Trust the Employees or Trust the Controls?
What would happen if you made additional tools and support available to your employees without dictating to them how or for what to use them?
See what IBM experienced when it made various publishing and broadcasting tools available to its employees and trusted them with the uses. Read Eric Eggertson’s insights into how building a corporate “culture of trust and authenticity” will result in unanticipated creativity and buy-in.
People are not an interchangeable commodity whose energies we exploit as long as we can get away with it. They are our primary asset, a source of infinite energy and creativity, IF we come to terms with the reality that core to their (our) motivation is the opportunity to contribute and make a difference.
Try an experiment of your own and see what amazing new improvements, initiatives and/or innovations emerge from your team.
On your side.
December 29th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Thanks for the mention!
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be ANY rules, but the rules should be about principles, values and behavior, not a list of all the things people can’t do. That gets them in mistake-avoidance mode, when they should be in achieving objectives mode.
December 29th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Good point. Maybe the value of any new rule could be tested by its effect… Whether it has a facilitating, structuring and/or guiding effect on the one hand. Or whether it has a quenching, controlling and/or limiting effect on the other.