|
|
Build Your Own Board Of Experts
The most successful entrepreneurs rely on their advisory boards to help spot new opportunities and potential pitfalls. Now you can have your own advisory board: a shadow board of directors. A shadow board of directors is a low-tech technique for...
Finding Profitable Products For Your Online Business
Emerging entrepreneurs from around the globe would like to try their hand on online marketing. Where to start and what to sell are the first stumbling blocks for these aspiring entrepreneurs. Fortunately, entrepreneurs can overcome this state...
Focus Your Light
Focus Your Light © 2002 Elena Fawkner Remember when you were a kid how you could make paper catch fire by focusing the sun's rays with a magnifying glass? You'd look over your shoulder at the sun, get the angle of the rays just right, and...
Fuel Index ( A measuring stick for a company's success)
Every company has a Vision, a Mission and a set of core values. Companies develop multiple strategies that implemente the Values to realize their Mission. I always wondered, 1) Is there any relationship between a company's values and it's success?...
The secret is in the details!
Do you present your product or service with enough details? You may be so familiar with it that you don't realize an outsider may not even "get it". The secret is in the details!
This holiday season, like many other people (at least according...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Agility = Sustainability
High Engagement, it’s not your standard employee motivation. - All organizations today are faced with intense competition and rapidly changing markets, customers, products, delivery, systems and services. The rate of change is outpacing our ability to adapt. We are witnessing this inability to adapt every day as organizations in business, government, religion, healthcare etc. fail right before our eyes.
Sometimes, I think we overlook the fact that the rules of the game have changed as well. Early on in my career, businesses were evaluated by the amount of assets or “Retained Earnings” showing on their books. “Good Will,” used to be a bone of contention in determining the real value of an organization. Today, little if any attention is paid to “Retained Earnings” as we have switched to measuring “Return on Investment” and other measures of efficient use of capital. In part, efficiency has become the key instead of asset accumulation because a product and process that is generating a profit today may be tomorrow’s buggy whip. Change in our environment and change in the rules we are measured by all point to the need to be adept at change.
To me, an agile organization is one that is proficient at change. It can do anything it wants, whenever it wants. There have been lots of different operating strategies presented over the last few years to help us transform our organizations to higher levels of performance. These strategies include, LEAN, TQM, Continuous Improvement, SMED, Process Reengineering, Mass Customization and others. Sadly many of the efforts to implement these strategies have failed not because the strategy was wrong, but rather because agility was missing in the organization. Agility is a people issue not a strategy or process issue. Successful adoption of operating and transformational strategies will happen much faster and with less expense as an organization becomes more agile.
Like evolution and mutation in living organisms, organizational adaptability or agility is a core survival requirement. Achieving agility in an organization is contrary to the way most of us were trained to manage. Most management training even today is still based on the work of Frederick Taylor. It is an approach to management that worked well at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but is sadly out of date in today’s highly sophisticated world where computers, cell phones, the internet, radio and television are commonplace and workers are better educated and more involved in their world than ever before.
As I witness the changes in organizations, I become more convinced daily that all of the process improvements in the world will not by themselves solve the problems facing organizations. It is time for a new approach to management that involves people in the issues that affect them leading to engagement, creativity and commitment in the workplace. Jack Stack in his book The Great Game of Business makes the case when he says, “…productivity depends on people. I don’t disagree that machines can make you more competitive. They can absorb overhead. They don’t take breaks. They don’t go on vacation. They don’t sit around wasting time. What machines can’t do is figure out how to make money. Only people can do that. If you have people who know how to make money, you’ll win
every time.” For too long, we have relied on a leader – who by virtue of position, greater experience, wisdom or skill, is relied upon as the problem solver and that leader fails to ask for or accept input from team members. Psychologist Patrick Laughlin and his colleagues at the University of Illinois recently released a new study that shows that the approaches and outcomes of cooperating groups are not just better than those of the average group member, but are better than even the group’s best problem solver functioning alone.
Not only do groups make better decisions, but once agreed to, the decisions are far easier to implement and have much greater likelihood of success. More and more research points to the advantages of group engagement and decision-making. It is no longer a matter of why you should adopt a high engagement strategy with your people to gain agility, but rather how to implement this process.
Roadway is a trucking company that is currently implementing a high engagement strategy in their organization with some tremendous successes. Their approach includes three elements and may very well be the model for other organizations. The three elements of their program are: 1.) Education, 2.) Tools, 3.) High Engagement.
First, Roadway is spending a lot of time educating their people about the business. They have adopted much of the thinking from Jack Stack’s book, “The Great Game of Business.” The key is to help their employees understand the financials of the business and how they affect the numbers. Second, they have trained their people in the basic principles of LEAN so that they can evaluate current processes and procedures and have a basis for making changes that will positively affect the bottom line. Finally, they have adopted and use a positive approach to achieving “High Engagement.” Rather than focusing on the problems in the company, they have chosen to look at the strengths of the company and build on those strengths using David Coopperrider’s 4D model for positive change.
The results at Roadway have been impressive. There are many stories of success at individual terminals that are now being shared across the company and in the meantime just one of the measures they use has recorded a $10 million improvement over the last 4 years. Roadway is rapidly developing Agility to help them face a very competitive and rapidly changing world. Without it, they would most likely not have survived.
ã Copyright Bob Cannon/The Cannon Advantage, 2003. All rights reserved.
Byline Bob Cannon helps visionary leaders make decisions that gain a competitive advantaget. Check out other interesting articles available in the Taking Aim newsletter available at www.cannonadvantage.com . Bob can be reached at (216) 408-9495 or mailto: bob@cannonadvantage.com
This article courtesy of http://www.cannonadvantage.com. You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.
About the Author
Robert E. Cannon, successful business executive, left the corporate world in 2001 to start Cannon Advantage; a firm specializing in helping visionary leaders and business decision-makers who want to enhance the competitive advantage of their organizations
|
|
|
|
|
Creativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
Creativity (or creativeness) is a mental process involving the generation of ... Wallas considered creativity to be a legacy of the evolutionary process, ... |
en.wikipedia.org |
  |
Creativity For Life |
An exploration of creativity in everyday life, with articles, quotes, reviews and other creative resources to awaken creativity in daily life. |
www.creativityforlife.com |
  |
AdCritic.com: Commercial Ads |
FROM CREATIVITY: Emerging Directors, Unite In the time it took to write this, three new directors popped up. Here are twenty to get acquainted with. ... |
www.adcritic.com |
  |
National Curriculum in Action - Creativity - |
Ordering Creativity packs: print and video materials. This website gives practical ideas on how to promote pupils' creative thinking and behaviour. ... |
www.ncaction.org.uk |
  |
Ten Steps for Boosting Your Creativity |
Experiments performed by the JPB Creative Laboratory show that watching TV causes your ... a weekly report on creativity, ideas, innovation and invention ... |
www.jpb.com |
  |
Category:Creativity Techniques - Mycoted |
This is a general category of Creativity and Innovation Techniques, ... I like to think of these creativity techniques as tools in a toolbox in much the ... |
www.mycoted.com |
  |
Creativity at Work: The interplay of business, art and science |
A resource for training and development in creativity and innovation in organizations. Has a newsletter, and some articles and essays by 'Corporate ... |
www.creativityatwork.com |
  |
Crayola Creativity Central |
Crayola Creativity Central offers kids arts and crafts ideas for rainy day fun. We also have coloring books and pages, art and craft projects, games, ... |
www.crayola.com |
  |
Pages tagged with "creativity" on del.icio.us |
All items tagged creativity ??? view popular ... Perspective for Creative Leaders · save this. by aromay to creativity business management ... 1 hour ago ... |
del.icio.us |
  |
Creativity Web - Resources for Creativity and Innovation |
Creativity Web Home Page Resources for Creativity and Innovation ... The Creative Process · Multiple Intelligences · Idea Recording · Your Creative Space ... |
members.optusnet.com.au |
  |
gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": how to ... |
So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. ... Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion ... |
www.gapingvoid.com |
  |
Creativity Quotes | Creativity Quotations | Creativity Sayings ... |
Quotes on Creativity - part of a larger collection of Wisdom Quotes to challenge and inspire. Find Creativity quotations and links to quotes on other ... |
www.wisdomquotes.com |
  |
Ideas by Creativity Pool |
A free database with new ideas and possible inventions. Add your own, or bring an existing idea to life. |
www.creativitypool.com |
  |
CREATIVITY |
Creative problem solving depends on using the right tools, tricks, ... Search for the latest books on Creativity (or anything else) in the Quantum Books ... |
www.quantumbooks.com |
  |
Creativity Tools, Creative Solutions & Creative Problem Solving ... |
This page explains a wide range of techniques which can help you generate creative solutions to your problems. |
www.mindtools.com |
  |
The 6 Myths Of Creativity |
A new study will change how you generate ideas and decide who's really creative in your company. |
www.fastcompany.com |
  |
CreativeClass.org |
Richard Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class" examines creativity and its effects on economic development. |
www.creativeclass.org |
  |
TIP: Concepts |
The relationship between creativity and intelligence has been always been a central concern of psychology ( Guilford , 1950). Much effort has been devoted ... |
tip.psychology.org |
  |
American Creativity Association (ACA) |
An incorporated non-profit organization promoting personal and professional creativity. Association membership is represented by four multidisciplinary ... |
www.amcreativityassoc.org |
  |
CREAX - Portal for creativity and innovation |
A resource for links on creativity and innovation on the web. A selection of 690 links is divided into 67 categories for the visitors convenience. |
www.creax.net |
  |
|