Leading at Light Speed is a groundbreaking leadership book by Eric Douglas describing the 10 Quantum Leaps which build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization.
What is spark? Spark represents an intense influence on those spurring them on to create new innovations.
It’s easy to spot an organization that has high levels of spark:
• People feel free to challenge the status quo.
• Going farther than what is expected by workers is the current norm for company employees.
• People feel their work is fun.
• When workers can suggest ideas for company changes they must feel unfettered by higher ups and their rank to do so.
• Sharing concepts freely concerning new developments on old improvements are a common practice with employees.”
3M is a good example of a company that focuses on trust and spark. Its “15 percent rule” enables employees to spend 15 percent of their work time exploring and conducting experiments. Internal funding of grants for new and approved innovations can be applied for by tech employees. It is this careful nurturing of innovation that has resulted in products like ScotchGard™ and Thinsulate™.
Fred Smith
Fred Smith, founder and CEO of Federal Express, “We hammer home that not to change is to be in the process of dying, of not meeting the market as it is. Those who inspiring change earn many kudos as we see it. We don’t hang people who try something new that doesn’t work out, because that’s the easiest way to ossify an organization – to crucify the people who are trying to innovate.”
Steve Jobs
By now, nearly everyone is familiar with the story of how two young men named Steve – Wozniak and Jobs – pretty much created the personal computer industry. Today Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple Computer, still puts a premium on fun, creativity, learning, and exploring new ideas: “Learning about new technologies and markets is what makes this fun for me,” Jobs says. “You just gotta go learn this stuff. If you’re smart, you’ll figure it out.”
Walt Disney
Spark thrives in an environment of freedom, where the unexpected is invited, embraced, and encouraged to evolve into value. Walt Disney understood it. Long before Mickey Mouse came along, he injected creativity into his team of animators. He wasn’t content to have silent cartoons: he wanted to produce the first cartoons with sound. He wasn’t content with black and white: he wanted color. The people who worked with Disney often remarked on the freedom he gave them to try new things – and they drew on the culture he built to come up with their own dazzling creations.
One of the best examples of spark is Google. Here’s a company that ten years ago barely registered a ripple. Today, new innovations influence everything from advertising and media to geo-science, disease control, and climate prediction. Several years from now I have a premonition that the Google guys will continue to revolutionize our daily lives at home and at work. Invention by Google of profit and non-profit concepts interacting has placed a progressive, new business on the forefront of internet markets. Performing at the speed of light has, in most aspects, reformed and revitalized many actions we take.
Spark isn’t limited to the private sector. Ted Gaebler, co-author of “Reinventing Government,” sees innovation as one of government’s most important missions: “We need to start engaging public employees’ whole brains,” he says, “not just the expenditure control half. We need to engage the entrepreneurial brain as well.”
Is your organization implementing the practices of high performing organizations? Find out with this free work survey.