Projecting Wisdom
“A large organization is a collection of local communities. Individual and institutional growth are maximized when those communities are self-governing to the maximum extent possible.”
The power of diversity. Self-organizing teams. These are newfangled notions, right? The quote is from Mary Parker Follett, a management innovator whose life was bracketed by the American Civil War and the Great Depression. Consider some more of the farsighted management tenets in Follett's book, Creative Experience, first published in 1924:
“Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power but by the capacity to increase the sense of power among those who are led. The most essential work of the leader is to create more leaders.”
“Adversarial, win-lose decision making is debilitating for all concerned. Contentious problems are best solved not by imposing a single point of view at the expense of all others but by striving for a higher-order solution that integrates the diverse perspectives of all relevant constituents.”
– From Gary Hamel’s HBR cover story on Management Innovation.
In our discussion at MLab today, James Surowiecki (Wisdom of Crowds author) suggested that her precepts were prescient, but perhaps ahead of their time because much of the enabling communications technology was not yet developed.
P.S. I like the way the hand gesticulations create a visual stutter....