And not least in the world of management (and management studies), where gurus and inspirational leaders so often turn out to have feet of clay. Stefan Stern talks to Lynda Gratton

Business journalists are no doubt partly to blame for the familiar hero-to-zero life cycle of these prominent figures. We cheer them on their way up, and boo them on their way down. So accounting & business readers may want to grab a pinch of salt with which to digest the next few hundred words.

But it seems to this observer at least that Lynda Gratton of the London Business School (LBS) is set to be catapulted to the very top of the tree, as far as management gurus are concerned. And one of the reasons for this is that, following Gandhi's dictum, Professor Gratton really does walk the talk. Her big themes are creativity, teamwork and the energetic, civilised, successful workplace. And you could not meet a more civilised, energetic, and creative management thinker than Gratton.

The launch-pad for this next stage in Gratton's career, and she is hardly an unknown, already featuring prominently on the business conference lecture circuit, is her new book, Hot Spots - Why Some Companies Buzz With Energy and Innovation, and Others Don't.

Although the book is refreshingly compact at just over 200 pages, it is in fact based on a substantial body of research. In advance of writing the book Gratton led an international project, called 'co-operative advantage research'. This research programme involved studying 57 teams working for 17 different companies, most of which were operating in more than one country. In her book she also draws widely on other existing academic research into networks, teams, culture, collaboration and creativity.

Her basic argument is that too often, businesses and organisations succumb to the tedium and drudgery of everyday work. We are stuck with pragmatism and incrementalism. But that sort of approach will not be good enough if we are to survive in this increasingly competitive era.

Gratton uses the metaphor of a hot spot to point us in a different direction. If you were to study the work going on in an organisation through heat-sensitive goggles, she says, you would see mostly a sea of green - tepid, low-energy activity. But every so often you would also see a flash of heat in the form of orangey-red light, a flare-up of creative activity.

These hot spots are moments 'when people are working together in exceptionally creative and collaborative ways', Gratton writes. 'Hot spots occur when the energy within and between people flares - when mundane everyday activities are set aside for engaged work that is exciting and challenging. It is at times like these that ideas become contagious and new possibilities appear.' But sometimes, too, your heat-sensitive goggles reveal an icy blue colour looming large, the slow death of the corporate deep freeze.

How to unleash those hot spots is the theme of the new book. The bad news is that hot spots cannot simply be commanded to appear out of thin air. But what management can do is try to put in place certain core elements, or disciplines, that will help hot spots to emerge. The three principal foundations are a 'co-operative mindset', the ability to span boundaries and the successful 'igniting of purpose'. A fourth element, productive capacity, is necessary if the hot spot is to create real value.

When I went in to LBS to meet Gratton recently she was excited (if a little daunted) by the full and demanding work schedule she has ahead of her this spring. She was leaving that night for Finland - Nokia is one of her key exhibits in the book - before coming back to London prior to flying on to India. But she also has a long list of speaker engagements to fulfil in the US. Gratton is aware how important the US market is in the business book world, and she is planning on devoting a lot of her not inconsiderable energy to cracking this market with the new book.

But she is not a starry-eyed admirer of the US. 'I am banging the drum for European businesses in this book,' she explained. Nokia, for example, shows a deep understanding of the benefits of collaboration and teamwork. This has a lot to do with its Finnish roots, Gratton believes. 'People there are skilled at co-operation,' she says.

And then there is the question of sex - as in gender. Gratton was one of only four women to be found in the original 'Thinkers50' list of leading management gurus. Only two of these women were from Europe. So there is another opportunity there for Gratton to become a distinctive voice.

As well as her teaching responsibilities at LBS, she has also recently become head of the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business, the first research centre dedicated to the issue in Europe. As she rightly said on her appointment to this role, things will only start to move faster (as far as equality for women in business is concerned) when the fathers of very bright daughters see their offspring missing out unfairly at work.

At 52, Gratton already has a significant career in business behind her, as well as her second life in academia. Trained as a psychologist, she spent several years at British Airways before leaving to become one of PA Consulting's youngest ever partners. She got out of management consultancy, taking a huge salary cut to do so, to take up a post at LBS, where she is now Professor of Management Practice. Important word that, practice. As someone with plenty of real-world experience, Gratton would hate to think that her work was some arid and irrelevant academic exercise.

Prior to Hot Spots, she has produced other acclaimed work. In her book, Living Strategy (2000), she argued for the development of humane organisations, ones that appreciate the qualities and abilities of the human beings turning up to work every day. In, The Democratic Enterprise (2004), Gratton got to grips with one of the biggest management challenges of the modern age: how to win the commitment and engagement of employees who can no longer be simply instructed to do what they are told. What meaning can the word 'democracy' have in the 21st-century workplace?

Gratton's enthusiasm and energy are infectious. She is something of a one-woman hot spot in herself. Listening to her you actually believe that leaders and managers could learn how to 'ignite' their organisations and bring about that cross-fertilisation of ideas and creativity that we all need to meet today's competitive challenge.

And it is to leaders that Gratton ultimately addresses herself. Leaders need to be courageous, she says. They need 'a belief, a passion, a point of view, a question that is often challenging and audacious. When big questions are asked, hot spots are often ignited, breaking the vice-like grip of pragmatism.'

Now if we could just perfect that Dolly-the-sheep cloning technology, and get a few more Grattons out there, we really would be in business.

Stefan Stern is a columnist on management for the Financial Times.

Hot Spots - Why Some Companies Buzz With Energy and Innovation, and Others Don't by Lynda Gratton, Berrett-Koehler/FT Prentice Hall, US$24.95/£20.