A very interesting chart from the Wall Street Journal.

NewSectorsDominateTop25Companies

Why haven’t we learned to go golfing on Monday morning when we’ve learned to take our work home on Friday night? – Ricardo Semler

Nå er det nesten 25 år siden Ricardo Semler tok over det brasiliansk-baserte selskapet Semco, etter sin far.

Ricardo er en verdensberømt leder, som har en mildt sagt anneredes lederstil, hvis det i det helt tatt kan kalles ledelse. Kanskje det heller burde hete “LidenSkaper?”

Her er noe av det mest bemerkelsesverdige Semler og de ansatte har gjort:

1. Alle som jobber der bestemmer sin egen arbeidstid.

2. De bestemmer sin egen lønn.

3. Alle ansatte velger også hvilket utstyr de skal ha (IT)

4. Du velger selv hvilket møte du ønsker å delta på, og kommer det ingen på møtet som er satt opp, vil det nok ikke jobbes så alt for mye mer med dette temaet fremover..

Og hva skjer når du gjør noe som dette?

Jo,- økt produktivitet, langsiktig lojalitet blant de ansatte og fenomenal vekst, for å nevne noe…

Semco´s omsetning har økt fra $35 millioner til $212 millioner på seks år! Jippi!

Vil du lese mer om dette spennende eventyret, kjøp boken på www.amazon.com (koster 135 kroner inkludert frakt, så ikke den alt for store utskeielsen)

Vil du se Ricardo Semler live, trykk her:

Ellers tar jeg mer enn gjerne en lunsjprat om temaet!

Ha en fin kveld videre!

Hilsen Tina

In his Management 2.0 blog, Gary Hamel shares some thought-provoking questions about counterintuitive, yet common, IT policies that seem to discourage productivity and innovation:

• How is it that companies are willing to trust employees with their customers, their expensive equipment, and their cash, but are unwilling to trust them when it comes to using the Web at work or loading their own programs onto their workplace PC?
• Do IT staffers really believe that conscientious, committed employees turn into crazed, malicious, hackers when given a bit of freedom over their IT environment?
• If leading edge IT tools are, as many claim, essential to unleashing human creativity, why would any company force all of its employees to use the same computers, phones and software programs?

Hamel recommends giving employees more freedom over their IT tools.  We agree.  One of the best ways to cultivate innovation and engagement is to empower people with the ability to decide how they can best do their jobs.

El caballero que habla en el video, es Bill George, y tiene las siguientes credenciales:

Es profesor de prácticas de Gestión en la Harvard Business, donde ha enseñado liderazgo desde 2004. Es el autor de cuatro best-seller: 7 lecciones para liderar en crisis, True North, Encontrar el norte verdadero y Auténtico liderazgo. Es el ex Presidente y CEO de Medtronic, al que llegó en 1989 como Presidente y COO, fue Managing Director en el período 1991-2001, y Presidente de la Junta de 1996 a 2002. Bajo su liderazgo, el mercado de Medtronic de capitalización creció de $ 1.1 mil millones a $ 60 billones, un promedio de 35% por año. Anteriormente en su carrera, era un ejecutivo de Honeywell y Litton Industries.

Lo que dice, en castellano, es:

CLICK EN LEER MAS PARA SEGUIR LEYENDO EL POST

“Si miramos esta crisis, creo
que debemos verla fundamentalmente como una Crisis de Liderazgo. Obviamente podemos culpar a los analistas, o al exceso de endeudamiento, o a cualquier otro elemento aislado, pero yo creo que los líderes deben estar a la altura y aceptar sus responsabilidades. Y de hecho, los que han sobrevivido o los que sobrevivirán a esta crisis son los que han sabido asumirlas.
Pero creo que debemos decir que mucha de las organizaciones que han fracasado en esta crisis, es porque han fallado por no tener líderes que realmente entendieran que su trabajo, el trabajo de cada uno de nosotros, es de construir Organizaciones a Largo Plazo.
No hay nada más importante que tener una perspectiva de largo plazo.
Particularmente, aquí, en Wall Street, hemos vivido solo de una perspectiva a corto plazo, hemos perdido la perspectiva acerca de cual es nuestro verdadero objetivo cuando lideramos.
No se trata de nosotros (de nuestros intereses).
Y demasiado a menudo, las raíces mismas son las causantes de los problemas.
Demasiado a menudo hemos estado escogiendo los líderes equivocados, por razones equivocadas.

Hemos escogido a la gente más por su carisma que por su carácter, más por su imagen quye por su integridad, más por su estilo que por su sustancia.

Por lo tanto, si escogemos a la gente por su carisma, por su imagen y por su estilo, ¿por qué nos sorprendemos cuando después no tenemos ni carácter, ni integridad, ni sustancia?“

No puedo estar más de acuerdo, así que me limito a reproducir sus palabras, esperando que el eco llegue muy alto, y muy fuerte, allí donde tiene que llegar.

A story published earlier this month on the Economist discussed the recent trend of companies preferring “anonymous” bosses to the “rock star” CEOs who were popular in previous decades. “The corporate world is increasingly rejecting imperial chief executives in favour of anonymous managers.”

We believe that this shift represents another stage in the ongoing evolution in the typical organizational structure – from a top-down, hierarchical system to a decentralized, democratic organizational model.

“The fashion for faceless chief executives is part of an understandable reaction against yesterday’s imperial bosses, many of whom were vivid characters. Some, such as Jeff Skilling of Enron and Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski, broke the law and helped inspire a dramatic tightening of government regulation, in the form of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. Others, such as Home Depot’s Bob Nardelli and Hewlett-Packard’s Carly Fiorina, paid themselves like superstars but delivered dismal results.“

Talented, motivated, and innovative professionals are no longer willing to work for arrogant dictators in exchange for a sizeable paycheck.  Instead, employees are becoming more and more selective about the quality and type of work environment that their employers offer, and they are increasingly seeking award-winning employers that share decision-making powers and that do not tolerate workplace jerks.

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Tom Davenport’s Blog: November 2, 2009

The United States, my beloved home country, has become the General Motors of nations in its lethargy and complacency. This is ironic, because the US (and Canada) own a majority share of GM, but I am focused more on economic similarity rather than ownership. The height of complacency for GM was probably about 2004. In that year the automaker still had the title as the world’s largest maker of cars, a title it relinquished in 2007. GM was still profitable in 2004 — but not very much so — and it was losing market share in many of its major markets. That was the year that GM abandoned the Oldsmobile brand, but it didn’t seem worried about its future overall. (Announcing the decision to phase out Olds, GM stated in a press release issued in late 2000 that the move would “accelerate GM’s effort to focus resources on strengthening its market position and growth opportunities” and “further streamlines GM’s product portfolio, focusing engineering and marketing resources more sharply on the company’s most successful products and brands. It will also facilitate the development of more innovative products with shorter life cycles.”) Optimism is great, but obviously that didn’t work out terribly well; by 2009 GM was in bankruptcy and is about to shed a lot more brands. It’s now a shadow of its former self, but in 2004 its managers didn’t seem to grasp that the company had a serious problem. Compare GM’s situation to that of the United States, where the complacency peak was probably about 2007. In that year my country continued its long, slow economic and social decline; it ranked 13th (down from 12th the year before), for example, in the United Nations Development Program Human Development Index, which combines GDP per capita, education, and life expectancy (Norway, Australia, and Iceland held the top 3 positions. Yet the then-CEO of the US, George W. Bush, was sanguine about the economy in the 2007 State of the Union address: A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy, and that is what we have. We are now in the 41st month of uninterrupted job growth, a recovery that has created 7.2 million new jobs so far. Unemployment is low, inflation is low, wages are rising. This economy is on the move. And our job is to keep it that way — not with more government but with more enterprise. Apparently the near future of the US economy wasn’t quite as bright as Bush suggested. Both GM and the US government seemed unable to grasp the extent of their problems and failed to do much about them. Both had insufficient innovation, overly high health-care costs, undereducated populations, unwillingness to face environmental issues, and an inability to make tough decisions and take tough actions. And why should they make the hard calls, when it was all too common to hear within both institutions that they are the greatest of their kind in the world? Are there bright spots in both organizations? Absolutely. But touting them, as opposed to calling attention to problems, only leads to further apathy and decline. I believe that it’s diligent and serious self-criticism that identifies the need to change and drives action. Compare the attitudes of the U.S. in 2007 and GM in 2004 to that of Akio Toyoda, the new CEO of Toyota (and a graduate of my school, Babson). Instead of patting the company on the back, Toyoda addressed its recent problems with sharp, pointed criticism, according to a New York Times account of his remarks at the Japan National Press Club: Mr. Toyoda said his company was shamefully unprepared for the global economic crisis that has devastated the auto industry, and is a step away from “capitulation to irrelevance or death.” The company, he added, is “grasping for salvation.” Even adjusting for the usual Japanese tendency to self-criticize, this is an amazing statement. It suggests that Toyota and Toyoda aren’t remotely content with business as usual and plan to face the company’s problems. It may exaggerate a bit, but isn’t it more constructive to exaggerate problems than to exaggerate success? As many have noted, Toyoda borrowed the language for his company’s situation from Jim Collins’ book How the Mighty Fall. One might suggest that Collins’s framework for economic decline applies to countries as well as companies, although that wasn’t his focus in the book. So where is the U.S. in his five-stage model? We have clearly exhibited Stage 3, “denial of risk and peril,” for many years. I don’t think that Toyota is truly at Stage 4, “grasping for salvation,” but the U.S. probably is. And we aren’t that far from “capitulation to irrelevance or death,” Collins’s fifth and final stage. Barack Obama hasn’t sounded the alarm quite to the degree that Akio Toyoda did, but he clearly knew we were in big trouble well before the latest economic crisis. His administration is trying to work along multiple fronts — health care, the enormously costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, climate change, education, financial mismanagement, and many others — to address the sad state we’re in. He may not succeed, but I give him substantial credit for trying. It’s typical of our situation that his strongest detractors allege that he’s taking on too much and having government play too large a role. If we’re verging on “capitulation to irrelevance and death,” the implication is that, if anything, he’s moving us too slowly. I love my country, but right now the kind of love it needs most is tough love.

By Dave Holloman

November 11, 2009

In most of our pursuits, it used to be that a small group of elites would convene and decide how things were to be done.  Entering a new market, investing in a new technology, and how the staff spends their time were often decided upon by these small groups of the chosen.  Increasingly, our world is moving towards a different model where these decisions are distributed and more grass roots.

The growing use of the phrase “Built from the Ground Up” is a good illustration of the shift going on in our global culture.  This phrase emerged in the early part of the last century.  At the time, it was used to describe something exceptional.  A rare event.  It’s a phrase that is now commonplace.  A quick Google search shows its origins in 1910, but only mentioned twice in that decade.  There is only a single reference in the entire decade of the 1920’s.  That started to change dramatically during the 1980’s as use of the phrase became more common and used increasingly up to today. 

Mobilization at the grass roots level has always been the impetus for significant social progress (see – The Power of 11/9).  Think about any large social movement – American civil rights, Indian independence – and the power of grass roots is recalled as the determinant lever.  This week marks the 20^th anniversary of the Berlin wall’s downfall.  There is no better example of a grassroots movement prevailing. 

Today, this dynamic – building success from the ground up – is moving across the fabric of our culture. Any new idea in the world of business is increasingly vetted at the grass roots level.  Most venture capitalists value ideas coming through their door by breaking them down to their most basic level.  “Tell me how this idea works at the individual level, demonstrate how it is new, and then prove that it can scale.”  Philanthropy has moved in this direction as well.  The rise of micro-financing, perhaps the biggest trend in the use of philanthropic funds, is a direct assault on top-down grant making and its perceived failures.  Look at successful organizations like the Acumen Fund as an example of how the world of charity is being increasingly dominated by a ground up, grass roots view of the world.  Increasingly, government’s credibility faces new threats from the grass roots.  Think about the Iranian government’s challenges in controlling opinion of the recent election in that country.  The easiest step taken to control opinion and dissent was to revoke the visas of all visiting journalists.  Then they tried to stifle communications by shutting down access to YouTube and Twitter.   They did not succeed on this count.   Individuals far away from Iran set up proxy servers that thwarted the Iranian government’s actions, allowing Iranians continued access to the outside world.  The web 2.0, bottom-up world put the Iranian government on its heels.  In markets, think about Microsoft’s dominant power, and the challenges it faced in protecting its market position.  It hasn’t been easy for the global heavyweight to keep up with a few college students who invented the browser more than a decade ago.  Mark Zuckerberg, the student who invented Facebook years later, is another example.  

Web 2.0 technologies are clearly accelerating this shift with an infrastructure that will solidify a more decentralized culture.  Web 2.0 technologies allow for an individual idea to enter the collective conscious as quickly as it can be posted on YouTube.  In 2008, Analysis from Technorati, a blog indexing web site, showed 133 million blog records alive on the internet, 7.4 million of those posted in just 120 days prior to the analysis.  It is tough to comprehend how many ideas, how many innovations, how many new ways of doing things are out there to be recognized and tapped. Small groups that previously made the decisions and yielded the influence are now running to keep up. 

Think of this shift to a bottom up world as the new operating system for our culture.  In this new era, effective leadership will change its emphasis towards findings ways to leverage the new operating system.  P&G’s Connect and Develop R&D model is an excellent example of how companies are trying to tap into it.   Through this effort, P&G seeks to leverage a grassroots innovation network that is dispersed and organic, rather than dictating innovation from within.  As another example, Google has become well-known for its self organizing development teams.  Effective leadership in this new world means creating new ways for society and organizations to tap into ideas that start at a grass roots level.   Leverage the network.   It’s a bottom-up world.

Capitalism: A Love Story, the 2009 documentary movie directed by Michael Moore, criticizes the current economic order in the United States and capitalism in general while covering the financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the recovery stimulus.  In his movie, Moore highlights workplace democracy as an alternative model to capitalism.

Many would argue that workplace democracy should not be considered a replacement to the capitalist economic system.  Instead, workplace democracy is a highly effective management strategy that helps enable companies to engage and motivate their employees and to maintain a competitive advantage in their industries.

Workplace democracy is not limited to a specific type of company ownership structure.  Democratic companies come in all shapes and sizes and range from high tech start-up companies such as Brainpark, to small worker-owned cooperatives such as South Mountain, to large privately-held companies such as W.L. Gore and Associates, to large publicly-traded companies such as DaVita.

Workplace democracy is an innovative management strategy where company information and decision-making powers are shared and distributed among employees so that customer-facing workers (who are closest to customers and usually know them best) are aware of the company’s goals and performance and have the ability (and motivation) to make smart decisions quickly, which is essential in today’s fast-moving and hyper-competitive marketplace.

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   Date: 03-11-2009
 Source: The Economist

In many rich countries, grooming young bureaucrats for a changing world is a struggle for their would-be bosses

AGED 25 and armed with a master’s degree in water management, Andrew Reeves has the very mix of youth and green-mindedness that many governments claim to need. Yet when he attended a Canadian government job fair in Toronto this autumn, he left after 20 minutes without handing out a single résumé.

He queued in front of a booth for the Canadian natural-resources ministry, only to be told that information on openings was best found on the ministry’s website. “I’d have preferred to do the whole thing by e-mail,” he grumbles. Such was his frustration that he settled instead for a small non-profit group specialised in recycling.

At a time when many administrations in the rich world face a looming talent shortage, because a huge cohort of civil servants is about to retire, anyone would think that governments would be trying harder, and in cleverer ways, to scoop up bright students now leaving college.

It is not simply a matter of replacing one set of mandarins with another: in an age when most policy issues (from climate change to migration) cut across ministries and state boundaries, the civil servants of tomorrow will have to be lateral thinkers, not pen-pushers. And for better or worse, the outcome of the global recession will be closer regulation of the world’s economic and financial systems, for years to come.

Especially in the English-speaking world, governments say they are trying hard to bring some private-sector pizzazz to all aspects of public administration, including recruitment. Among the legacies of Tony Blair’s term as prime minister of Britain is the idea that the “services delivered” by government can be monitored almost as precisely as a firm’s profits.

And Britain’s civil service got a jolt three years ago when Gill Rider—a partner in Accenture, a management consultancy—was given a wide-ranging brief to shake up the way personnel were used and rewarded. The results have been watched carefully in places like Canada, Australia and Ireland. Civil-service reforms can work best in smallish territories—Denmark, Finland, Scotland, Wales, the Canadian provinces—says Tony Dean, a British-born Canadian who has switched from being a bureaucrat to studying bureaucracy. (Outside the English-speaking, Nordic and Teutonic worlds, one of the few countries often cited as a model for administrative reform is Singapore, which pays its bureaucrats well so as to stem corruption.)

However well-planned, internal reforms may not be enough to solve the basic problem—common to most of the leading industrial democracies—of competing for talent with commerce and voluntary groups, and then retaining the loyalty of a fickle, sceptical generation. “If we have any energy left after the trials of a competitive American college, we turn to private corporations if we have debt to repay, and to the non-profit sector if we want to make the world better,” says Robert Ochshorn, who has just graduated in computer sciences from Cornell University.

In simple numerical terms, the personnel gap opening up is vast. A report by the OECD, a rich-countries’ club, found that in 13 of the member countries surveyed, at least 30% of central-government workers were 50 years of age or older. Generous early-retirement provisions mean that many will leave their posts fairly soon.

To replace them, governments will have to offer something more than the steady life that attracted the older caste of mandarins. “We’re a squirmy generation,” admits Tyler Hunt, a University of Toronto student who is about to start looking for work. “The idea of settling into a job for 30 years just isn’t appealing.”

Today’s high-flyers want multi-disciplinary careers, the ability to rise as high and fast as their talents allow, and the freedom to move in and out of government work, says Linda Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and co-author (with Scott Gould) of a book* that predicts a crisis in America’s public service.

Even those keenest on working for the nation may find their loyalty tested, she notes. A State Department officer who masters a hard language may get dozens of job offers, from private firms or global institutions. The “stove-piped” structure of government careers in most OECD countries takes little account of these new realities; talent that leaves is unlikely to return.

In any case, before you can think of retaining the best employees, you have to get them in the door. In the United States, the complexity of recruitment deters eager youngsters. As Ms Bilmes points out, advertisements even for modest posts are “filled with jargon, acronyms and unexplained requirements” such as “eligibility under 5 CFR 330.60 (b)”.

In the short term, the recession will certainly increase the number of graduates who are willing to surmount these hurdles. But in the contest for really marketable skills, government will often be at a disadvantage. For a young biochemist, working for a big pharmaceutical firm is far more tempting than government research. It is the same for graduates trained in intellectual-property law or telecoms.

On the lowest rungs of the career ladder, salaries in America’s public sector can be quite competitive with the private sector; but at the highest levels, the differential is vast. In the private sector, and above all in finance, successful types earn many times more than public servants with huge responsibilities. An added turn-off for would-be American bureaucrats is that top positions are often filled by political fiat, not merit.

In many rich countries, there is a hint of desperation in the way some public employers try to present their work as glamorous. “Did you know we have our own CSI [Crime Scene Investigation] team?” asks the website of Ontario’s government, citing an American television show. British Columbia stresses long holidays (time to hike and ski), while in Britain, potential mandarins are told of the heroic role they might play in a catastrophe.

In some rich democracies, the personnel problem is felt only in specific areas. In Australia, for example, the elite stream of civil servants still attracts brilliant applicants, but hiring accountants and IT specialists for lower positions is harder, says Peter Shergold, an ex-cabinet secretary.

In his view, the public sector should be looking not just for high IQs but a new skill: that of negotiating with the many agencies (including non-profit and private bodies) to which government is being farmed out. Old, vertical bureaucracies are ill-adapted to this task; flexible youngsters will have to do better. For that reason, perhaps, Kevin Rudd, Australia’s prime minister, recently asked his top bureaucrat for a plan to shake up the entire civil service.

If there is one rich democracy where state service is revered, it is France. Competition to get into elite institutions like the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA, a springboard for bureaucrats and politicians) is still fiercely meritocratic. For the 2009 intake, 1,352 applicants took the exam for just 80 places. Government jobs are in huge demand. In 2007 roughly 178,000 aspirants took the exam for the highest of the three grades of civil servant, comprising just 24,000 jobs. Some 44% of the successful recruits were actually overqualified.

“As the French see it, joining the civil service is not generally considered a track like any other, but a decision to devote one’s life to the public interest,” purrs an official report. Some 70% of French respondents told Ipsos, a pollster, that the civil service had a good image, and they would like their children to join.

Still, there are signs, at least, of change in the process whereby alumni of the ENA move seamlessly into the senior ranks of administration. For one thing, énarques (as graduates of the school are called) are moving on from the civil service into top private-sector jobs, in banking and insurance; and (unlike two of his four predecessors) President Nicolas Sarkozy did not attend the school. Nor did most of his cabinet. In future, énarques will no longer be assigned to state jobs on the basis of their grades; they will apply in a more-or-less open procedure.

Even in mandarin-minded France, the problem of an ageing civil service is felt. In 2005 the average age of a civil servant was 42, three years more than the private-sector mean. Under a plan supposed to take effect by 2012, Mr Sarkozy wants to cut the total number of civil servants while hiking pay and incentives for those who stay.

There is also stiff competition for positions in the European Union bureaucracy, whose culture is heavily French. The hurdles are worth negotiating for anyone who likes the stimulation of a multilingual, multicultural environment, says Aurélien Juliard, a successful applicant for a recent batch of 200 posts. Some 19,000 hopefuls sat an exam, and were whittled down to 600; they then faced a second exam and an essay, on the basis of which 300 were summoned for an oral interrogation. The bureaucrats of Brussels do not enjoy the same public esteem as the sleek administrators of Paris, but they are well rewarded in other ways.

In places like Canada, where the need to hire and deploy government personnel in a more rational way is recognised in principle, at least, sensible changes have had unexpected results. Hiring for Canada’s public sector has been decentralised, allowing those who are closest to the job to make the selection. And mobility within the civil service has increased, creating the sort of environment that young recruits want. But a report by the Public Service Commission of Canada, which oversees the hiring and welfare of 210,000 federal civil servants, has noted some drawbacks. Almost one-third of respondents to a survey said they had had three or more supervisors in the past three years; half told another survey that rapid staff turnover had caused problems.

Morale in any civil service, and its attractiveness to recruits, are also affected by factors unrelated to promotion ladders or pay-scales. The political mood, for example. In the view of Ms Bilmes, the malaise of America’s bureaucracy reflects an overzealous response to Ronald Reagan’s dictum: the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

In the Obama era, things may be different—not just in the United States, but in democracies that emulate America. As 21-year-old Mr Ochshorn puts it, “Our elected politicians long created an impression of government as stale and rife with bureaucracy…but my peers are proud of having elected Obama, and that has improved the image of government.” If hopes like that prove overblown, clever youngsters will not be slow to notice.

* “The People Factor: Strengthening America by Investing in Public Service.” Brookings Institution Press.

In most  organizations, change comes in only two flavors:  trivial and traumatic.  Review the history of the average organization and you’ll discover long periods of incremental fiddling  punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change.  The dynamic is not unlike that of  arteriosclerosis:  after years of  relative inactivity, the slow accretion of arterial plaque is suddenly  revealed by the business equivalent of a myocardial infarction. The only  option at that juncture is a quadruple bypass:  excise the leadership team, slash head  count, dump “non-core” assets and overhaul the balance sheet.

Why does  change have to happen this way?   Why does a company have to frustrate its shareholders, infuriate its  customers and squander much of its legacy before it can reinvent itself?   It’s easy to blame leaders  who’ve fallen prey to denial and nostalgia, but the problem goes deeper than  that.  Organizations by their very  nature are inertial.  Like a  fast-spinning gyroscope that can’t be easily unbalanced, successful  organizations spin around the axis of unshakeable beliefs and well-rehearsed  routines—and it typically takes a dramatic outside force to destabilize the  self-reinforcing system of policies and practices.

Let me  return, for a moment, to the topic of my last post, organized religion.   What are some of the inertial forces that have prevented churches from  reinventing themselves in ways that might make them more relevant to a  post-modern world?  A partial list  would include:

–Long-serving denominational leaders  who have little experience with non-traditional models of worship and  outreach.

–A matrix of top-down policies that  limits the scope for local experimentation.

–Training programs (seminaries) that  perpetuate a traditional view of religious observance and ministerial  roles.

–Promotion criteria for church pastors  that reward conformance to traditional practices.

–And a straightjacket of implicit  beliefs around how you “do church.”   For example:

Church  happens in church.

Preaching is the most effective way of imparting religious  wisdom.

Pastors lead in church while parishioners remain (mostly)  passive.

The  church service follows a strict template:  greet, sing, read, pray, preach,  bless, dismiss (repeat weekly).

Believers, rather than curious skeptics, are the church’s primary  constituency.

Going  to church is the primary manifestation of a spiritual life.

Church  is a lecture not a discussion.

If organized  religion has become less relevant, it’s not because churches have held fast to  their creedal beliefs—it’s because they’ve held fast to their conventional  structures, programs, roles and routines.  The problem with organized religion  isn’t religion, but organization.    In the first and second centuries, the Christian church was communal,  organic and unstructured—a lot like the Web is today.  It commanded little power (it couldn’t  raise an army or depose a monarch), but had enormous influence.  (The Christian church grew from a handful of believers in AD 40 to 31 million adherents by AD 350, roughly half the population of the Roman empire. ) Today many mainline denominations  are institutionally powerful, but spiritually moribund—at least in the  U.S.

What’s true  for churches is true for other institutions:  the older and more organized they get,  the less adaptable they become.   That’s why the most resilient things in our world—biological life,  stock markets, the Internet—are loosely organized.  

To thrive in  turbulent times, organizations must become a bit more disorganized—less buttoned down, less  uptight, less compulsive, less anal.

As a start,  you’ll need to become more alert to the things that reflexively favor the  status quo in your own organization.   While no one’s going to stand up  and say, “I’m on the side of inertia,” they may nevertheless defend management  processes that reflexively favor the status quo.

All of the  things that allow little organizations to grow into big ones—scale, learning  effects, and accumulated expertise—are products of repetition.  When the environment changes, however,  the returns to repetition start to diminish.  Problem is, old habits die hard,  particularly when they’ve been hardwired into a company’s management  processes.  

–Hiring criteria that over-value  “expertise” and under-value diverse life experiences.

–A planning process that  institutionalizes orthodox thinking by using industry standard definitions of  customer segments and product categories

–Decision-making bodies that are  comprised mostly of long-serving industry veterans who tend to discount new  views.

–Highly conservative budgeting criteria  that starve unconventional projects of resources by demanding near certain  returns, even when the funds involved are modest.

–A single approval track for new  projects, where every new idea has to go up the chain of command.

–Large, monolithic organizational units built around a single, dominant, business model.

–A highly optimized but inflexible IT  infrastructure.

Large  organizations don’t worship shareholders or customers, they worship the  past.  If it were otherwise, it  wouldn’t take a crisis to set a company on a new path.

The most  extreme version of organizational inertia comes when those within a company  are no longer able to distinguish between form and function—when their  instinctual loyalty is to the “how” rather than the “what.”

If one  didn’t know better, it would be easy to believe that a lot of newspaper  publishers have been more committed to producing broadsheets than to  delivering the news in a convenient form, or making it easy for advertisers to  connect with customers.

Until  recently, music companies seem to have been more committed to stamping out  plastic discs than to giving their customers easy access to their favorite  tunes.

Many drug  companies seem a lot more interested in peddling temporary palliatives for  chronic conditions than in eradicating disease.

For years,  Kodak seemed more focused on making film than on leveraging new digital  technologies that would make photography simpler and cheaper.

Alzheimer’s,  arteriosclerosis and arthritis—these seem to be the inevitable byproducts of  old age.  But must organizational  maturity bring a similar set of maladies?  I don’t think so.  Despite all the evidence to the  contrary, I think a company can truly be “Forever 21.”

In my next  couple of postings I’ll give you the Cliff Notes version of the book I’m too  busy to write:  ”Ever Young:  How to Keep Your Company Flexible,  Vital and Impertinent.”

Date: 29-10-2009 Source: Businessworld

If you thought outsourcing would take a hit from the financial crisis, think again. While certain sectors have seen double digit declines, other end markets are growing. What the final tally for the year might be is unknown, but the results thus far are somewhat counter-intuitive. Outsourcing’s resilience in the face of such financial and political strain – lawmakers across the globe have often required firms to hire or source materials domestically – has implications for globalization. For one, it suggests that globalization as a trend remains in place despite fluctuations. Second, given that many firms plan to expand their outsourcing footprint, one would conclude that the trend should continue. Indeed, that many small and mid-sized companies seek sources of innovation offshore, suggests the trend has considerable strength. Of course, that doesn’t mean there won’t be bumps in the road: the gap in structural costs between US and offshore manufacturing operations has been cut almost in half thanks to rising unemployment, calling into question new uses of outsourcing. Nonetheless, no one has a monopoly on talent or innovation, so firms will continue to look outside of their domestic market for opportunities. – YaleGlobal The financial crisis did not leave a deep dent on offshoring; it has endured the shock and is adapting to the changes The implosion on Wall Street last year was seen by many as signalling the end of globalisation. De-globalisation became a favourite word to describe the worldwide economic contraction. For the first time since 1982, the volume of global trade actually shrank. Not surprisingly, the outsourcing of services, which had grown dramatically in the past decade, was considered most vulnerable to the global downturn. The pronouncement of the death of outsourcing, however, seems to have been premature. But a year on from the implosion of Lehman Brothers, the information technology and BPO sectors seem to have absorbed the shock, consolidated themselves, and are seeking to adapt and reinvent. The trend, born of technological innovation and new business models, has not been reversed. It is simply reconfiguring and adapting to a new business climate. The phenomenal growth of fibre-optic networks and computing has enabled corporations to run their back offices thousands of miles away. Outsourcing business processes, IT maintenance, research, design and auditing has achieved efficiency and savings. The factors that encouraged companies to outsource have not changed, but their financial ability and demand levels have. In fact, their need to tighten spending has provided an added incentive to outsource some work. What has turned negative is the public perception of outsourcing in the developed West. As politically influential and voluble white-collar workers were the most affected by outsourcing of services, corporations have come under pressure to show patriotism in their hiring, and not focus on maximising profit. What could have been ignored as populism has been embraced by politicians and, in some cases, turned into law. For instance, the US stimulus package requires that software needed for medical-services modernisation be produced in the US. The opposing pulls that have shaped the outsourcing business can be seen in the report prepared by TPI Index, a US-based firm that measures outsourcing contracts valued at $25 million or more. Compared with the first half of 2008, which was marked by record outsourcing, the number of outsourcing contracts awarded fell by 11 per cent, and their collective value by 22 per cent during the first six months of 2009. The sharpest drop was in the banking sector, followed by the energy, food and beverage and consumer durable sectors. But outsourcing grew in sectors such as diversified financials, transportation, retailing and telecom. Not only did the number of contracts rise over the 2008 levels, but their valuations rose as well. At the end of the year, the volume of outsourcing business may still be lower, but the sector’s overall resilience serves as a reminder that entwining technology and business processes can still create value for those who are prepared to adapt. A report jointly produced by Duke University and The Conference Board, a global independent business membership and research association, confirms the durability of the business logic that leads to outsourcing operations and offshoring production. A survey by the group showed 60 per cent of companies engaged in offshoring had ‘aggressive’ plans to expand activities. The report also noted that the globalisation of innovation is continuing at an increased rate in the industry. Small and mid-sized companies, especially those unable to find or compete for highly qualified talent domestically, are increasingly sourcing innovation offshore. Offshore resources also allow firms to bring products to market faster. The report concluded that companies that have implemented a corporate-wide offshoring strategy often report better performance than before. Of course, since the global crisis, rising unemployment, a government stimulus package and the growing emphasis on green technology have combined to drive down production costs in the US. This has narrowed the gap with offshore competitors. According to a recent study by Deloitte, the gap in structural costs between US and offshore manufacturing operations had already begun to shrink before the crisis — down from nearly 32 per cent in 2006 to 17.6 per cent in 2008. The narrowing cost differential, and the opprobrium of sending work abroad while unemployment is high at home, may persuade new firms to reconsider their plan to offshore. Eventually, though, economic logic is sure to prevail and prove to be a more enduring reason to continue expanding global trade connections. Nayan Chanda is director of publications at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalisation, and Editor of YaleGlobal Online.

siehe den ausgezeichenten YouTube Beitrag auf dem Blog “Digital Government 2.0″ der Donau-Uni, Zentrum e-government.

from Daniel Pink’s Weblog:

Yesterday afternoon, I was reading Jerry de Jaager and Jim Ericson’s smart new book, See New Now, and came across this stunner:

“A study of the top fifty game-changing innovations over a hundred-year period showed that nearly 80 percent of those innovations were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field in which the innovation breakthrough took place.”

Recentemente c’è stato un dibattito sul perché le grandi imprese non riescano ad innovare.
Forse sono troppo ortodosse, forse temono di cannibalizzare i mercati, forse hanno paura dei rischi, delle incertezze. Forse, forse.

O forse, più semplicemente, dipende dal fatto che operano sulla base di un modello gestionale che premia il conformismo e punisce la creatività
Leggendo il management 2.0 secondo Gary Hamel e vedendo lo speech di Dan Pink su Ted si intuisce come il nodo della questione per molte aziende, soprattutto le più grandi, sia riconducibile ai vecchi modelli gestionali ed ai sistemi completamente sbagliati di retribuzione e incentivazione tuttora “in essere”.
Organizziamo le nostre imprese (Hamel) e definiamo gli incentivi (Pink) premiando la coerenza e il conformismo, quando ciò di cui abbiamo veramente bisogno sono sperimentazione e creatività.
Ancora oggi la maggior parte delle prassi gestionali che le aziende applicano si basano su modelli di management che furono sviluppati in aziende come la General Motors negli anni ‘30 e ‘40. Quando la maggioranza dei dipendenti erano poco alfabetizzati ed il loro valore aggiunto era la loro manodopera.

Gli obiettivi erano semplici, non era richiesta creatività ma conformismo e subordinazione.

In questo ambito, come sottolinea Pink, i modelli di retribuzione ed incentivazione come li conosciamo avevano un senso. I sistemi di incentivazione tradizionale funzionano quando i compiti sono semplici, chiari e possono essere eseguiti seguendo un processo molto ben definito.

Oggi la maggior parte del lavoro che facciamo è un lavoro di conoscenza in continua evoluzione.
Difficile definire i contorni di un lavoro, difficile persino definire un prodotto finale prima che sia terminato.
Per questo c’è bisogno di una struttura organizzativa che attragga persone a lavorare su prodotti o servizi in cui, innanzitutto, credono e, certamente c’è bisogno di modelli di retribuzione ed incentivazione completamente diversi.
Oggi sono richieste prima di tutto velocità, capacità di cambiamento e adattamento in corsa, trasparenza, capacità di relazione e interazione con i clienti che sono parte integrante del processo produttivo di soluzioni, beni, servizi a loro dedicati. E nessuno di questi aspetti era lontanamente contemplato tra le caratteristiche indispensabili di un’azienda del secolo scorso.

Dunque molte imprese non possono innovare perché le loro strutture, processi e modelli di retribuzione e incentivazione sono rigidamente ancorati alle esigenze del mondo del lavoro degli anni 1950 e 1960 e non riflettono affatto le attuali esigenze.
Manager ed esperti sono in impasse, non riescono ad individuare i freni all’innovazione e i cambiamenti che sono necessari per innovare con successo.

Ladies & Gent’s, non sono i sistemi retributivi, non sono le gerarchie, non è la paura di rischiare, non è la cultura, non è l’incertezza che frena l’innovazione nella maggior parte delle grandi imprese.

Non uno di questi fattori, bensì tutti questi fattori insieme.
L’unica soluzione è essere disposti a fare un radicale, netto taglio col passato.
In alternativa c’è il napalm.

bzzzz

Dan Pink at TED [eng: required]

Na ja, mit 70% der Namen bin ich einverstanden. Ohne Zweifel hat sich C.K. Prahahlad die #1 Position verdient! Siehe das Ranking.

¿Qué por qué en un Blog de Estrategia y Cambio en el mundo de la Empresa, llevamos días hablando de personas, sentimientos, conceptos, hasta acercarnos a la filosofía, la psicología, y el resto de las ciencias que miran al ser humano?

Porque creemos firmemente, y con absoluta convicción, como Herb Kelleher, fundador de Southern Airlines, que “El quid de los negocios, es la gente”

CLICK EN LEER MAS Y SEGUIR LEYENDO (TRADUCCION DEL VIDEO)

“El quid de los negocios es la gente, ayer, hoy y siempre. Y escogiendo entre empleados, accionistas y clientes, decidimos que nuestros “clientes internos”, es decir, nuestros empleados, van primero.
La sinergia de nuestra opinión es simple: honrar, respetar, cuidar, proteger y premiar a nuestros empleados, independientemente de su título o posición, hará que tanto internamente entre ellos, así como con los clientes externos, se traten de una manera cálida, cuidadosa y hospitalaria.
Eso hará que los clientes externos quieran volver, y eso hará felices a nuestros accionistas.
Nosotros creemos que nuestro trabajo no es solo aportar cada día un servicio más fiable, con precios más bajos, sino también aportar una forma de concepto espiritual.
Una idea de diversión, calidez, hospitalidad y un sentido del servicio diligente, tanto para nuestros empleados como para nuestros pasajeros.
los intangibles del espíritu son, a nuestro entender, más importantes que las cosas tangibles.
¿Por qué?
Primero es un asunto de moral y de ética, pero después, desde un punto de vista estrictamente ligado al negocio, los tangibles siempre pueden comprarse, de hecho, todas las aerolíneas tienen aviones. Pero los intangibles son mucho más difíciles de copiar por nuestros competidores….”

Posts relacionados:
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Liderazgo
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Estrategia y Cambio:los directivos poderosos
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Estrategia, empresa y Bushidō 武士道

Brian Carney and Isaac Getz are the authors of a new book called Freedom, Inc., which is being released today!  WorkplaceDemocracy.com spoke with them recently about their book and its connection to workplace democracy.

What is Freedom, Inc. about?

Freedom, Inc. is a book about the most important corporate movement of the last two decades, a movement that has been quietly transforming the fortunes of dozens of businesses and the lives of thousands of employees by using a source of benefits neglected by most—complete freedom and responsibility for employees to take actions they—not their bosses—decide are best.

Each of the unusual bosses and amazing leaders profiled in Freedom, Inc. have performed near-miracles in driving their companies to unheard-of levels of success, often from unlikely or disheartening beginnings. And each has something in common with the others—he believes that the key to business success is freeing up the initiative and genius of every, even the lowest-ranked employee in the firm, every day. How they set their employees free—and how their lessons can be applied to firms in every industry, of any size, anywhere in the world—is the story of this book.

After four years of research, thought and debate, we have identified three stages that each leader went through to build a radically free workplace—rejecting the command-and-control structure, enlisting employees in building a free workplace, and staying put in spite of setbacks;  and in each successive stage this leader relied on one corresponding personal strength: values, creativity, and wisdom . Among the leaders of the companies we studied, these three strengths set them apart from other executives while binding them as a group.

Were most of the companies featured in Freedom, Inc. founded as democratic companies or did their management structures evolve from more hierarchical structures?

I’ll reply to all your questions considering that “democratic” means “freedom-based”–the term we use in the book to describe the companies we studied.  We avoid “democratic” mainly because it focuses too much on the instruments (and none of our companies used, for example, formal voting for making decisions). Our companies, each with their own instruments, all focused rather on the end: freedom of action and initiative for every employee.

What inspired these companies to develop freedom-based workplaces?

Each company had what we call a liberating leader at its head, who initiated the changes.  The leader was either frustrated with command & control companies and/or admirative of the freedom-based ones such as WL Gore & Associates.

How does democracy work at these companies?

Freedom of action is achieved when an environment satisfies universal human needs instead of hampering them. These needs are intrinsic equality, growth, and self-direction, according to the most advanced psychological research carried out by University of Rochester psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.

What have been some of the main challenges in cultivating democratic workplaces?

Workplaces struggle to evolve the often authoritarian managers’ practices into freedom nurturing practices.  Some liberating leaders had to remove certain managers (albeit keeping their salary) from the positions of authority.

Why should companies consider decentralizing their workplace?  What are the advantages of freedom-based or democratic companies?

Freedom of action is a tremendous advantage because in freedom-based companies, employees facing a sudden surge in competition, a downturn, a new government regulation, or an inadequate business process don’t simply wait for their higher ups or some new policies to tell them what to do. Instead, they take action that they—not their bosses—deem is best for the company and they do it right away—not when it’s too late. Add to that that frontline people always know better what’s going on and what needs to be done. So letting them take action is pure common sense.

What is the most important step that companies should take in order to become more democratic?

The most important step is for the liberating leader to stop telling people how to do their work and instead ask them how they want to do it.

Este es un Blog que habla de fijar Estrategias, implementar Cambios, en definitiva, de la misión del Management. Por eso esta foto me ha parecido perfecta para ilustarlo!

Conseguir que todos estén en el aire, girando a la vez, y además hacerlo en equipo, eso es Dirigir!! Se puede hacer así, en solitario.

Platos Chinos en solitario / spinning plates

Originally uploaded by fonso

Pero mucho mejor es hacerlo así, entre todos

Platos Chinos en grupo

Originally uploaded by estebanl

No perderse en el detalle, dejar las especialidades para los especialistas, mantener la perspectiva, saber que todo está en continuo cambio y movimiento.

Eso es la Dirección. Tan innovador, por cierto, como los Platos Chinos.

WorkplaceDemocracy.com conducted an interview with Peter Leeson, economics professor at the University of Chicago and author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. The Invisible Hook is a fascinating book that explores why and how lawless and violent pirates organized themselves into what may have been the world’s first democratic workplaces.

The Invisible Hook shows how pirates’ search for plunder led them to pioneer remarkable and forward-thinking practices. Pirates understood the advantages of constitutional democracy–a model they adopted more than fifty years before the United States did so. Pirates also initiated an early system of workers’ compensation, regulated drinking and smoking, and in some cases practiced racial tolerance and equality. Revealing the democratic and economic forces propelling history’s most colorful criminals, The Invisible Hook establishes pirates’ trailblazing relevance to the contemporary world.

What is the “invisible hook” and how does it relate to workplace democracy?

The “invisible hook” is the piratical analog to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” idea, which describes how individuals’ self-interest seeking guides social cooperation among legitimate persons. My argument is that, similarly, criminal self-interest seeking guided social cooperation among pirates. As my book describes, in pirates’ particular economic context, rational self-interest seeking led pirates to socially cooperate through a kind of workplace democracy in which pirates were more-or-less equal shareholders in their ship and its proceeds and democratically made important workplace decisions.

How did pirates’ organizational structure differ from that of law-abiding merchant ships?

On pirate ships, crewmembers democratically elected important officers, such as the captain, and enjoyed similar perquisites of crew membership. Further, power was divided among multiple officers, such as the captain and quartermaster, who checked one another’s authority. In this sense, pirates’ organizational structure was ‘flat.’ On merchantmen, in contrast, the organizational structure was much more hierarchical. The captain wielded the lion’s share of the power and the ordinary crewmembers were subjected to his largely uncontrolled authority. Authority was much more concentrated and ship-board governance mirrored governance in landed legitimate society in being much more autocratic.

Why did pirates organize their activities democratically?

Pirates organized their ships democratically becuase this organizational arrangement maximized profits in pirates’ particular economic context. Unlike crewmembers on merchantmen, where a very different economic context dicated a different profit-maximizing organizational  structure, crewmembers on pirate ships were owners and employees of the ‘firm.’ It therefore made economic sense for each man to have a say in the firm’s enterprise–to make decisions democratically. Democratic organization was ‘cheap’ for pirates to adopt (in contrast for merchantmen for reasons discussed in the book) and yielded large benefits in the form of effectively preventing officer predation, which plagued merchant ships.

What effects did the pirate organizational structure have on the crew?

Pirates’ democratic organization had at least two major effects on the crew. First, it empowered pirates to popularly elect and depose important officers, which gave pirates great control over their ‘leaders.’  This in turn created strong incentives for pirate ‘leaders’ to wield their power in the crew’s interest rather than against the crew’s interest for personal benefit. Second, since pirates’ democratic organization extended to their method of pay as well–each pirate received a roughly equal share of the booty–it created several “collective action problems” for pirates that they needed to solve. For instance, this method of payment encouraged crewmember shirking, which pirates overcame by instituting a system of social insurance and bonuses.

What lessons can today’s managers learn from pirates?

Among the most significant modern management lessons from 18th-century pirates is the importance of letting the pursuit of profit determine ideas about a firm’s organizational features rather than the other way around. It’s tempting to conclude from pirates’ success with workplace democracy that this highlights the desirability of this organizational form more generally. But that would be mistaken. In pirates’ particular case–a relatively small ‘workforce’ operating a firm that required no external financiers in which information about each laborer’s contribution to production was difficult to glean by observation–workplace democracy was profit maximizing. And for other firms that also satisfy these economic conditions this will also tend to be true. But for firms that don’t satisfy such conditions, for instance large firms, or those that require lots of external capital to function, or those in which it’s relatively easy to measure laborers’ contribution to team production–which is the vast majority of firms–workplace democracy won’t be a profit-maximizing form of firm organization. Workers would be better off under a different organizational arrangement. Thus what pirates teach us is the desirability of letting profit dictate the particular organizational features a firm adopts rather than the universal desirability of particular organizational features across firms.

Many large companies are very good at pinpointing their target markets. Those that depend on more youthful customers are very aware of viral marketing, social media etc and some use them very skillfully. Some have become very advanced in interactive marketing and product development.

Those that perceive that they sell to a more “mature” market will eventually be touched by this, although some seem to be reluctant to face up to that some “oldies”, like me use social media and expect an entirely different interaction.

But what really gets me is the awareness of the younger generations as customers, but not as employees. The marketing strategy and tactics have adapted, but so few seem to have realized that this cadre of customers also are potential employees. If I were younger I would react when I realize that a company’s apparent social media savvy probably is dependent on their choice of advertising bureau and that there is no connect whatsoever with management practices.

Poniéndole otra vez puertas al campo en el mundo de la Organización Empresarial, una de las más famosas firmas de headhunting Heidrick & Struggles, describe así la importancia de un nuevo puesto en los organigramas, a nivel C ( CEO, CFO, etc.), llamado CIO:Chief of the Innovation Officer.

La creación de esta nueva figura se justificaría porque “…la innovación no se trata simplemente de algo que concierne a los nuevos productos o a mejores maneras de comunicar con el mercado, sino que se trata de transformar la manera en que toda la empresa piensa sobre el mercado y su propio posicionamiento en él”

Sin embargo, más que una nueva parte de los Organigramas antiguos, a mi entender la innovación es una actitud: desde los empresarios hasta los directivos, pasando por cada uno de los empleados de una empresa.

Innovación es más que una palabra, o una manera de mirar nuevos productos , nuevos mercados o nuevos procedimientos.

La innovación es la fuerza que ha de llevarnos al camino donde repensemos en profundidad cada cosa que hacemos en las empresas, desde las novedosas hasta las que hacemos a diario.

Innovar significa desarrollar el hábito de preguntarnos a nosotros mismos, cada día: por qué estoy haciendo esto? por qué de esta manera? hay una manera mejor? es en realidad necesario hacerlo?

La innovación ha de ser el arte de la provocación, para mantener los espítus abiertos.

De lo contrario, solo le estaremos dando la razón a quien quería “cambiar algo, para que todo siga como está“

Three of us have been in Copenhagen for a conference on Management Innovation. Many asked what Management Innovation actually was and claimed that a definition was needed. While at the same time ignoring those that attempted do do so.

One speaker suggested a typology with on one hand either total system or part of the system, on the other hand incremental or radical. Many of the studies were quantitative studies and needed large number of well defined innovations. In moor opinion most of those were improvements in managerial tools. Very little of what had been studied was both radical and total systems.

We who have initiated this blog want to investigate the new world of work and ask ourselves which new forms of management and organizing are requisite for the younger generations of employees now rapidly filling the workforce.

Several of the speakers spoke of the spread (diffusion) of new management ideas and techniques. Professor Birkinshaw claims that radical managerial innovation rarely is diffused. Sadly he also claims that such innovation rarely is sustained over time, which if the theme of “The age of the heretics” by Art Kleiner.

Birkinshaw exemplifies why present management paradigms are outmoded and says that we are stuck with hem as they suit those in power, that most cannot envisage any alternatives and that innovation in management is perceived as risky.

Birkinshaw describes a business model as describing choices about sources of revenue, cost structure, what to make/buy and how to make profit. Where as a management model describes choices about defining objectives, motivating effort, coordinating efforts and allocating resources.

He goes on to describe                     Tight                              Loose
Ends
Managing objectives                         Alignment      <->      Obliquity
Managing motivation                       Extrinsic         <->      Intrinsic
Means
Managing across                               Bureaucracy   <->      Emergence
Managing down                                Hierarchy       <->       Collective wisdom

And plots this is a four-square graph

• Tight Means, Loose Ends, “Scentific mode” (Schools). Broad purpose, not clear objectives, emphasis on intrinsic motivation. Well understood methods for making progress
• Loose Means, Loose Ends, “Discovery model” (Google). Broad and often vague goals. Emphasis on intrinsic motivation.Many pathways to success, all equally valid)
• Tight Means, Tight Ends, “Planning model” (Apple). Clear objectives, clear incentives for achieving these objectives. Tight control.
• Loose Means, Tight Ends. “Quest model” (King Arthur & the holy grail). Clear objectives, clear incentives for achieving those objectives. Enormous degrees of freedom in how objectives will be achieved.

Summing up the vagueness in the definition of what management innovation has made it very clear to us that Trajb needs to be very clear on what kind of a Quest we are on. We want to discover our holy grail – what is the future of management and organization. As this need is driven by demographics we also have to be clear that there is no escape, any management innovation needs to be sustained and has do be diffused, being adopted and adapted at the same time.

A great TED talk from Dan Pink on motivation – but as it turns out also includes a lot of evidence on the need of management innovation!

//jan