Give your story a title - preferably one that reflects the essence of the innovation you're going to describe.

Here’s your chance to catch your fellow MIXers—and the world’s—attention. Inject some personality into your title—the more concrete, colorful, and clever, the better—but don’t forget to communicate the impact of your story. For example: “Dude, Where’s My Boss? How We Banished Titles, Offices, and Flipped the Pyramid"

Describe the management innovation in 50 words or less, emphasizing the key feature(s) that make this case distinctive or noteworthy.

This is what your fellow MIXers will see when browsing the Stories. Grab their attention and get right to the heart of your story and its impact on management. An example: “Rite-Solutions flips its top-down approach to strategy setting and decision making by creating a novel internal marketplace for ideas and innovation. Anyone within the company can propose an idea for the company to pursue and “invest’ in it via a virtual stock market.”

Tell us a bit about the organization that pioneered this management innovation: name, location, size, industry, age, history and competitive landscape.

Offer up the basic facts and figures to describe the organization. Set it in context: what’s the competitive landscape, how does this organization figure in the larger picture, what is its role, reputation, big strengths, constraints?

What were the issues or events that triggered this innovation? What real world problems or opportunities prompted this initiative or experiment?

This is the backstory behind the story. How would you describe the beginnings of this innovation to a colleague over dinner? What’s going on in the world? What challenges was the organization up against? What was the urgency, the spark? Who are the key characters in the story? (If it’s your own story or your company’s story, use the first/second person.) What’s driving them personally? Don’t worry about making this a prose masterpiece—it’s more important to convey the details, emotional tone, and connection to specific management challenges.

What changes were made to this organization's management practices or processes? (Be as specific as possible)? How were these changes introduced and sequenced? (If possible, give us a sense of the timeline).

This is the main course of your story. Take us along on your innovation journey—relate the twists and turns with all the color and personality that was inevitably involved—and be sure to describe the workings of the initiatives in as much detail as possible. How does your new tool/process/approach actually work? Who was involved? Where did you get the funding/permission? How did you roll it out to the larger organization? And how did this affect the working life of real people in the organization? Tell their stories here!

What were the key implementation challenges (technological, legal, organization, etc.) that had to be overcome in implementing these changes? How were these hurdles surmounted?

As you describe the twists and turns in your innovation journey, be sure to connect them to the management challenges (ingrained assumptions, structures, processes, politics, human nature) you’re tackling. And, as always, offer up as many details, as much color, and a mini-vignette or two that really brings the challenge—and your fixes, tweaks, solutions to life.

What specific benefits did this innovation produce, and how were these benefits measured (if at all)? (Try to give us a before and after picture). Were there any unintended side effects? If so, please describe them.

Again, be as specific as possible and offer up both quantitative and qualitative metrics. Don’t forget to link the benefits to progress on your management moonshot. An Example: Benefit: A “heat map” of the innovative energy and collective passions of the company Metric: Rite-Solutions’ leadership is constantly devising new tools and metrics to provide a view into its overall investment innovation, individual contribution, forward progress on innovation. Mutual Fun is now Rite-Solutions core new employee orientation tool.

What are the most important lessons that other organizations should learn from this innovation? What suggestions would you have for someone eager to duplicate this innovation in their own organization?

Share both insights specific to your innovation and general lessons for management innovators. Be as emphatic as possible—it helps to offer up the lesson in one sentence or phrase and then expand upon it. An example: If you love something, set if free A key enabler of the DM’s ultimate success was management’s willingness to relinquish control of the process, and to allow the emergence of country-specific DMs, as well as DMs administered by external organizations.

Who deserves credit for developing or describing this management innovation?

Are there key words that might help to catalog this story, and help other MIXers find it? It may be helpful to tag this story with the name of a key management process (e.g. budgeting) or of a function (e.g. HR, Strategy, Finance).

Are there any other resources that might give MIXers more information about this innovation—whether presentations, blog posts, articles, books, or videos? If so, please provide relevant URLs.