As part of my ongoing effort to share insights from this IBM study of CEO's, it is clear the era of military style "command and control" is dead. Thank God! Compliments of the sales lead generation company Find New Customers.
CEO's need some degree of control - to enforce regulatory compliance, drive standardization and avoid waste, but beyond that CEO's believe a trend toward openness brings the best business results. In fact, more open organizations were characterized by higher performance.
The lack of controls puts a stronger emphasis on corporate culture. In order to draw out the best in their employees, CEOs are most focus on three attributes of their organizations:
- Ethics and values
- Collaborative environment
- Purpose and mission
What's also interesting is that CEOs have changed what they look for in employees. With rapid change, they can no longer foresee capabilities needed in as little as two or three years. Instead, they look for employees with the ability to reinvent themselves. These shape-shifters are comfortable with change and they exhibit four main characteristics:
- Collaborative
- Communicative
- Creative
- Flexible
CEO's are working to move their organizations to a more collaborative environment and not delegating to H.
IBM has some specific recommendations :
- Replace rulebooks with shared beliefs
Ensure employees know what to do without being told - Build future-proof employees
Create unconventional teams, concentrate on experiential learning and empower high value networks for employees. - Provide tools to collaborate at scale
Pursue social collaboration technologies, devise incentives to foster collaboration, and breathe new life into the employee "suggestion box."