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Ten ways to kill innovation

Do you want change in your organisation, but it is not happening? You could be the problem. Here are some sure ways to stop innovation.

  1. Regard any new idea from below with suspicion – because it’s new, and because it’s from below
  2. Insist that people who need your approval to act first go through several other levels of management of get their signatures.
  3. Ask departments or individuals to challenge and criticize each other’s proposals.  (That saves you the job of deciding: you just pick the survivor).
  4. Express your criticisms freely, and withhold your praise.  (That keeps people on their toes).  Let them know they can be fired at any time.
  5. Treat identification of problems as signs of failure, to discourage people from letting you know when something in their area isn’t working.
  6. Control everything carefully.  Make sure people count anything that can be counted, frequently .
  7. Make decisions to reorganize or change policies in secret and spring them on people unexpectedly.  (That also keeps people on their toes).
  8. Make sure that requests for information are fully justified, and make sure that it is not given out to managers freely.  (You don’t want data to fall into the wrong hands).
  9. Assign to lower-level managers, in the name of delegation and participation, responsibility for figuring out how to cut back, lay off, move people around, or otherwise implement threatening decisions you have made.   And get them to do it quickly.
  10. And above all, never forget that you, the higher-ups, already know everything important about this business.

From:  R. Moss Kanter, The Change Masters, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1983.

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Chronic problems in organisations – community, business, government

When it comes to organisation of all types, there are some problems that seem to persist and persist and persist….

When I first started seriously studying management and leadership in the 1980s, people like Stephen Covey were in vogue.  In 1990, he identified chronic problems in organisations. I don’t see much different today. 

Take a look at this list, and ask yourself how well your organisation is doing and what you might do in your organisation differently.

Continue reading “Chronic problems in organisations – community, business, government”
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Tips on dealing with conflict

At some stage in our life we have to handle conflict. Within a team we can all help manage and resolve conflict among team members. The following are some useful actions you can take.

  • Check that the conflict is real. Ask those who disagree to paraphrase one another’s comments.  This may help them learn if they really understand one another.
  • If real, try to work out a compromise.  Get everyone to agree on the underlying source of conflict, then engage in give-and-take and finally agree on a solution.
  • Ask each member to list what the other side should do.  Exchange lists, select a compromise all are willing to accept, and test the compromise to see if it meshes with team goals.
  • Have the sides each write 3 to 5 questions for their opponents.  This will allow them to signal their major concerns about the other side’s position.  And the answers may lead to a compromise.
  • Coach team members to see a need for compromise. They sometimes may have to admit they’re wrong.  Help them save face by convincing them that changing a position may well show strength.
  • Respect the experts on the team.  Give their opinions more weight when the conflict involves their expertise, but don’t rule out conflicting opinions. We all need to entertain the possibility of being wrong.

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How we best learn

How do you learn? Reflection is important. And the context or setting you are in is important. Another way to think about this, is to think of yourself in a teaching situation where you are dealing with fellow adults. When would they learn best from you?

If you understand how adults learn then you can create, or seek, the right conditions for yourself to learn. Adults learn best when:

  • They feel the need to learning and to have input into what, why and how they learn. (Voluntary participation is almost always preferred to mandatory – however people do sometime perceive learning as necessary after being forced into it.)
  • Learning’s content and processes bear a perceived and meaningful relationship to past experience and experience is effectively utilised as a resource for learning. (Adult learners need to realise that their experience constitutes both a potential asset and a potential liability for learning.  Education needs to take into account previous experience – create environments in which people are free to analyse experience and try out new ways of learning.)
  • What is to be learned relates optimally to the individual’s development changes and life tasks.
  • The amount of autonomy exercised by the learner is congruent with that required by the mode and method utilised.
  • They learn in a climate that minimises anxiety and encourages freedom to experiment (collaborative learning requires a climate of mutual trust and teamwork in which people feel accepted and free to disagree and take risks.  “When people are truly treated as adults”)
  • Their learning styles are taken into account.

From  Smith R M (1983)  Learning How to Learn: Applied Theory for Adults.  Milton Keynes: The Open University  pp.47-49

See also Reflection in Action: Reflection on Action. What is it that we do when we do what we do?