If organizations are going to evolve from the hierarchical, command-and-control structure that has dominated over the past century to a new model where trust, transparency and meritocracy are guiding principles, they're going to need to change the way they develop leaders. To gain some insight into how the leadership development process is adapting to the challenge of creating leaders who are inclusive, progressive, and able to look beyond their organization for great ideas, we turned to the MIX community. With our partners at HCI, the Human Capital Institute , we sponsored the HCI Human Capital M-Prize on Leadership , and we asked you to share your stories on leadership development.
Often, when I'm invited to speak to boardrooms, I start by gently saying: "Listen up folks. Business is brain-dead. Right now, even as we speak, your business is probably undergoing a slow, barely perceptible, but wholly pernicious brain death." I might take a custom-made, baby-soft $2000 loafer to...
We have a big dream here at the MIX: to create organizations that are fit for the future--and fit for human beings. It's an aspiration that calls for nothing less than what the philosopher and reformer John Dewey described as a "new audacity of imagination." While "modern" management has delivered an immense contribution to global prosperity, the values driving our most powerful institutions today are fundamentally at odds with those of this age--zero-sum thinking, profit-obsession, power, conformance, control, hierarchy, and obedience don't stand a chance against community, interdependence, freedom, flexibility, transparency, meritocracy, and self-determination. It's time to radically rethink how we mobilize people and organize resources to productive ends.
I live a half mile from the San Andreas fault—a fact that bubbles up into my consciousness every time some other part of the world experiences an earthquake. I sometimes wonder whether this subterranean sense of impending disaster is at least partly responsible for Silicon Valley’s feverish, get-it...
