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Keeping the Organization and People Young
The strategy of switching jobs, portfolios or areas of responsibilities
creates an innovation-friendly environment where people stay challenged,
look broader, communicate better, make decisions quickly and effectively,
innovate and build synergies across the organization.
A nonstop stream of new ideas is gained though constantly changing
perspectives and looking with new eyes at old practices, problems and
issues.
Case
in Point
Hewlett-Packard
Nurturing Cross-Functional
Experts
Most companies tend to recruit, train and promote people within functional
corridors. But Hewlett-Packard (HP) breaks the walls, creating a carrier
network that begins with the recruitment of diverse people in terms of their
skills and personality and then promotes horizontally, as well as vertically
throughout the company.
Typically, HP employees move through four to six functional areas in the
course of their carriers. This creates broad knowledge of the company and
fosters the kind of teamwork other companies covet. When it comes time to
promote, managers don't look who is next down the carrier line, they look
for the best people. Neither employees should follow a pre-defined path to a
particular post, nor need they to get a bigger title to be given new
responsibility.
Case
in Point
U.S. Department of Defense
Doing Job More Innovatively
“One of the surest ways to get a job done more innovatively is, quite
simply, to reorganize frequently.” believes Ronald T. Kadish from the
Missile Defense Agency (MDA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. “When you
put people into a new structure, it stimulates them to rethink what they’re
doing on a day-to-day basis.”
Ronald Kadish reorganized MDA on a major scale twice in less than two years.
He had to do so because the organization was refocused in order to adapt to
external changes. MDA needed to orient people toward a new goal, and
reorganizing was one way to do that. It’s traumatic for most people in very
hierarchical organizations, like MDA. But on balance, Ronald Kadish found
that “people respond well if you can get them to focus not on the
inconveniences of restructuring but on the satisfaction of setting high
goals and then knocking down the barriers to achieving them.”
Discover much more
in the mini-course
Systemic Innovation |
