Leadership lessons from King Arthur

 

Harvard professor David Perkins uses the metaphor of the Round Table to discuss how collaborative conversations create smarter organizations. The Round Table is one of the most familiar stories of Arthurian legend since it’s meant to shift power from the king who normally sat at the head of a long table and made long pronouncements while everyone else listened.

By reducing hierarchy and making collaboration easier, Arthur discovered an important source of power––organizational intelligence–that allowed him to unite medieval England. According to Perkins, Organizational Intelligence is simply “how well people put their heads together in a group, team, organization or community.”