If you were to list your most important people assets, above the best set of skills and competences, above the best track records, I would suggest that inquiring, inquisitive and restless minds are your top. Without that, everything fails.
Inquiring, inquisitive and restless minds could be a pain. They could question everything and they may do so for the sake of it, so, they are not good inquiring, inquisitive and restless minds, or they can genuinely see different angles, being unsettled by default positions an ‘un-examined life’, and they think critically. If so, they are a gem. And as such, you do have headcount for them. Must have.
The ability to seriously seek, seduce and give home to those inquiring, inquisitive and restless minds is a fundamental function of the leadership of the organization.
In the old days, whatever that may mean today beyond one week, these kinds of minds were assumed to be the ones of people in Research and Development, or Science for that matter. Today, this is bread and butter for all functions, all staff, all layers of management and leadership.
If you get this right, if you recruit the right people and you train old and new in Critical Thinking, you are providing the fuel for innovation. Winning and moving forward, reinventing the organization or simply being ahead of the game require those ‘skills’. Without that in your DNA, you are on the path of McDonaldization, slow or fast. Incidentally, McDonald’s is a successful model. The most successful if you run a McDonald’s franchise.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
FEED FORWARD WEBINAR SERIES
The organization now, under new management.
Machines work on feed-back. Minds work on feed-forward. We don’t need thermostats; we need new compasses. There is no ‘back to normal’. Normal has not been waiting for us.
Leandro Herrero
Join Leandro Herrero and his team of organizational architects for the penultimate free webinar of the series – The Myths of Management – hear from them as they debunk uncontested assumptions and uncover the alternatives, whilst considering why this is even more relevant today in the current exceptional post Covid-19 environment. Register Now!
All webinar attendees are eligible for a complimentary copy of Leandro’s new book: The Flipping Point.
Would you like to comment?