April 2005

Innovation Tips

...ideas for building collaborative innovation

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People as Partners

 

One of the misfortunes of standard accounting practices is the reference to "employee expense." People, in this fiscal framework, are considered another cost of doing business. Their highest value as productive partners is suppressed when they are reduced to an implied cost rather than asset.

 

Those organizations that treat people as common expenses, that run sweatshops, that count beans rather than ideas, or that manage by intimidation rather than affirmation have short shelf lives. They may see near-term financial results rise, but they stunt the creative thought and continual improvement that will ensure enduring long-term results.

 

Traditional management practices grounded in command and control hierarchies stifle the genius of the organization's greatest innovative asset--the people doing the work. The very operational terms of traditional management imply a suppressive regime--subordinates, supervisors, direct reports, boss. The terms tend to fortify implicit hierarchies, command and control cultures, and political silos that impede creative collaboration.

 

Much more productive and effective are the organizations that promote people as partners. These are the organizations, like Toyota or Southwest Airlines that stand head and shoulders above their competition. They build tremendous customer and employee loyalty while they cultivate cultures of mutual support and continual improvement.

They build social capital by cultivating trust, respect, and cooperation--all of which must start with management. Then they build continual improvement into the culture by humbly affirming, supporting and promoting individual and collective initiative.

 

Management at Southwest Airlines likes to say that they are building a culture of love rather than fear. Their "culture of love" has the best passenger satisfaction ratings, the best departure and arrival ratings, the best baggage handling ratings, and the best fiscal results in the airline industry.

 

Toyota is now widely considered THE best manufacturer in the world. By attending to the Toyota Way--a way that respects and honors employees--Toyota has been built from a family business to an auto company that far exceeds the operating success of its American counterparts. Often heard in the halls and the manufacturing floors is the simple Toyota theme: "Before we build cars, we build people."

 

Like other companies that have attained strikingly prodigious achievement, Toyota and Southwest corroborate the value of developing people as partners. ________________________________________________

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