Category: leadership

Harnessing the collective genius of the organization

“The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away“. ~ Walter Wriston, banker, former Chairman of Citicorp.

That’s exactly what the Fourth Revolution will do: release the collective genius of the organization, and of the world beyond. It is the inevitable direction of history.

When will your organization start harnessing the collective genius of its employees? Open up, and harness the collective genius of the world? Become fluid, and become a turbulent cradle of great innovations?

Such is the power of the collective genius, of the collaborative network, that it will crush any organization who stays rigid, hierarchical and closed.

So, you’d better start doing it before your competitors. Become an open, fluid and collaborative organization. It is not just a temporary fad. It is a necessity.

Why don’t you start today? And blow your competition away?

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Overcoming our fear

Failure is free today. But fear is still lurking.

Fear to take the first step into the unknown. Fear to be exposed in the spotlight to the judgment of the crowd. Fear to jump in the unknown.

jump into the unknown
overcome your fear

Overcome the fear. Kill the fear. Ask yourself: what’s the worst that can happen to me if I do this? If I publish my idea? What will my family, boss, friends, colleagues, think about me?

There is just one risk. That they like it because they discover a new facet of your personality.

Go and do it. Lean into our fear.

FEAR is just False Evidence Appearing Real.

Get out of your shell. Contribute to the world. Start today. The first step is the most difficult. Do it.

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Management and leadership skills are complementary, not opposed

In the Industrial Age, Management and Leadership were opposed.

management old styleManagement was tweaking the process to gain efficiency. That was a hands-on, hence dirty job. Reserved for young people or people that could not get promoted.

Leadership was the clean realm of ideas. After a certain age you got promoted in leadership position. No more concern about the dirt. Just ideas, concepts, vision.

Transition between management and leadership was a crisis. You needed to stop doing things by yourself.

Well today it has become clear that everybody, anywhere in the organization, needs to have some leadership skills and use them when needed. And everybody needs to have management skills when it comes to improving the efficiency and reducing waste and effort for the same result.

Managers that cannot lead are boring, and dangerous for themselves. They don’t see that the world around them is changing and that the important thing is not just to optimize their little corner.
Above all, leaders that cannot manage are boring and dangerous for the organization. They become so far away from reality that they can make terribly wrong decisions.

Every day there are times we need to be managers, times we need to lead. There are also times we need to be simply human.

When do we start to be flexible and do systematically both some leading, and some managing in our normal day? When do you start to lead?

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When do you start measuring yourself in terms of effectiveness?

Management means efficiency. Doing the things right. With minimum effort, waste. With maximum productivity. With less people. With less thoughts. With more procedures.
Efficiency was the thing of the Industrial Age. Produce more commodities for less. Minimize waste, increase quality.
Efficiency is the thing of the corporation.

Leadership means effectiveness. Doing the right thing. Create. Looking at the world, overcoming the fear, and doing it. Contribute to the world. Because it counts.
Effectiveness is the thing of the Collaborative Age. Maybe a computer programmer will only contribute once five lines of code to an open source software but his contribution will be decisive.

Effectiveness is the thing of the K.E.E.N, nomad between projects.

When do you stop measuring yourself in terms of efficiency? When do you start measuring yourself in terms of effectiveness, how you contribute to the world?

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