locally,” and overcoming “not invented here” resistance add cost to
ideas and slow down their adoption locally. It is an unfortunate
truth that leaders and their teams can come up with good ideas, but
if the organization lacks the capacity to capture the value from the
ideas, they become a low-cost supplier of intellectual capital to
the rest of the industry.
Timing
Efficient markets are made up of cycles within cycles, and they are
influenced by the just-in-time actions of entrepreneurs. A recent
Wharton study revealed that it takes, on average, thirty-six months
for a good idea to become a “best practice” in use in another part of
the organization.^2 Timing is influenced by the alignment of organi-
zation processes or “cadence,” the willingness and ability of man-
agers to send and receive knowledge, and the clarity of the ideas to
be adopted. Change the cycle time and you change the competi-
tiveness of a company and the effectiveness of its leaders.
Trust
All markets are based on a foundation of trust. Just consider what
has happened to the stock markets in the past couple of years when
financial information was no longer considered trustworthy. Trust
is the biggest single factor affecting the marketplace for ideas
within organizations. When individuals lack trust in other indi-
viduals, teams, and organizations, ideas simply will not flow
between them.^3 Trust can take years to build and minutes to
destroy. The founder of Southwest Airlines knew that the willing-
ness of an organization to listen and act on a leader’s ideas is built
on a lifelong foundation of trustworthiness. There are three impor-
tant components of trust—reliability, competence, and sincerity—
that together will determine the legitimacy of a leader’s good ideas
and intentions.
106 LEADINGORGANIZATIONALLEARNING