Making Ideas MoveWe would like to focus on five concepts leaders can apply to make
their organizations more efficient marketplaces for ideas.
Leaders as Idea “Brokers”
In our experience, the single biggest factor contributing to the
movement of ideas is the mind-set of the leaders, exemplified by
their behavior. The higher leaders rise in their organizations, the
more their primary role becomes creating leverage: how to make
their organizations more effective “markets” for capital, talent, and
ideas. Consider Rob Poulet, business group president for Unilever’s
$8 billion global ice-cream business. Rob and his core team visit all
the major units of the ice-cream business each year. Following each
visit, he and his team sit and discuss where else in the world of
Unilever ice cream can the great growth ideas they just discovered
in, say, Brazil be used. They then take it upon themselves, as idea
brokers, to connect the other teams in the world that could bene-
fit from these ideas. They even go so far as to designate “sister
cities” where there are two diverse geographies that could benefit
from each other’s growth ideas. This has proved to be a highly
effective way to get great ideas flowing between the two local com-
panies. Effective leaders as brokers are in tune with both the speed
of the transaction and the value of the content knowledge they
provide. They are validated in the organization because they con-
nect rather than control those whom they serve—the front line
and the customers.
Meetings as “Marketplaces”
Most meetings and high-level gatherings (workshops, forums, and
conferences) can be a terrible use of organizational resources
because all too often they are held at the wrong place with the
wrong people at the wrong time. Some leaders have figured out that
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