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August 21, 2006

Innovative Disruption

This just in. For those of you who trust the trade mags, proof that the main cause of business problems is... doing business.

While 60% of the "innovation" ideas come from business unit leaders, according to the "winners" most of the resistance to those ideas comes from businesss unit staff. Since the staff were presumably led to the win, uhhh, what happened to the staff?

Ohhhh kayyyyy.

(Source: CIO Magazine, which you'll assume has some kind of copyright on the source material -- but not on the combination of materials as re-presented here, since I made the point of the juxtaposition when they didn't.) (On the other hand, don't try this trick at home, just because you saw it here.)

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at August 21, 2006 5:28 PM

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Comments

Your "presumption" that business unit leaders lead, in any sense of the term, or even communicate with their staffs is, in my experience, thoroughly open to question.

In Japanese firms where kaizen has become a thorough part of the culture, most suggestions for improvement come from the staff, not the leaders, and most are implemented successfully.

It is possible that improving strategy would solve the wrong problem - the real problem might be communication, especially listening, which is an essential leadership skill.

Posted by: Sid Kemp at August 21, 2006 6:45 PM

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