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The
GE Leadership Effectiveness Survey (LES)
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Fully utilizes diversity of team members (cultural,
race, gender) to achieve business success.
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Values and promotes full utilization of global
and work force diversity.
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Demonstrates global awareness / sensitivity and
is comfortable building diverse / global teams...
More
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Diversity as a Managerial Approach |
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Unleashing the Power of
Integrated Opposites
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develop innovative services and
products for diverse customer groups by sharing of diverse
experiences and cultural insights of workers
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solve problems creatively by looking at "the
same landscape with different eyes" and
cross-pollination of ideas
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achieve synergy
by leveraging the power of critical opposites
Solving Problems Created
by Diversity1
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treat people first and foremost as
individuals
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acknowledge the special circumstances or particular context that may
lead to exclusion for some groups of people
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work to change that situation
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develop a workforce within which people are valued for the
contribution they make
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Maintaining a Fresh
Perspective with Your Employees
10 Tips |
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Hire a diverse group of individuals...
More
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New
Product Development
by Cross-functional Teams
Recommendations
to Top Executives6 |
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Keep the team small.
Increased functional diversity on
the teams does not necessarily increase
innovation. Social cohesion between the members of a team
can suppress the exchange of views, since cohesive groups focus
on maintaining relationships and seeking concurrence. Cut back
on number of functional areas represented on the team, so as
help the team crystallize its identity...
More
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Virtual Teams: Best Practice
The study is
based on a sample of 54 teams in 26 companies who rarely if ever met
as a whole face-to-face.8 |
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“Far-flung”
teams are more productive than their face-to-face counterparts
if they keep three practices:
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They
exploit diversity.
The team can't just
be
diverse;
it has to make the most of it. The best teams teams credit
their creative breakthroughs to challenging people from
different disciplines,
cultures,
and the like to come up with something better together...
More
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Diversity Defined
Diversity is a specialized term describing a
workplace that includes:
The Power of Taking a Different View
Diversity of thought,
perception, background and
experience enhance the
creativity
and innovation.
It was by taking a
different view of a traditional business that major innovations were
achieved. To find a better
creative solution to
the current practice, force yourself to
reframe the problem, to
break down its components and assemble them in a different way.
Balanced Organization: 5 Basic Elements
Wood (Corporate
Capabilities):
Leveraging Opposite Forces
You can inspire
innovation
and find a strategic
competitive advantage in an
organizational and
cultural
context by seeking to leverage, rather than diminish, opposite forces.
People with different cultural, educational, scientific, and business
backgrounds will bring different frames of reference to a problem and can
spark an exciting and dynamic
cross-pollination of ideas.
"An important but widely overlooked principle
of business success is that integrating opposites, as opposed to identifying
them as inconsistencies and driving them out, unleashes power," writes Mark
Stevens.3 "This is true on both a personal level (the
balanced manager is more effective than his or her peer at one end of
the control spectrum) and on
organizational level as well... On an organization level we accept the
existence of hard and soft dichotomies because this binary perspective helps
to rationalize personal styles, viewpoints, and structures. Polarized
thinking is simplistic and misleading. In the business world, ideal
approaches are generally painted in gray as opposed to black and white." To
be successful in
today's complex, rapidly changing and highly competitive world, you must
embrace and manage critical opposites.
Integrated
Diversity
"Integrated diversity" is a term
used by
Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric, to define a
synergistic learning culture. He described
"integrated diversity" as the
elimination of boundaries between businesses and the transferring of
ideas from one place in the company to another. "Integrated diversity means
the drawing together of our thirteen different businesses by sharing ideas,
by finding multiple applications for technological advancements, and by
moving people across businesses to provide fresh perspectives and to develop
broad-based experience. Integrated diversity gives us a company that is
considerably greater than the sum of its parts."4
Integrated diversity only works when the
elements of that diversity, independent businesses, are strong in their own
right. "GE wouldn't succeed by propping up small businesses with larger ones
or having weaklings rely on winners. That was why Welch had always
emphasized the importance of creating strong, stand-alone businesses."2
Creativity of Groups
Interplay among individuals is
essential to the
innovation process. While individual
creativity is important, and even crucial to business, the creativity of
groups is equally important. The creation of today's complex systems of
products and services requires the merging of knowledge from diverse
disciplinary and personal perspectives.
Innovation
– whether it be revealed in
new products and services,
new processes,
or new
business models – is rarely an individual undertaking. Creative
cooperation and
cross-pollination of ideas is critical...
More
Case in Point
General Electric (GE)
Jack Welch liked to say that GE's uniqueness was based on its being a
multibusiness enterprises with a
learning culture; that made its diversity a
competitive advantage rather than a handicap. At General Electric (GE)
the sum is greater than its parts as both business and people diversity is
utilized in a most effective way. A major American enterprise with a diverse
group of huge businesses, GE is steeped in a
learning culture and it is this fact that makes GE a unique company...
More
25 Lessons from Jack Welch
Case in Point
Hewlett-Packard Way
To create an organization that could sustain
its
competitive advantage regardless of marketplace
whims and what their competitors were building, HP founders based their
corporate
culture on the integration
and reinforcement of critical opposites. This became known as the
Hewlett-Packard Way. HP has achieved "what
appears to be the greatest dichotomy: creating an environment that
celebrates individualism, but at the same time one that is also wholly
supportive of teamwork. Although HP people are
taught to engage in cross-functional
teams, they are also rated on the performance of decentralized business
units and
personal achievement."3...
More
Case in Point
Cargill
Cargill,
Incorporated is an international provider of food, agricultural
and risk management products and services. With 101,000
employees in 59 countries, the company is committed to using its
knowledge and experience to collaborate with customers to help
them succeed.
To reach their goal of being the
global leader in nourishing people and potential, Cargill behave
in ways that support and leverage the many differences among
employees, suppliers and customers. Issues of difference are
everywhere. Leaders of the company consider these differences
vital assets that will help ensure ongoing success, loyalty,
innovation, customer focus and enriched communities.
Valuing Differences Initiative
at Cargill is designed to leverage and maximize each employee's
unique talents and perspectives to improve business performance.
Cargill recognizes the importance of an inclusive work
environment in which the full range of individual differences in
our customers, employees and suppliers are recognized,
appreciated and valued. Cargill's diversity councils provide
employees with the opportunity to share ideas and information,
address issues and concerns, develop relationships and network
with other members as well as with top management...
More
10 Commandments of Innovation
Synergize.
Cross-pollinate
ideas, leverage diversity, create synergies...
More
The Three Rules of Work...
A Proposal Analysis Tool:
Switching Hats...
Key Characteristics of High-performance Organizations...
Sources of Your
Sustainable Competitive Advantage...
Entrepreneurial Success...
Managing Dynamic
Organizational Dichotomies...
Cross-functional Teams...
Managing Innovation by Cross-functional
Teams...
Managing Cultural Differences...
Recommendations to Top
Executives...
Case in Point
Tech Oasis...
Case
in Point
Diamond
Associates...
Case in Point
Steelcase...
Case in Point
Joint Engineering Design by Ford and ABB...
Case in Point
Integral Yoga...
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