I attended a seminar last night at Stanford Business School called "Intention: The Heart of Leadership" by Dr. Jeannie Kahwajy. Her message is simple, hard, and important. Most leaders do not know how to encourage or "receive" innovation and, therefore, most corporate cultures (small and large) do not behave in ways that encourage their people to tap into their own energies and passions. In short, too often management reveals its biases and preconceptions first and then ask for others to contribute. Even if the employees have better ideas than their managers, these employees become conditioned to deliver to their management's predetermined directions. The irony is that management will then hire other managers to "bring in new ideas", and often the new managers will introduce their own set of biases that encourage the employees to recalibrate their contribution rather than free them to be more creative. Unfortunately this counter-productive cycle is all too prevalent in today's organizations.
There is no ready solution to this dilemma. I'd venture to say that trillions of dollars in value are lost annually and, more importantly, millions (maybe billions) of people are not encouraged to reach their potential in their places of work. One place to focus is on the leaders themselves. Dr. Kahwajy suggests that company leaders need to reconsider their leadership styles and the behaviors that they exhibit, and she offered a compelling Harvard Business Review article called "Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve" by Jim Collins. I hope you find the article as enlightening as I do.
