Preveiw of September's HBR: Post #6 - Chinese Management

The Chinese Approach to Management: Chinese entrepreneurs are perfect profiles of “lean startup” types. They focus on adaptation and context (p.103).

Preview of September's HBR: Post #5 - Org Chart Origin

The Chart that Organized the 20th Century: Invented by the Pennsylvania Railroad system in 1870, the “org chart” has influenced us all (p. 32).

Preview of September's HBR: Post#4 - M&A

Leaders Who Make M&A Work: Both acquiring- and target-company leaders who were socially and emotionally attuned fared better in such transactions (p.28).

Preview of September's HBR: Post #3 - Global Issues

Voices from the Front Lines: Four global leaders tell their stories—Luc Minguet (Michelin), Eduardo  Caride (Telefonica), Takeo Yamaguchi (Hitachi), and Shane Tedjarati (Honeywell) (p. 77).

Preview of September's HBR: Post #2 - Language

What’s Your Language Strategy: If you’re going to do business in a lot of locations, consider the impact of language on hiring, training, promotions (p. 70).

Preveiw of September's HBR: Post #1-Context

Contextual Intelligence: Not all good ideas and best practices work well in different countries. Learning how to adapt to a different context helps (p. 58).

Collective Genius: FINAL Post--Leaders of Tomorrow

Finding the Leaders of Tomorrow. 
Innovative leaders aren’t “take-charge” types; rather, they are creators of an environment where others are willing and able to innovate. A couple of examples: Steve Kloeblen at IBM and Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen. Both are great examples to build leaders of the future for any company.

Collective Genius: Post #5--Collective Genius 2.0

Collective Genius 2.0.
a.    Problems have become so complex and global that leaders have to reach across institutional, corporate, and national boundaries to build innovative ecosystems to solve them. Unfortunately, competing values, interests, and cultures often war against such necessary innovation.
b.    Authors use two different examples: Calit2—a collaboration of two California universities; also,  as well as the legal department at Pfizer that collaborated with its partners in an innovative way to make a big difference—using community along with a willingness and ability to innovate.

Collective Genius: Post #4--Making a Team "Able"

How Leaders Create a Team Able to Innovate.
Leaders have to balance paradoxes. Authors use a “harness and unleash” metaphor—balancing order and creativity. Several other paradoxes: Patience vs. urgency, iterative learning vs. performance, and bottom-up ideas vs. top-down controls. Three ways leaders create an ecosystem for creativity and innovation:
a.    Collaboration ~ Using Creative Abrasion. Creativity comes from ideas from diverse people colliding and combining to find something new. Options emerge “through discourse, debate and even conflict,” not through a flash of individual genius.
b.    Discovery-driven learning ~Using Creative Agility. The ability to test and experiment through quick pursuit, reflection, and adjustment. Innovation comes from experimentation, failure, dead ends, learning, and revision.
c.    Integrative Decision Making ~ Using Creative Resolution. The ability to integrate decisions that combine disparate or even opposing ideas. Innovative leaders neither dominate nor simply compromise—neither approach produces the best creativity. Rather, innovators find a third way of integrating ideas—fusing them to synthesize something new.

Collective Genius:Post #3--A Willing Team

How Leaders Create a Team Willing to Innovate.
a.    Shared Common Purpose: Why we exist. An overarching purpose unites people. Such a vision is not just set by the leader but also bubbles from the bottom on up. Shared purpose creates the atmosphere for innovation to thrive.
b.    Shared Values: What we agree on is important. Studies by the authors show that key shared values in innovative companies are: boldness, ambition, learning, and responsibility.
c.    Shared Rules of Engagement. How we interact with each other and think about problems. Two big categories:
i.    How people in the group interact: Support safety for people to challenge, innovate, and fail without fear. All employees engage in mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual influence.
ii.    How people in the group think: Question everything, be data driven deciders, and “see the whole.” Experiment and focus on clients.

Collective Genius: Post #2--Case Studies

Collective Genius at Work.
Case studies of firms that innovate and thrive:
a.    Ed Catmull (Pixar)—Catmull created an environment that enabled creativity and produced amazing success. Hundreds of people work on a film, and Catmull allowed them all to have a voice in each film—pulling together individual slices of genius into the “collective genius” that is Pixar. The focus was revision (iteration) of the story.
b.    Vineet Nayar: The president and CEO of Indian computer giant HCL worked to use IT to become a transformative partner with clients. Employees were unwilling and unable to innovate; however, he thought the value zone was between employees and customers. Using transparency, engagement, shared purpose, values, and rules of engagement, he became the “social architect” who had all the questions, not all the answers…”transferring ownership of the organization’s growth [to employees].”

Collective Genius: Post #1--Overview

Overview:  Most leaders know that innovation is the key to success, even survival, in a competitive global environment, but we don’t know how to do innovation! This book answers the “how to” question. The book offers not only an innovation formula but also explicit case studies of innovation in practice. Rather than create innovative vision themselves, innovative leaders create an ecosystem that allows the collective innovative vision to emerge from hard work. Leaders “set the stage” but aren’t actors on that stage. They create a “willing” team by forging a common purpose, shared values, and mutual rules. Leaders develop their teams by using techniques to implement the innovation process: Collaboration (uses the collaborative abrasion technique), discovery-driven learning (uses the creative agility technique), and integrative decision making (uses the creative resolution technique). Everyone has a slice of genius. Great leaders figure out how to find that genius and get it to play well with others.