A long weekend. Yay!
Here's the first installment from my new business book on creativity and innovation--"The Concise Adair on Creativity and Innovation". This is a great book, kind of a Dummies book on creating a workplace that inspires those wonderful skills. Here's an interesting passage:
"Characteristics of an Innovative Organization
- The management is personal and informal
- There is not an emphasis on functional specialization
- Workers have been allowed to have freedom of thought
- The management structure is quite flat with leaders being very approachable
- Clearly laid down procedures are kept to a minimum
- Workers are encouraged to be creative and flexible, and to develop themselves."
Do you work at a place like that? I don't know if a workplace culture exactly like this exists, even at places known for innovation like 3M. My workplace has a lot of these qualities but certainly doesn't have a flat management structure (I can't even imagine how many layers of management there are between me and the corporate CEO). On the other hand, I have met with executive-type people who are very curious about how the projects are being run and listen carefully to how people expect to reach their goals without dictating their own preferred way of doing something.
Does a company have to be small to be like this? My (informal) mentor at Not Big Blue was in charge of fostering innovation and did some wonderful training to get things going but there was a lot of resistance from management and workers. At Widgets we innovated all the time, usually just for survival, but there was a hierarchy and most of the creative work people did was unknown to the company leaders. (Note: the innovation program at Not Big Blue was stopped about two years ago and my ex-mentor was laid off after twenty years at the place. Nice.)
My computers are set up and I think I've screwed around enough with my LCD monitors and should leave them alone. I started working with Final Cut again using a bunch of family videos. I was surprised that the new G5 take a long, long time to create a .mov file for a 30 minute video (using Sorenson's which I supposed adds a lot of time). I just couldn't hold out another six months for the very-much-faster Intel Macs.
Anyone want an ancient iMac for free?
Here's the first installment from my new business book on creativity and innovation--"The Concise Adair on Creativity and Innovation". This is a great book, kind of a Dummies book on creating a workplace that inspires those wonderful skills. Here's an interesting passage:
"Characteristics of an Innovative Organization
- The management is personal and informal
- There is not an emphasis on functional specialization
- Workers have been allowed to have freedom of thought
- The management structure is quite flat with leaders being very approachable
- Clearly laid down procedures are kept to a minimum
- Workers are encouraged to be creative and flexible, and to develop themselves."
Do you work at a place like that? I don't know if a workplace culture exactly like this exists, even at places known for innovation like 3M. My workplace has a lot of these qualities but certainly doesn't have a flat management structure (I can't even imagine how many layers of management there are between me and the corporate CEO). On the other hand, I have met with executive-type people who are very curious about how the projects are being run and listen carefully to how people expect to reach their goals without dictating their own preferred way of doing something.
Does a company have to be small to be like this? My (informal) mentor at Not Big Blue was in charge of fostering innovation and did some wonderful training to get things going but there was a lot of resistance from management and workers. At Widgets we innovated all the time, usually just for survival, but there was a hierarchy and most of the creative work people did was unknown to the company leaders. (Note: the innovation program at Not Big Blue was stopped about two years ago and my ex-mentor was laid off after twenty years at the place. Nice.)
My computers are set up and I think I've screwed around enough with my LCD monitors and should leave them alone. I started working with Final Cut again using a bunch of family videos. I was surprised that the new G5 take a long, long time to create a .mov file for a 30 minute video (using Sorenson's which I supposed adds a lot of time). I just couldn't hold out another six months for the very-much-faster Intel Macs.
Anyone want an ancient iMac for free?
posted by changingagain at 5:55 PM
2 Comments:
iMac for free? I do I do!!!
Or give it to the Minneapolis Public Schools. But even they might turn up their noses.
Mike
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