with you.” Effective renewal is not about getting people to change
in order to conform. It’s about getting people to take responsibility
for creating a different future. People want to be engaged. People
want to be passionate. It is the leader’s responsibility to create the
environment and the opportunity.
- People seek to be led, not managed.People don’t want to be
managed. No one wants to be planned, organized, and controlled.
People want to be part of a team. They want to participate. They
want to be a partner in the process of value creation. Participation
is not a tactic. It is the way people work best. However, there is
power in an inspired leader of a team who drives with passion,
integrity, and has the courage to make decisions and provide direc-
tion as needed. As people can be frustrated by micromanagement,
they can be just as frustrated when leadership or direction is lacking. - People want to work cooperatively toward a shared goal.People
have a need to be part of a group and to help others. This natural
tendency is often lost when people are “incented” to compete with
other members of the team. This may be the biggest value subtrac-
tor in many organizations. We need to overcome our belief that
internal competition leads to better performance. We need to
experiment with team-based organizations. Manufacturers learned
out of necessity. The rest of us must follow. - We must communicate as much as possible to as many people as
possible.Can you remember the last time you were asked to do
something and had no idea why you were doing it? Can you
remember how excited you were? We simply cannot commit to
what we don’t understand. Widely distributed information and a
shared context for understanding that information should be the
right of every employee. Jan Carlzon said it best: “People without
information cannot take responsibility. People with information
can hardly help but take responsibility.”^6 People want to take
responsibility and make good decisions. People want to live values
that are consistent with their aspirations. However, too often
people in organizations remain uninformed and are therefore
unable to discern what is best for the organization.
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