When giving up control, aim for level 5 on the Ladder of Leadership. This allows for robust discussions and maintains a safe environment for decisions. We’re careful to represent level five as the sweet spot on the Ladder of Leadership. But there’s this notion that well, six is greater than five. So six must be...
The Industrial Age Obey the Clock play pushes to get the team moving forward. Since we’ve separated the deciders (blueworkers) from the doers (redworkers), the deciders need to convince, cajole, bribe, shame, or threaten the doers to DO the work they had little or no part in choosing and sounds like “I’ll tell you what...
The fundamental organizational design principle from the Industrial Age was to separate the deciders from the doers. Each group was given a label: white collar – blue collar, salary people – hourly people, bosses – workers, leaders – followers, blueworker – redworker. The main idea was one group (white collar, salary,bosses) decided what the other...
This is part 4 of 4 of the ABCs of Cultural Change. The senior executives argued that any initiative that was not reflected in the company’s performance evaluation system wouldn’t stick. They called it accountability. Based on Aubrey Daniels’ book, Bringing out the Best in People, we agreed and felt that the word “consequence” was a better fit....
Continued from the post titled The ABCs of a High Performing Leader-Leader Organization Modules completed. Vision Statement written. Values Instilled. The training is over…and… Nothing changes. Sound familiar? We spent time working individually focusing on one avatar at a time defining behaviors for each group. The team worked together to develop each behavior into an action, something...
The Industrial AgeThe period when humans developed large complex organizations based on machines. Factories, assembly lines, plantations, and railroads were dominant during the Industrial Age. The Industrial Age organizational design was optimized to use humans to reduce variability and comply with their masters’ instructions. This fundamental structure shapes our organizational design and language today. Obey the ClockThe...
