SMALL BITES WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF BIG WINS: REINVENTING MANAGEMENT
/Chris Grams, one of the Management 2.0 Hackathon Guides, has posted a great summary of where we are and our next steps. You are very welcome to join us - even if it's just to follow along with the process of how were trying to realistically reinvent management.
Besides my contribution of joining trust and transactive memory building into one process (see my prior post), there are two others that catch my eye:
- Open Up Clip by Clip (OUCC) by Alberto Blanco: "Embrace openness by unlocking simple yet routine processes.... As we have said, openness is somehow a philosophy of life. Likewise, closeness should be so. Is it possible a change of philosophy? Yes, but not overnight. Solution: Locate a simple yet routine process and let people take full control of it. Let’s focus this idea in the process of assigning office supplies. In this sense, people should be given full autonomy so anyone can take any office supply (clips, pencils, notebooks, staplers, etc.) whenever they want and in the quantities/amount they want, too, with the solely condition to publicly declare or share (with the help of an open inventory management tool) their consumption decisions. Once a process has been fully unlocked, find another simple yet routine process and repeat the experience. Are you ready for the next level? Unlock more complex processes. Unlock your strategy, your company, your industry and beyond."
- All Meetings Default to Open by Chris Grams: "In the Learning from the Vanguard stage, one of the examples I gave was how Mozilla (of Firefox web browser fame) makes most of its internal meetings open to the outside world so its vibrant community can participate. Meeting details are shared on the website, and anyone can jump on calls, chats, etc. While it is not likely that many typical organizations could operate this way and open meetings to the outside world, almost any organization could enable a default to open *internally* meeting policy. What would this mean? When scheduling conference calls, meetings, etc, the call-in details, web conference login information would be published on the intranet so that anyone could join. If the host of the meeting deemed the material too sensitive to have the meeting be open to other employees, they could choose to have the meeting closed-- but all meetings would be open by default. Would every meeting be open? No. But *defaulting* to open would result in more open meetings, more transparency, and more collaboration... not to mention the occasion serendipitous contribution that occurs simply because the meeting itself was made public and someone with a new perspective was able to join."
Both of these "mini-hacks" take small-bites with the possibility of big wins. This is similar to the strategy I often suggest to my students: start small (e.g., workgroup level), but really publicize the wins. Then take a slightly larger bite for the next attempt. The more public the process the better as it adds accountability to the autonomy -- and you may get suggestions for improvement.
I'm hoping the group decides to work on both these hacks and that some of our related organizations will give them a try. (If you'd like to join in, click here and then look for the link on the bottom of the post.)
If your organization has done this or you try either as an experiment -- please let us know how it works out.
