Me First, Team Next, Company Last: The Truth of Corporate Loyalty?

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I had an interesting comment to my recent post on why executives do not get innovation. It went like this:

“Essentially, I attest that people believe they either work for a brand/company independent of themselves (boss-subordinate relationship) or they work for themselves independent of the brand/company (commissioned representatives/sales leadership). Either of these scenarios creates a disconnect in the areas of loyalty, transparency, and communication. In fact, I’d go as far to say that organizations don’t put innovation in the hands of people in either group because they don’t trust that they have selected the correct human resources. Just a theory, but I wonder if there’s a correlation between the resistance to innovate and the age of the research that defined the hiring model competencies.”

My response:

“I think most people work for themselves or their team rather than the company itself. However, they still need to work and make things happen in the bigger corporate context and many also end up pursuing long-term careers here. I don’t think we disagree much here.

On the other hand, I really believe that organizations need to put innovation in the hands of people. What should replace this? Systems and processes are enablers, but it is people who make things happen. Unfortunately, we see too many people with the “wrong” mindset for innovation in charge trying to make it happen hence my post on why executives do not get innovation.

On talents, it is interesting to see how this is really up in the air right now. I have read some interesting pieces on this lately, which prompted me to write a post on talents in the context of innovation. Check this link: 5 Reflections on Innovation Talent

Some of my key observations in the post include that future hires will be for potential rather than competencies, adaptability is critical and future innovation leaders create communities that allow internal and external resources to innovate.”

What do you think of this?

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Stefan Lindegaard
Stefan is an author, speaker, facilitator and consultant focusing on open innovation, social media tools and intrapreneurship.

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