Why Leaders Donã¢â‚¬â„¢t Learn From Success Harvard Business Review

Articles on Organizational Development

R. Michael Bokeno, Introduction: appraisals of organizational learning as emancipatory change, Periodical of Organizational Change Management Book 16/half dozen, pp 603-618 (2003)

Issue half-dozen of volume 16 of the Periodical of Organizational Change Management is devoted to an exploration of Organisational learning. In this introductory essay Bokeno "attempts to illustrate the emancipatory intent of organizational learning (OL) by connecting its aims and aspirations to prominent themes of critical organisation study, including the emancipatory understanding of "learning" past OL, how OL engages the "dialectic of enlightenment," and its prioritizing of "communicative action" as the means for reflection and transformation.”

"Conversations lie at the heart of managerial work. Managers talk. It is through talk that they teach and inspire, motivate and provide feedback, plan and take decisions… develop new ideas, share noesis and experience, and enhance individual and collective learning… Nonetheless, in most companies, very little attention is paid to the quality of conversations."

Lynda Gratton and Sumantra Ghoshal 2002

Bokeno commences, "Two of the more vital and energetic challenges to mainstream system and management theory in the past two decades have been critical organization studies (COS) and organizational learning (OL). While they have been heretofore singled-out enterprises for social and organizational transformation, in this paper I venture a comparison of the projects in terms of what might exist similarities betwixt them. I practise aim to endorse OL as emancipatory change, simply my larger purpose is rather to provide some basis from which theorists and practitioners from both COS and OL can draw from the insights of the other. Given the monumental socio-organizational transformational tasks both have laid out for themselves, whatever endeavor that points to areas of combined force should be welcome.”

Cottage near the Grampians, western Victoria (More)
"Broadly and by way of background, both COS and OL understand a range of societal dysfunctions every bit the straight consequence of modern corporate domination and organizational practices based solely on technical-instrumental rationality. Both endeavors see the modern corporation as the site where social transformation may be productively addressed. Consequently, too key to both is the envisioned resurrection of a more freely called and constituted organizational structure, ane that emerges from the insufficiently liberated thinking and acting of individual and commonage agency.

"Despite similar inspiration, OL and COS remain largely contained projects. In many means the separation is acutely disappointing. Increasing disquisitional assertions by COS and other theorists of ability and politics aimed at the OL effort and its "humanistic direction" heritage smacks of battle lines for an academic turf state of war that is at all-time unwarranted and at worst arrogantly unresponsive to the applied demands of the organizational and social transformation that both obviously seek.

"The tone of the contend can be guaged from this comment by a H. Armstrong in 2000 ("The learning organization: inverse means to an unchanged end" in the periodical Arrangement 7/2, p355-61) that "the `learning organization' is naught only a Hawthorne light bulb with a dimmer switch … It is a Machiavellian subterfuge. It is a pimp, and the employees, the hapless prostitutes.”

“In concern, as in art, what distinguishes leaders from laggards, and greatness from mediocrity, is the power to uniquely imagine what could be. To get to the futurity start, top management must either meet opportunities not seen by others or must be able to exploit opportunities that others can't… As much as anything, foresight comes from really wanting to brand a difference to people's lives.”

Gary Hamel & CK Prahalad 1994

R. Michael Bokeno, The work of Chris Argyris as disquisitional organisation practice, Journal of Organizational Modify Direction Book 16/6, pp. 633-649 (2003)

An illuminating elaboration of the debate is given in this essay which examines the wide thesis of organizational learning theorist Chris Argyris in terms of communicative activity, and finds his critical understanding of Model I and the emancipatory potential embedded in double-loop learning consistent with prominent themes in critical arrangement report.

Bokeno explains some of the views as follows: Argyris' is well known for his contrast between "espoused theories” and "theories in use”. Theories-in-utilise consitute "a set of socialized assumptions or "master pattern" that govern our beliefs and interaction with others. Importantly, Argyris has found that a very specific set of governing assumptions exists well-well-nigh universally – beyond, age, wealth, position, race, education and geography. This set of assumptions and their accompanying behaviors, called Model I, is characterized by:

• maintenance of unilateral control;
• win-lose conflict orientation, where the goal is to maximize one's take chances of winning and/or minimize the chances of losing;
• rationality and the objective distance afforded by it, so that one can credibly "business relationship for" or justify one'southward behaviors and decisions and "discount" those of others; and
• preservation of "face up" for both self and others, requiring that ane non express negative feelings.

"Model I is assumed to be a universal theory-in-employ, a master design maintained by individuals in organizations. Thus, Argyris hither not only links the incapacity of organizations for change to deficiencies and distortions in interpersonal interaction amongst organizational members, but also to the maintenance of power in organizational interaction as the source of the incapacity. Consequently, the organization that develops the ways for "effective" (double-loop) learning and modify, is also the organization that develops the conditions for emancipatory – i.e. gratuitous, empowered, democratic, participatory – reform.

"There also exists a set of assumptions called Model II, consisting of:

• continuous and open admission betwixt individuals and groups;
• gratuitous, reliable communication;
• interdependence as the grounds for cohesiveness;
• trust, risk-taking and helpfulness; and
• integrative (rather than win-lose, nil-sum or distributive) conflict.

"Model II for Argyris is largely hypothetical. He has constitute them to exist only in the course of espoused theories – what people say or believe nigh how they interact, non how they really practice interact. The projection for Argyris, and so, is to transform Model II from an consort theory into a theory-in-apply.”

Model I can be described every bit managerialism and "discursive closure”… managerial practice is an emphasis upon short-term, quick-gear up problem solving, routines which provide the illusion of beingness rational, in control and making the world predictable.

Bokeno says, "if we understand (double-loop) learning as a process accomplished via disquisitional reflection upon Model I norms, and Model I norms as those that stipulate power disproportion, and then double-loop learning becomes the practical communication process past which transformation/emancipation happens.”

Bokeno'southward and the other papers constitute a very of import review of this important area.

A quite different paper is from Paul E Bierly in the same journal 3 years previously.

Paul E. Bierly Three, Eric H. Kessler & Edward W. Christensen, Organizational learning, knowledge and wisdom, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. thirteen No. half-dozen pp. 595-618 (2000).

This commodity (which unfortunately lay around on my desk unattended for three years), contains a wealth of quotable quotes, useful definitions and distinctions, very useful reviews of past and present approaches to organisations and learning and much wisdom.

"Learning is the process of linking, expanding, and improving data, information, knowledge and wisdom.”

"To improve our understanding of the impact of organizational learning and knowledge on competitive advantage, we suggest a framework that includes the constructs of data, information, noesis, and wisdom. Each of these constructs is then associated with a unlike type of learning. We further fence that wisdom is an important, admitting missing, construct in the cognition-based theory of the firm. A key to organizational wisdom is judgement and decision making, which requires an understanding of the complexity of a situation, but also requires the power to make sense and simplify and then that action can exist taken. Iii important drivers for the development of organizational wisdom are experience, a passion to learn, and spirituality. Processes for acquiring organizational wisdom such as transformational leadership, organizational culture and knowledge transfer are also discussed.

"Since the early on 1990s the resource-based view of the firm has almost supplanted the traditional I/O arroyo to strategy. The fundamental statement of this school is that a firm'southward resource will be a source of competitive advantage if the resource are valuable, rare, inimitable and non substitutable. Research on the resources-based view of the firm illustrates that for nearly firms knowledge is the most important strategic resource and that the capability to create, integrate and employ knowledge is critical to the development of sustainable competitive advantages. Thus, the knowledge-based view of the business firm has emerged, which identifies the principal rationale for the firm every bit the creation and application of cognition.

"This arroyo has led to the general prescription that firms should become "learning organizations” to maximize their knowledge base logical this prescription, others have pointed out the difficulty of integrating dissimilar types of knowledge and the need for "absorptive capacity'” to empathize and acquire external organizational noesis. Later, research on noesis strategies (and organizational learning have been undertaken).

"Post-obit the cognition based view, strategic analysis focuses on the different ways firms tin strengthen their overall knowledge base by determining which specific cognition areas should exist strengthened. The full general argument of these researchers is that superior knowledge in disquisitional areas volition lead to a sustainable competitive reward and organizational success.

"A major critique of the knowledge-based approach to strategy is that information technology is based on the underlying assumption that more than information and knowledge lead to greater success. Conspicuously, this assumption is difficult to test, but empirical tests studying the links between R&D intensity and profit, and betwixt patents and profit practise not seem to back up this assumption, at least for some industries ). Likewise, the link between it intensity and organization operation remains fuzzy. Despite propositions that the use of advanced information technologies should effect in more than effective intelligence and that this intelligence should produce higher quality decisions the evidence is equivocal and idiosyncratic at best.”

Some definitions

Data are something given, granted, or admitted; a premise upon which something can be argued or inferred.

Data is a representation, an outline, sketch, or giving form.

Cognition is a clear and sure perception of something; the act, fact, or state of understanding.

Wisdom is the faculty of making the best use of knowledge, experience, and understanding by exercising good judgement.

Passion: To be wise, one must besides take the force of belief to make it happen. Because wisdom includes action, one must exist able to take the drive and the courage to overcome personal, social, and institutional barriers in the name of implementing the "right" strategy.

Here is an important quotation from one of the slap-up minds of the 20^thursday century, Albert Einstein: accumulating knowledge is insufficient to become wise. In a voice communication at Princeton Academy:

"Convictions which are necessary and determinant for our conduct and judgements cannot be found solely along this solid scientific manner . . . The scientific method can teach united states nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned past, each other . . . Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One tin can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and nonetheless non be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our man aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievement of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from some other source . . . The knowledge of truth equally such is wonderful, but information technology is so footling capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here nosotros confront, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our being . . . Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of ways and ends, but mere thinking cannot make clear these cardinal ends and valuations.”
Castle of Fontainebleau, almost Paris, France (More)
Harold J. Leavitt, "Why Hierarchies Thrive”, Harvard Business concern Review Vol. 81/3, p96, 7p (2003)I Fri afternoon, word came down that the president (Jimmy Carter) absolutely had to accept a detailed report about a certain problem past Monday morning. What could be more important? The staff worked the unabridged weekend, assembling and reviewing information; rechecking numbers; organizing, debating, and rewriting conclusions. One staff member even canceled his 10-year-old's altogether party. They had a deadline to run across-and they met it. Early on Mon morning, the spring report was on the president'south desk. Zero happened.

Information technology turned out, of grade, that President Carter hadn't actually needed a written report on the problem in question. All he had done was remark casually to a few top aides that he would like to run across how work on the problem was progressing. That offhand remark had prepare the telephones ringing down the chain of control. His comment metamorphosed into a proposition and and then into an guild, which exploded into a crisis that required everything else to be put on hold.

Henry Kaiser, the cofounder of Kaiser Permanente, was fond of fresh fruits and vegetables. Once, before leaving on an extended trip, he announced to his staff that he would similar to have a vegetable garden waiting for him when he got back. A few days before his return, Kaiser'southward staff remembered the comment. A huge team of gardeners quickly was summoned. For two days and nights they planted. When Kaiser returned, and then the legend goes, he pulled up a perfect, full grown carrot–quite unaware that information technology had been planted at that place just the dark before.

Leavitt concludes, "It seems more sensible to accept the reality that hierarchies are here to stay and piece of work hard to reduce their highly noxious byproducts, while making them more habitable for humans and more productive besides.”

A very interesting Australian business relationship of how the office of Prime Minister works, or doesn't, and which gives examples of similar difficulties, is found in Don Watson'due south award winning book, "Recollections of a Bleeding Eye A Portrait of Paul Keating PM” (Knopff 2002).

Michael D Watkins &, Max H Bazerman, Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Accept Seen Coming, Harvard Business Review Vol. 81/iii, p72, 9p (2003)

This paper might be summarised past saying risk direction is poor!

Anticipated surprises arise out of failures of recognition, prioritization, or mobilization. The best way to effigy out whether a disaster could have been avoided is to ask if the threat had been recognized, if appropriate priority was accorded to information technology and appropriate activity taken. Rigorous chance analysis-combining a systematic cess of the probabilities of future events and an estimation of the costs and benefits of particular outcomes–can be invaluable in overcoming the biases that afflict organizations in estimating the likelihood of unpleasant events; even so, it is often no undertaken. Anticipated surprises arise out of systemic flaws in determination making.

Portents had been building upwardly for years most the "ix/11” disaster:it should not accept been a surprise. There was awareness of Islamic militants being prepared to commit suicide, previous attacks on the Globe Trade Eye, aviation security organization was known to be "full of holes”. But no precautionary measures were taken. Different pieces of information were not connected, priority was not given to fixing known problems and plans to do so were subverted by lobying past certain industries.

Neb Bradley, Paul Jansen and Les Silverman, "The Nonprofit Sector'southward $100 Billion Opportunity”, Harvard Business concern Review Vol. 81/five, p94, 10p (2003)

A written report conducted past McKinsey & Company suggests that the Usa nonprofit sector could free upwardly an extra $100 billion a twelvemonth past challenging the operating practices and notions of stewardship that currently govern the sector. Charitable organizations could gratuitous up that amount past making five changes: reduce funding costs, distribute holdings faster, reduce programme service costs, trim administrative costs, and amend sector effectiveness.

Robert Goldberg (of Organisation Insight, Greensboro, North Carolina) in "Awake at the Wheel" (Leadership and Organization Evolution Periodical 21(5), p 225-234, 2000) recounts in some very useful detail the evolution of an executive squad at a banking concern where the by leadership civilisation had to be abandoned as not working and a new culture of honesty and openness developed.

Phillip H Siegel (of Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Bailiwick of jersey Usa) writes of "Using peer mentors during periods of dubiousness" in Leadership & Organization Development Journal 21(5), p 243-253 (2000). Peer relationships in piece of work settings can bear on adjustments and personal and professional growth during stressful periods caused past mergers and acquisitions. Such relationships may provide an antidote to stress at all authoritative levels.

In "Saving Money, Saving Lives" (Harvard Business organisation Review November-Dec 2000, p 57-65), John Meliones (Primary Medical Director at Duke Children's Hospital in Durham, North Carolina) explores the advances to be made using more information, a fresh arroyo to teamwork and the balanced scorecard in keeping the mission lofty and the bottom line salubrious.

A minor article in the "Finance" cavalcade [of Sloan Management Review Wintertime 2000] reports that Principal Financial Officers adopt their ain approaches to managing uppercase [and presumably other funds]. Even though experts such equally Nobel Prize winner Franco Modigliani have shown that capital letter structure is best chosen on the basis of trade offs between benefits of debt (taxation deductibility of involvement payments) and the drawbacks of debt (higher interest payments) most CFO'southward keep debt levels depression in order to be ready for unforeseen opportunities. More than half the CFOs practise non adjust either cash flows or their discount rate for risks presented by interest rates, foreign exchange, business cycle, commodities or inflation.

In "Employee Loyalty around the Globe" (The "Intelligence" column [of Sloan Management Review Winter 2000] p 16) a study past Walker Information Global Network, "an Indianapolis-based international partnership", finds that the cultural differences between people we observe in cuisine, clothing and sport around the globe should non be dislocated with differences in piece of work-force issues. "People are people wherever they live; they care deeply about the same few things." In the workplace, people everywhere ask, Am I fairly compensated for my piece of work? Am I well suited for my work? Does my employer trust me to practise that work? The question is whether studies showing that loyal employees afford loyal customers beget greater profits are valid around the globe. Amongst other things the study constitute that employees who perceived their employers as ethical are more probable to exist proud to be associated with the company. The cost of being an ethical company is cheap compared to the cost of replacing workers who leave because of dissatisfaction [relating to unethical practices].

House in Perugia, Umbria (More than) "Driving organizational change in the midst of crisis" past John S Carroll and Sachi Hatakenaka of MIT's Sloan School of Management (in Sloan Management Review Spring 2001, p70-79) recounts the handling of a serious state of affairs at the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in Waterford, Connecticut. In the late 1980's a new CEO arrived and a consultant informed the company that in the face up of deregulation a focus on toll containment would be essential.

In 1997 Northeast Utilities, its parent company closed the constitute down. The plant was facing bankruptcy after the Nuclear Regularity Commission (NRC) placed it on the "Scout List" and required demonstration of compliance with licensing requirements, regulations and safety analyses before giving permission for the found to restart. The focus of the change management was the addressing of staff'southward rubber concerns and the building of trust with direction. Involvement of staff in the committees which developed new procedures was also a critical part of the change process. The NRC and Northeast Utilities insisted that Millstone pursue strategies that would involve staff meaningfully in the change process.

Among other things it was emphasized that managers would be judged on how they handled complaints, not on the absenteeism of complaints, so overturning the suggestion that in the nuclear industry good managers don't have problems! Millstone didn't resolve the situation past a transformational manager putting forth a tiptop downwards plan for change: spaces were created for wider participation, managers watched the organization "motion forward, stumble and try once again", many individuals stepped in at central moments to offer the components from which to style change. Everyone from expert and manager to staff member learned to respect 1 another'southward contributions and build effective working relationships.

In the change process, "the learning was not in the policy and the structures simply in the behaviours [of the people in the arrangement] that made the structures come to life."

In late 2000 Millstone was again producing electricity, the stock had recovered and Northeast was able to sell the power station.

Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford Academy ("What's wrong with management practices in Silicon Valley? A lot" in Sloan Management Review Bound 2001, p101-102) asks questions well-nigh the mode in which companies in Silicon Valley manage their staff and criticises many of them. Far from being a model to follow Jeffrey Pfeffer (in Sloan Management Review Spring 2001, p101-102) asks questions about the style in which companies in Silicon Valley manage their staff and criticises many of the practices. Far from existence a model to follow, practices such as use of the free agency model of employment with limited attachment, extensive utilize of outside contractors, use of stock options equally a class of compensation and encouragement of long working hours, are more expensive in the longer term, reducing delivery of employees, increasing staff turnover and more.

"Why would a company entrust activities that are its lifeblood – to a third party?" asks Jerome Barthelmey of Audencia Nantes' Graduate Schoolhouse of Direction in France in "The hidden costs of It outsourcing" (Sloan Direction Review Leap 2001, p lx-69).

Issues of vendor search, transitioning and managing the process influence subconscious costs. Choose activities that are safe to outsource, hire people experienced in outsourcing, typhoon tight contracts and keep key people in-house are amongst the critical strategies.

Michael Schrage, in "The Real Problem with Computers" (Harvard Business Review, 00178012, Sep/Oct97, Vol. 75, Result five – in the Books in Review Section) reviews two important books. (Yeah, that is 10 years ago, so what?) Fifty-fifty the best-designed systems tin't overcome faulty relationships. The books are

The Squandered Calculator: Evaluating the Business Alignment of Information Technologies by Paul A. Strassmann New Canaan, Connecticut: The Information Economics Printing, 1997

Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Surround Thomas H. Davenport with Laurence Prusak New York: Oxford University Press, 1997

Schrage asserts that "Businesses worldwide-and specially in the United States- have wasted billions of dollars believing the big lie of the Information Historic period. For almost 2 decades, that lie has encouraged a massive spending rampage, absorbing over half of every dollar that U.S. concern has invested in itself. And information technology has governed the ways in which both entrepreneurs and global juggernauts seek competitive advantage. The big prevarication is pervasive, and it offers a seductive logic that actually makes it believable.

"The lie says that if organizations but had greater quantities of cheaper, faster, and more useful information, they could increment their profitability and raise their competitive positions in the global marketplace. On the surface, that makes sense. If yous offer employees greater quantities of better information more speedily and at a lower cost, you lot should reasonably expect their performance to improve as a consequence."

Schrage also deals with these issues in an interview in Applied science, Silver Bullets and Big Lies: Musings on the Information Age with Educom Review Staff in Sequence: Book 33, Number (January/ Feb 1998)

Michael Schrage, currently a inquiry associate with the MIT Media Lab, is a widely read author whose soon-to-be-published volume, Getting Real (Harvard Business School Press), focuses on the function of modeling, prototypes and simulations as media for innovation. Previous works include Shared Minds (Random House 1990) and No More Teams (Doubleday 1995) – books nearly successful collaboration and collaborative media in business organization, art and the sciences. His work can besides be establish on the pages of Wired and Computerworld magazines. In addition, Schrage as well serves as a Merrill Lynch Forum Innovation Fellow, and equally executive director of Merrill Lynch's Academic Venture PhD Contest.

EDUCOM REVIEW: You've idea a lot nigh technology equally it'southward used in instruction at various levels. What's your opinion of what yous see out there?

MICHAEL SCHRAGE: I recall that there is an extraordinary amount of experimentation going on in educational technology and in bringing technology to didactics. Unfortunately there is as much unhealthy experimentation equally in that location is healthy experimentation. My personal experience is that the overwhelming majority of people who desire to bring technology and the Internet and interactivity to the schools believe that they are inherently doing a good thing, that they are doing God's work for education, G-12 or beyond. And I think that'south a hypothesis to be tested, not a proven fact. I think at that place are ideologues and idealists in the worst pregnant of the phrase and I am agape information technology is that bias – the bias that better technology or more engineering is an inevitably adept thing rather than something to be self-critical and self-skeptical most – that is provoking a backlash against applied science in education.
In "The Brainstorming Myth" (Business Strategy Review xi (4), p21-28, 2001), Adrian Furnham asserts that research shows unequivocally that brainstorming groups produce fewer and poorer quality ideas than the aforementioned number of individuals working alone. … Understanding why encephalon storming is usually ineffective, and why people yet practise it, gives a ground for suggesting how managers can amend the mode they use it, according to Furnham. He considers that the group context enables each person to make less effort ("social loafing"), people fear their ideas might look foolish and only one person can advise an idea at any 1 time. "Electronic brainstorming" may, according to Furnham, reduce the effects of these iii processes.

I observe this interesting considering of contrasting research past Miriam Erez and Anit Somech ("Is Group Productivity Loss the rule or the exception? Effects of Culture and Grouping-based Motivation", University of Management Journal 39(vi), p 1513-1537, 1996) which institute that teams are very effective when team members are familiar with each other, are motivated to maintain a positive self-image, when specific goals are set and when communication is good; apprehension about the evaluation of the piece of work does not contribute positively.

At best Furnham'south enquiry findings are counter-intuitive.

Thomas Davenport, Jeanne Harris, David De Long and Alvin Jacobson (Accenture, formerly Andersen Consulting) indicate out, in "Data to cognition to results" (California Direction Review 43 (2), p 117-138, 2001) that while firms accept unprecedented access to transaction data its is seldom sifted into the sort of knowledge that can inform decisions and create positive results. About firm accept even so to develop the very adequacy that prompted them to gather the data in the beginning identify. The authors say that they present a framework that identifies and articulates the chief success factors that must exist present tin guild to build broad organizational capabilities transforming information to noesis to results.

In "How increasing value to customers improves business results" (Sloan Direction Review Summer 2000, p 27-37) Sandra Vandermerwe (Royal College, University of London) examines the success flowing from thinking through what customers actually want and what it is that the business organization is providing. An example is BP offering customers the least costly class of fuel suited to their needs rather than trying to sell more fuel. Conservation expert Amory Lovins deals with that upshot extensively. (See the ABC Radio National Background Briefing website.) Peter Drucker emphasised the importance of this long ago; it is an important issue for museums considering if one really understood what it is that visitors and other users of museums really await from museums then, the argument goes, museums would be more successful.

Darrell Rigby (in Sloan Management Review Summer 2000, p 139-160) reports on a major study in "Management tools and techniques: A survey". More 70% of companies world-wide utilise strategic planning, mission and vision statements, benchmarking and customer satisfaction measurement. North American firms are more likely to use tools dealing with growth, help a focus on key issues and assist speed up the business bicycle. International firms more ofttimes utilize tools dealing with market place uncertainty and quality improvement. There has not been a lot of change in the tools used over the concluding 10 years.

In "Innovation Means Relying on Everyone's Creativity" (Leader to Leader, No. 20 Leap 2001), Margaret J. Wheatley writes, "Innovation has e'er been a chief challenge of leadership. Today we live in an era of such rapid modify and evolution that leaders must piece of work constantly to develop the capacity for continuous change and frequent accommodation, while ensuring that identity and values remain constant. They must recognize people's innate capacity to arrange and create — to innovate.

"In my ain work I am constantly and happily surprised by how incommunicable it is to extinguish the human spirit. People who had been given upward for dead in their organizations, one time atmospheric condition change and they feel welcomed back in, find new energy and go neat innovators. My questions are How do we acknowledge that everyone is a potential innovator? How tin can nosotros evoke the innate human need to innovate?"

* In "Innovation: The New Route to New Wealth" (Leader to Leader, No. 19 Winter 2001), Gary Hamel and Peter Skarzynski explore innovation. Gary Hamel is founder and chairman of Strategos, a consulting house focused on strategy innovation, and is visiting professor of strategic and international management at the London Concern School. Hamel is coauthor of the best-selling Competing for the Hereafter and author of the recently released Leading the Revolution. Peter Skarzynski is CEO and a founding partner of Strategos. His work on strategy, innovation, and enterprise systems has spanned a number of industries, including consumer products, free energy, telecommunications, and high technology.

This article explores the mode "path-breaking products" of the by few decades, such every bit the minivan, the Walkman, and CNN have been identified and adult. Such innovations succeeded not because they responded to marketplace need but because they created a need consumers had yet to sense themselves. According to Hamel and Skarzynski, the greatest rewards go to companies that create new business models — ideas that spark new sources of acquirement based on changing technology, demographics, and consumer habits. .. the Commencement Law of the Innovation Economy [is that] companies that are non constantly pursuing innovation will presently exist overwhelmed by it. Strategy innovation is the only way to deal with discontinuous — and disruptive — change.

"What stands in the way of companies failing to innovate in many cases is the tried-and-true recipe that brought them past success. Over time, every business concern model and every strategy goes stale."

To address really challenging bug that don't fit the organization'south existing processes and values organizations need "heavyweight" teams, people from different parts of the system working in an autonomous environment. This is the view of Clayton Yard. Christensen, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School and author of "The Innovator'south Dilemma: When New Technologies Crusade Dandy Firms to Fail". In "Assessing Your Organization's Innovation Capabilities" (Leader to Leader, No. 21 Summer 2001). This article offers a framework to help managers confronted with necessary modify understand whether the organizations over which they preside are capable or incapable of tackling the challenge.

Christensen notes that the amount of information available to managers and the amount of work required to sort the of import from the less of import is increasing dramatically. "Warnings are all about us that the pace of change is accelerating. The corporeality of data bachelor to managers — every bit well as the corporeality of piece of work and judgment required to sort the of import from the less important — is increasing dramatically. The pervasive emergence of the Internet is exacerbating these trends."

"… When managers assign employees to tackle a critical innovation, they instinctively piece of work to match the requirements of the job with the capabilities of the individuals they charge to do information technology. In evaluating whether an employee is capable of successfully executing a job, managers will await for the requisite noesis, judgment, skill, perspective, and energy. Managers will besides assess the employee's values — the criteria past which the person tends to decide what should and shouldn't be done." Unfortunately, according to Christensen, some managers don't think equally rigorously near whether their organizations have the capability to successfully execute jobs that may be given to them. Often, they assume that if the people working on a project individually have the requisite capabilities to get the task washed well, and then the organization in which they work volition also have the same capability to succeed."

* In 50eader to Leader , No. 21 Summer 2001 on the Peter Drucker Foundation website, Harvey Seifter, Executive Director of Orpheus Sleeping accommodation Orchestra writes about what he describes as "The Conductor-less Orchestra". For the by twenty years Seifter has provided creative and managerial leadership to performing arts institutions including San Francisco's Magic Theater and New York's Theater for the New City. He is the co-author of Leadership Ensemble: Lessons in Collaborative Management from the World's Simply Conductorless Orchestra.

Gina Colarelli O'Connor & Mark P Rice of the University of California hash out "Opportunity recognition and breakthrough innovation in large established firms" in California Direction Review 43, p two (2001), or how to encourage the development of radical innovations in organizations in the face of all the changes that accept identify over fourth dimension. Non surprisingly they conclude that the process of moving from a reservoir of technical knowledge to the initiation of a projection with "potentially game-changing opportunity" seems to be almost capricious and to a large extent dependent on chance events, supra-normally motivated individuals and rich breezy systems, "many of which accept been destroyed with early retirements and downsizing activities". They continue "further, the individuals in positions to come across opportunities aren't ever as motivated as the champion literatures would lead i to believe." (They annotation that the champion literature errs methodologically in that information technology identifies champions afterward the project's been initiated and so studies behaviours, attitudes and skills. This ignores those who recognised opportunities but elelcted not to champion them.) "The criteria applied by opportunity recognized in the initial evaluation of breakthrough innovations are different for the conventional criteria applied to decision making regarding incremental innovation and is highly dependent on an individual's capacity to analyze the ways a engineering can be used to substantiate a large enough market."

O'Connor and Rice identify distinctive skills, multiple waves of opportunity recognition, sustained effort and mechanisms, stimulation of divergent thinking, attendance at conferences and interaction with research labs and universities, informal discussions with renowned scholars as extremely important. 18-carat leadership which encourages thought generation is essential.

In "Outsourcing Innovation: The new engine of growth" (Sloan Management Review 41(4), 2000, p thirteen-28) James Brian Quinn, 1 of the leading writers on management, especially managing noesis-based enterprises and innovation, asserts that innovation calls for the complex knowledge that only a broad network of specialists can offer which is why then many companies are starting to outsource innovation. He notes that demand is doubling, the supply of knowledge workers is skyrocketing, interaction capabilities have grown and new incentives accept merged. "The most effective companies keep core competence activities in house and outsource the rest to best-in-world suppliers."

Quinn discusses the challenges facing companies that outsource innovation. Whatever organization that considers innovation to be a significant part of what it does should make a point of having this article widely discussed in the context of other articles virtually innovation and how to exploit it. In particular, an agreed position would be essential on how this outcome is managed. If a museum, for case, hasn't done this then 1 might ask whether it is taking the evolution of the future seriously!

I am seriously challenged past Quinn's perspective. If innovation is one of the primal issues for an enterprise so surely outsourcing information technology means losing control of it, quite only because it is very hard to be prescriptive plenty. Does one simply say, "We want you to exist innovative"?

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Source: https://desgriffin.com/leadership/orgdev/

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