Jerre Stead Chairman & CEO of IHS
Talking on the topic of Aligning People and Sustaining a Culture of Innovation from a panel discussion in San Francisco in October 2012 from Chief Executive January/February 2013 p62 :
"We actually create a culture that operates with 100 percent trust of every person in the company. If you don't do that, you'll never maximize innovation. Back when I was CEO at Square D, an 85-year old,very rigid company, a guy brought me two policy books with 650 corporate policies. I took them out in the parking lot and burned them. It worked. I wanted to get folks to understand [that] I trusted them"
Trust is a declarative phenomenon – I trust because I say so. It is the context for accountability and responsibility. It is the condition in which personal initiative thrives. It is the explicit permission to explore, experiment, fail, correct, learn and grow. It is the necessary condition for collaboration, and teamwork.
When trust is withheld or when it is conditional – when they prove themselves, when I have evidence they are trustworthy, and so on – disempowerment is rampant, responsibility is missing and people are made subordinate to the micro-managing whims of their bosses. In other words people have be systematically de-geniused.
2 comments:
Virtues such as trust and honesty have to be given in order to be received. You can't demand trust. You can't demand honesty. But by being honest, by trusting others yourself, you inspire and invite others to trust you and to be honest with you.
It is fascinating to watch the transformation in people when a new leader arrives who, like Jerre Stead, trusts people, respects people, encourages people and gives them the space to act on their own commitments and initiative.
I encourage leaders to see their organizations as a refection of their own way of being. If there is gossiping, undermining, a lack of responsibility and so on in their organization, then be curious – how am I creating this condition.
In coaching executives I borrow from many sources: Dr Mel Levine, a professor of pediatrics, in coaching parents he tells them that children pay little attention to what you say, but they copy what you do. So for executives, what are you modeling that your people are copying – that you complain about, like it's nothing to do with you?
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