Notes and Takeaways from The Tools of Cooperation and Change
When I read it: February 2025
Why I read it: I stumbled across this lesser-known Clayton Christensen article when I was rewriting my notes on his famous article, How Will You Measure Your Life? It discusses four types of tools for cooperation and when it’s appropriate to wield each type.
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My notes
About Clayton M. Christensen
Clayton M. Christensen was a best-selling author, academic, and business consultant. He wrote The Innovator's Dilemma, one of the most influential business books I’ve ever read. He was also a professor at Harvard Business School and a leader in the LDS (“Mormon”) church.
About this HBR Article
A version of this article appeared in the October 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review. It discusses tools managers can use to induce cooperation.
A manager's job is to get people to work together toward a desired result.
This is hard to begin with but becomes even more complicated when the manager needs people to change how or what they are working.
To change how employees work, you must induce them to cooperate.
Managers have a wide variety of tools at their disposal to induce cooperation, including financial incentives, motivational speeches, training programs, and outright threats. But even if you know what cooperation tools are available, deciding which ones to use can be challenging because a tool’s effectiveness depends on the situation.
The Agreement Matrix
According to Clayton Christensen and his co-authors in The Tools of Cooperation and Change, a manager’s first step in any change initiative should be to assess the level of agreement amongst people in their organization along two critical dimensions: 1) the extent to which people agree on what they want (i.e., results, values, priorities, trade-offs) and 2) the extent to which people agree on cause and effect (i.e., which actions will lead to what they want).
One tool for assessing the level of the existing agreement is the “Agreement Matrix,” which depicts these dimensions. The vertical axis shows people's agreement on what they want (i.e., desired results), and the horizontal axis shows their agreement on cause and effect (i.e., how to get the results). Note: I’ve created my own simplified version of this matrix with the following quadrants.
The upper-right quadrant represents a strong culture.
The upper-left quadrant represents a shared hope for future results.
The lower-right quadrant represents a willingness to invest in the process.
The lower-left quadrant represents chaos.
Inspired by The Tools of Cooperation and Change
There is no “best” position for managers to aspire to in the agreement matrix. That’s not the point. Managers should use the matrix to assess their organization’s level of agreement and choose the appropriate cooperation tools to employ. The tools that will most effectively induce people to cooperate in one quadrant will likely misfire with people in another.
The Four (4) Types of Cooperation Tools
The tools of cooperation can be grouped into four major types: power, management, leadership, and culture.
The Four Types of Cooperation Tools. Source: HBR
Each type of cooperation tool can be matched with a quadrant of the agreement matrix. While the boundaries are not rigid, the overlay can give managers a sense of which tools might be most effective in various situations.
Power tools of cooperation.
When people share little agreement across both dimensions of the agreement matrix, the only tools that elicit cooperation are “power tools” such as force, coercion, and threats.
For example, a manager employing power tools might say, “I don’t care whether you agree with me or with one another about what you want out of life or about how to get it. I want you to cooperate.”
Negotiation (a power-leadership tool) and financial incentives (a power-management tool) will only work when there is some level of agreement.
For example, in the world of K-12 public education, where there is little agreement, most negotiation and pay-for-performance efforts have failed to produce meaningful change in schools.
Power tools can be highly effective in low-agreement situations, but you must have the authority to use them. According to Clayton Christensen and his co-authors in The Tools of Cooperation and Change, a wise manager in a low-agreement environment would not agree to lead a change program without the authority to wield the right power tools.
Management tools of cooperation.
When people share little agreement on what they want but have a high level of agreement on cause and effect, management tools like training, standard operating procedures, and measurement systems are the most effective tools for driving cooperation.
Management tools are process-oriented.
Leadership tools of cooperation.
When people share a high-level agreement on what they want but little agreement on cause and effect, leadership tools like charisma, salesmanship, and vision are the most effective tools for driving cooperation.
Leadership tools are results-oriented. Charismatic leaders often do not address how to get things done but instead rely on motivating people to “just go out and do it.”
When people agree on what they want to achieve, vision statements articulating where the organization needs to go can be energizing and inspiring.
Culture tools of cooperation.
When people share a high-level agreement on both dimensions, employees will naturally cooperate to continue in the same direction. A broad consensus on the priorities and how to achieve those priorities is the essence of a strong culture. And companies with strong cultures are self-managing in many ways. However, this strength can make such organizations highly resistant to change.
Culture tools like rituals and folklore facilitate cooperation to preserve the status quo; they are not tools of change. People in the upper-right strong-culture quadrant are unlikely to cooperate with any strategy that is at odds with their deeply shared beliefs about what they want and what must be done. Leadership and management tools can also be used in this quadrant to foster cooperation, but only to reinforce or enhance the existing culture.
How Organizations Evolve Across the Agreement Matrix
There is no “best” position in the agreement matrix. Each quadrant carries its own challenges. Most organizations start at the bottom-left of the matrix, where the founder’s orders drive what gets prioritized and how it gets done. As employees develop methods that drive results, agreement develops on cause and effect (i.e., what actions yield the desired results). As the organization succeeds, people who agree with the founder and senior management tend to be promoted, and those who don’t tend to leave. Over time, continued success shifts the organization toward the top-right quadrant. The counter is also accurate. Recurring failures and crises destroy consensus and push the organization toward the bottom-left quadrant.
The Tool of Disaggregation
Managers who need to change a thriving culture before the onset of a crisis can leverage the tool of disaggregation by separating the organization into two or more units. This allows the manager(s) at the new unit(s) to accelerate change while the status quo continues in the original unit.
Wielding the Tools of Cooperation
It’s rare for all members of a large organization to be in one place on the agreement matrix at the same time. While founders and/or senior managers may be in the upper-right quadrant, rank-and-file employees may be in the lower-right. Different cooperation tools may need to be applied in different areas of the organization and at different times.
When a manager concludes their organization must change, they must consider where the rest of the employees are in the agreement matrix. One of the most valuable managerial skills is picking the right tool and avoiding wasting energy or risking credibility with the wrong ones.