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Autonomy and Acceptable Failures: The Need for Doctrine

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Autonomy and Acceptable Failures: The Need for Doctrine

Autonomy, especially in and around U.S. businesses, is a tricky concept. Autonomy is valued very highly in our culture, but the challenge of finding a way to hand off acceptable amounts of control takes a lot more work than most leaders or employees realize. Few companies have the patience or budget for mistakes which occur when a more-autonomous goes wrong, so they choose not to grant autonomy in the first place, or revoke it at the first sign of trouble. Understandably, the constant conflict of employees who need autonomy and leaders who need accountability plagues most organizations. 

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First Steps to Doctrine: the Example of Moore's Cloud Business Principles

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First Steps to Doctrine: the Example of Moore's Cloud Business Principles

For an example of a fluid progression from values to high-level beginnings of doctrine, consider this published set of business principles from Moore's Cloud, a "smart light" startup based in Australia. Their founder, Mark Pesce, explained that the intent of these principles was both internal and external, being used both to inform internal daily decision-making and to filter (attract or repel) investors by explicitly stating the company's commitment to open ecosystems and transparent business practice. By 'downloading' individuals decision-making guides from key leaders in the organization and then 'uploading' them to the business's guiding source code, Moore's Cloud has reduced huge amounts of unnecessary

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Doctrine: Downloading Wisdom for Agility and Effective Improvisation

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Doctrine sits in between strategy and plans. It is more specific than the strategy, but also more versatile than plans, or rules. Think of it as heuristics, or guidelines: the purpose of doctrine is to enable an individual to know what to do in a situation that's consistent with the strategy and achieves the objectives of a plan, but with flexibility, with autonomy, for the individual, in the circumstance. And the creation of effective business doctrine, I believe is going to be critical for the transition of business in the next century.

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The Shift from Push to Pull: Creating an Orbit

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The Shift from Push to Pull: Creating an Orbit

One of the greatest shifts we're seeing today is a shift from push to pull. We're in a world now where our customers and our employees don't need us the way that they used to. It used to be that we needed to advertise, we needed to promote, we needed to push information out to people, so that they knew who we are, what we sell, why they should buy from us

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Caring: The Missing Ingredient

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I think the biggest missing ingredient for leaders is caring. At some point along the line, they stop caring—about their teams, about the company, about their customers, and it becomes a matter of just executing actions. I think when leaders reconnect with why they're doing what they're doing, the difference that it makes in the world and allow themselves to open their mind and their heart and take action based on those, that's when things really start to happen. Because it becomes inviting to people. That's what becomes open and transparent.

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Creatives, Non-Linear Thinkers and So-Called Misfits

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I was recently asked to weigh in on how to support the creative worker. It's a broad, almost-impossible question: how does one even begin to categorize such a person? So I chose to respond by focusing on the elements of the workplace which enable creativity, both culturally and structurally, to support the rise of good ideas and ease for those bringing good ideas to light. 

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The Spectrum of Introversion to Extroversion

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The Spectrum of Introversion to Extroversion

Most leadership guides, hiring manuals and educational practices are grounded in the idea of supporting collaboration and motivating employees by having extroverts lead. The history of how this came to be is detailed in the revealing title by Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. 

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Social Enterprise as a Listening Tool

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Social Enterprise as a Listening Tool

And what I would say is that there is a unique opportunity right now for companies to, as a first step, to start to embrace the social enterprise—because what that does is that gets the value of the human component quantified, and from there we start to make decisions, we start to put in structures that are not 100% based on just what the profit and revenue growth are. Those things become an end, an outcome.

Causetalk: Future of Organisations Teaser from Osaka, Japan

Curious about the shift from hierarchies to networks? Have big ideas about what leadership will look like a new economy? We are too. We were honored to be invited by @innotribe of the @swiftcommunity to speak @sibos, the annual international banking conference, on just what leadership might look like. Here's a preview of the session while the full film is being produced:  

How Good Ideas Become Real Innovations

How Good Ideas Become Real Innovations
An introduction to Causeit's research pilot Opening the Door for Innovation

Steven Johnson's deep dive into the patterns of innovators, Where Good Ideas Come From, explores the environmental factors supportive of innovation and how good ideas come to be. Johnson’s work centers on where innovations are conceived, but spends less time on the factors affecting their birth. While reading the book, it occurred to me to ask, “If so many brilliant ideas are emerging, why aren’t more being put into action?”

Collective, lightweight decision-making

Found on @techcrunch by @thatdrew —The veteran startup types behind what was once known as @cotweet , a collaborative social media platform, are now creating a consumer offering to help people engage the collective wisdom of the networks for rapid decision making. Stay tuned to @seesaw for updates!

Mark Bonchek, Orbital Brands and Causeit's Network

Mark Bonchek, Orbital Brands and Causeit's Network

Causeit is happy to introduce our strategic alliance with ORBIT & Co. A project of Mark Bonchek, a long-time advisor (and former client) of Causeit, ORBIT & Co. serves to cause breakthroughs in organizational ability to engage communities in true, meaningful conversation, rather than old-model, push-style marketing messages.  We look forward to continuing our work with Mark as we help companies form, implement and share their big visions for world-changing innovation.

Hashtags and Semantic Analysis: A Brief View

There's another element of hashtags which is extremely important to companies and organizations (or even committed individuals) interested in listening to their ecosystems. It's called semantic analysis—the reading of conversations for meaning. 

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Flourish, fog, flipbooks, friends.

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Since we began our focus on innovation teams, we have been spending more and more time in the Bay Area. Now, we're excited to announced that both Causeit and its flipbook entertainment project business, Fliptography, are present in San Francisco, after our nine-month pilot expansion.

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TEDxBellevue

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Causeit, Inc. is proud to be the principal partner for TEDxBellevue, an independenty-organized TED event, where we provide thought leadership strategy and production support, project management and leadership through our team members Anna, MJ and Matt. At TEDxBellevue, our mission is to bring together local community leaders to engage in ideas worth doing that will make a positive impact in our global community. Our 2012 theme is Sustainable Happiness, from someday to everyday.