Leaders have to nourish the culture of originality and bring it to
life. A great leader encourages those they work with to be
themselves and be original. Leaders biggest challenge is to bring
the vision, mission and values of the organization to life. This
establishes a clear focus for their area of responsibility. This
includes maximizing the strength of everyone and putting people in
roles where they are able to achieve their potential. The leader has
to monitor reports regularly because duties and responsibilities of
each individual are constantly shifting based on customer
expectations. The culture of “originality” needs to be nourished and
cultivated. In this time of not being able to do something because
of lack of resources it is the leader’s duty to unlock the one
unlimited resource that they have….the originality of their
associates. That is the use of resources that make the organization
“unstoppable”.
There is a disconnect in organizations between the mission and
vision of the organization and the people who work for the
organization. The disconnect is due to “the system”. Systems stifle
the human side of an organization and standardized procedures and
practices become the end and not the means. The way to reconnect is
for the organization to put in place a culture that lets individuals
be themselves, for leaders of the organization to encourage
individuals and for individuals to discover their talents.
The prime disconnect in organizations is in the area of originality.
Great organizations were founded on originality, great leaders
become so because they are original, individuals are admired because
they are originals. Organizations and leaders fail because they put
in place systems that stop anyone else in the organization from
being original. Rules and procedures are put in place to
institutionalize the original idea. While this introduces safeguards
and reduces risks it also stops individuals within the system from
having to think too much. The result is the operations of the
business become formulistic and once they reach that stage people
are no longer thinking how to do it better they are just performing
by rote. The danger in having people do things by formula is that
robots can then replace them or the organization will be replaced by
one that can react to change.
Every organization has a vision that states they will be the first,
the best, the finest and then imposes systems that ensure that they
equal their competitors. “Best practices” and “bench marking” both
imply that the organization will do something as well as the
competition, not better than, but as well as. Where is the
competitive advantage in that? The organization has become a
copycat.
Organizations have to commit to making originality a core value.
They already have the resource most required to excel in today’s
highly competitive global environment…. people… that are originals.
They have to establish an atmosphere of openness and a culture where
ideas from any level of the organization are heard at a high enough
level that they can be assessed fully and implemented. Then the
resources…. the people… can be leveraged in order to gain the
ultimate competitive advantage and not become a “me too”
organization. If encouraging originality becomes a core value then
the organization becomes “unstoppable”.
It is everyone’s responsibility to reflect on their core strengths
and utilize them in their roles. They must use their power to
communicate and demonstrate to co-workers, superiors and customers
their personal contribution by being “original”. An “unstoppable”
individual is about being yourself, your “original” self. This is
where a personal competitive advantage comes from. An individual’s
#1 challenge is to discover and re-discover their personal
uniqueness and live it in all that they do.
If an organization is itself original and allows its human resources
to be original then those resources and the organization become
“unstoppable”.