When Corporate Commitments Drift

Over the years, as businesses continually manage the tension between creating value and extracting value, there has been a recurring theme in leadership philosophy: over and over, pundits have described the value of inviting an organization’s members to invest more than their compliance and commit to the organization’s enterprise.  I first became aware of this theme with Tom Peter’s In Search of Excellence and the popularization of skunkworks and Managing by Wandering Around, which reflected a deep value on employees’ ability to contribute to the organization’s strategic challenges. This same insight was implicit in Deming’s 14 points, which were based on the observation that workers tend to want to do work they are proud of. It showed up in the movements around Six Sigma, lean management, and the Toyota Production System, High Performing Organizations and in Good to Great  -- though these reflect widely divergent assumptions about how much of that commitment comes from individual traits or organizational climate. As the global economy has shifted to toward knowledge-work, the value of involving employees as partners has become more and more apparent. To quote Tom Peters, the only way to treat knowledge workers is as volunteers, because they have to want to contribute their energy.

You must be a Premium Member to view this Knol.

If you have an account:

If not, contact us about individual or corporate subscriptions. In the meantime, please create a free account to enjoy our Member-level content.

© 2010 Elizabeth Doty

Labels: elizabeth doty  leadership consultant coach  the compromise trap