Winning organizations today don't just sell competitive products and services. They stand for important ideas. Ideas that are meant to shape the competitive landscape of their field. Ideas that are meant to re-shape the sense of what is possible for customers, for employees, for investors.
For so long—for decades—we've lived in a world where the strong take from the weak. If you've got the biggest offices, the most established brands, the deepest pockets-- you won almost by default. That world is over. Today, the smart take from the strong. The most successful organizations don't just out-compete their rivals; they aim to redefine the terms of competition by embracing one-of-a-kind ideas in a world filled with "me too" thinking. Now it's hard to do which is why so few organizations ever really break from the pack and do something remarkable.
What do you promise that nobody else can promise? What do you deliver that nobody else can deliver? Here's the method in a nutshell: It's not good enough anymore to be "pretty good" at everything—as an organization or individial. You've got to figure out "How do we become the most of something-- The most exclusive? The most affordable? The most elegant? The most simple? Every answer is gonna be different but for so long, so many of us got comfortable operating in the middle of the road. That's what felt safe and secure. That's in theory where all the customers were - the great middle class.
The most successful leaders I have gotten to know don't say to someone, "I've got this brilliant idea! What's my top-down style of communication to push it through the ranks?" They say to themselves, "I need a brilliant idea. What's my architecture of participation so that I can tap the hidden genius of all my colleague? The collective genius of the customers and business suppliers? The group mind can come up with ideas that the individual mind, no matter how talented, can come up with on his or her own. Nobody alone is as smart as everyone together which is why when we spend a day here talking about talent and people and culture, my final message to you is those are huge issues to wrestle with. But don't create artificial boundaries around your company that say 'Those issues only apply to the full-time employees of the organization.' The talent available to you is as global, as wide, as dispersed as the invitation you wish to offer.
...Two lessons come out of that. First of all, people don't have to work for you anymore in order to work with you. You can invite smart, excited, talented people anywhere they sit, anywhere in the world, to share a little bit of their brainpower with you if, and this is the other part of the lesson, you become the kind of smart person that other smart people really want to work with.
To me, the lesson there is—it's a new leadership mind that I hope helps you answer what I think is the question ultimately all of us face as we go through life, which is "Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?" It seems to me that's what all of us sign up for as entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders. Do we have an answer to the question "Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?" And if you as individuals, if you as companies can say "You know what? We're conducting ourselves in ways so that we get the best ideas from the most people." Then I think you've got the best chance to keep learning as fast as the world is changing.
Read the transcription of this video on Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/65690451/Bill-Taylor-Care-at-Work-2011
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2011 SVBVS Business Plan Competition Finalists (1 of 2)by SCUboomerventure248 views
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