Management Innovation

The idea of a Chief Leadership Officer seems so obvious after I read this post. It’s so hard for senior executives to give feedback to one another, especially for something as delicate as leadership behaviors. Imagine if an internal resource was given the permission to assess and develop the leadership capacity of the top team and beyond. It would need to be a very trusted advisor and gifted coach, but the rewards would be high. I like this idea.

Interesting article on Xiaomi’s approach to exploring new business opportunities. In an effort to navigate a dynamic environment, they leverage a blend of corporate venturing and ecosystem development to make hundreds of strategic bets. It reminds me of Lowell Bryan’s portfolio of experiments, but it is actually a portfolio of third-party ventures. Really appreciate the level of experimentation, but, as the article states, time will tell its effectiveness.

Appreciated this article on how Flagship Pioneering (venture firm behind Moderna) leverages “emergent discovery” to create variants of an idea and then seeks to evolve each idea by always trying to learn more and to ask what’s possible. As they say, the theme behind the firm’s innovation process is not a “shots-on-goal” approach where 1 in 10 ideas are expected to be succcessful, but, rather, a desire for every exploration to be a learning experience. This article reminded me of one of my all-time favorite books, Erik Beinhocker’s “The Origin of Wealth” which was my first introduction to evolutionary economics. Both the article and Beinhocker’s book are worth reading to gain a real understanding of emergent discovery.

This article is fascinating; possibly one of my favorites of the year so far. From research (with examples), the author constructs a two-sided definition of agility – the agility for “speed” AND the agility to go “slow”. The author explains why specific situations may warrant slowness for certain dimensions of their organization. For example, for some companies, they may want to preserve identity or to be known for a set of stable client offerings while other organizations are willing to quickly pivot their identity or reorient their offerings. Noting that I have only touched on the depth and breadth of this tantalizing article – and its accompanying frameworks, it is really a required read for curious management thinkers. I wish I could have applied these ideas to a failed merger to which I was an equally responsible party! It’s unfortunate that this scholarly article is behind a rather hefty paywall. I’ve linked to a video summary. In addition, the author, Christiane Prange, has a book called Agility.X: How Organizations Thrive in Unpredictable Times. The book may be a cheaper option even though I highly recommended a subscription to California Management Review!

As the world continues to explore more distributed models for business (ecosystems, virtual workspaces, factional workers, etc…), the domain of network graphs seem critical to the way that we approach and understand our organizations. The VIDEO at the bottom of this short, summary post is worth watching and studying. Pay special attention to the idea of trust and how it influences our need to convene, as well as the two concepts of “bonding” and “bridging” which inform who and how often our organizations will need to convene physically. With the move to more virtual models of doing business, much reflection is needed to rethink how best to create a corporate identity and a set of value-creating information flows that increase our value to both our customers and our employees.

This post pits the idea of dialogic “what is possible” versus that of diagnostic “what is true” (which typically means – true to me – within the constructs of my understanding). I continue to spend more and more time thinking about how to reframe my thinking to always be about what’s possible, or possibly true, as opposed to framing within what I think is true. It’s very hard for me, but it has helped with my marriage, my kids, and my work! The post goes on to explore the needed attributes (generativity, narrative, and emergence) of change conversations from this perspective.

I’m intrigued by the concept of “job sharing” – the idea of two part-time, but overlapping, employees doing one job. Seems like a great way to combine complementary on-the-job skills and/or personalities(!) while also providing flexibility to staff. This article discusses how Swiss companies have made a common practice out of what the author says was an idea that originated in the US!? As a leader, it is worth understanding job sharing. It seems to hold merit as employees look for balance in their work and non-work lives.

“Unsuck”, as in “not suck” the life out of everyone involved, is the term that this post uses as the podcasters dissect the critical elements of any group meeting. I found the honest dialog around each of the individual meeting elements to be on point and compelling. However, the time allotments provided at the end of the podcast are simply not possible – without a careful picking and choosing of what elements to include (which is my suggestion). Worth listening to for anyone who runs lots of meetings each day.

Here is another article this week referencing an aspect of the decade long re-creation of Best Buy. Using remote work to grab our attention, this article describes the move toward ROWE (a results-only work environment) where worker autonomy is optimized by leveraging fully flexible work arrangements and structured negotiations between requestors and providers of work product (“both parties had to agree on a plan that balanced the urgency of the task and the reality of its executor’s workload”). The outcome was a shift from in-person surveillance to outcomes that reduced staff turnover. Unfortunately, the cultural experiment has since been reversed. We’ll see what happens. It’s a must-read for management aficionados!