Thanks for the comment and support. I was pleasantly surprised my innovative idea of penning the word “insourcing” too. My partner gave me the phrase mission-delivering part of the organization.

Regards,

Michelle

I don’t feel we are too far off from one another. I agree that “The sum and substance of innovation is ?people involvement.” I also agree the interpersonal maturity on the part of a leader is a wonderful thing.

Accountabilities (tasks, projects) related to strategic goals will be job-specific and they need be changed and updated as circumstances change. When I refer to accountabilities I am talking about the generic, system wide accountabilties for all employees, managers and managers-once-removed.

I am proposing system-wide standard worldview that is consistent, fair and aimed at enducing trust rather than the paranoia which I believe current systems stir up.

Systems drive behavior. I’m not saying that managers should ignore employee output when assessing effectiveness, but it should only be one input. Looking at numbers only fuels corruption. For example, people will hide mistakes, pass through poor quality products in order to meet their numbers. This behavior makes perfect sense if the systems is set up only to look at numbers. Somewhere we decided looking only at numbers is objective and thus fair. If I’m being judged for effectiveness, it behooves me to bring attention to mistakes or quality deficits, not hide them.

How can employees be accountable for their output when they do not choose their assignments, they do not supply their own resources, and they cannot control all circumstances? Asking employees to be accountable for things out of their control is cruel and a cruel system will drive dysfunctional behavior.

Thanks for your input. Feel free to push back.

Regards,

Michelle

I agree completely that much academic attention to this subject is, in effect, self-absorbed snobbery that simply acts in an accessory role to the widespread tendency to inflate the role of the individual and downplay that of the system.

It’s a bit ironic, perhaps, that academia would find itself developing theory out of whole cloth to support various notions of the great leader, such as his or her putatively heroically creative and central role in organizational innovation, rather than examining organizational dynamics from a broader, more general and objective perspective, but there it is.

This essay is an excellent presentation of the issue for organizations – my vote for best line goes to: “Insource innovation, i.e. expect it from the mission-delivering organization, at all levels.” Perhaps the most potent phrase is “the mission-delivering organization.”

Outstanding – thanks!