Innovation Tips
...ideas for building collaborative innovation
July/August, 2007
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The premise of this month's Innovation Tip is simple yet too often overlooked: Organizations become vital and endure to the degree that the people who join them are respected, encouraged, and valued individually.

Align with the vision, drive the results, meet the goals, attain the objectives, set the strategies, create the plan, carry out the tactics, deliver results. Are we building organizations or invading Iraq?

The common wisdom about managing organizations suggests that we can operate them like tanks: blow the competition away, win customers, capture market share.

Enough already. How many organizations built on the military model have to fall before we get the message: Do not manage people like troops; the CEO is not a Commander in Chief.

Yes, organizations are formed to deliver some particular mission. No, we do not have to manage the people in them like faceless armies to successfully deliver that value. Organizations are not nation states and they are not at war.

Vital, successful, enduring organizations have learned to cultivate individuals. The people who lead them humbly acknowledge the value of others. It is not too much more difficult than that.

Look to the really successful organizational cultures in any arena and you will find people everywhere in the organization being cultivated for their individual value. Look to the lackluster organizations and you will find cultures where people are being used as pawns to accomplish objectives, strategies and tactics.

Look to the successful organizations and you will find people willing to fail, freely sharing ideas, taking risks, and venturing out into uncertain territory.

Look to the mediocre organizations and you will find people entrenched, defending their positions, protecting their jobs, blindly pursuing narrow objectives, making their "unit" look good and ostracizing dissenters.

How many cultures that promote the value of individuals have to succeed beyond anyone's imagination before we understand the premise that prevails in them?

They are built on uncommon common sense: organizations become vital and endure to the degree that the people who join them are respected, encouraged, and valued individually.

JGJ
Copyright (C) 2007 Partners for Innovation, Inc.
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Partners for Innovation is in the business of helping you create organizations that thrive on creativity and social capital. We write these articles to support your work in building vital and resilient organizations.

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Partners for Innovation, Inc.

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