Corporations often look to external talent for fresh ideas, new approaches and cultural changes. Yet, when employees leave, frustrated by a lack of promotion, executives complain there is a lack of loyalty. Ironic, isn’t it? In my post on external hires, I mentioned alternatives for bringing in new ideas, perspectives and culture. Below is a list of these ideas that do not require hiring external candidates:

1. Book Clubs

Encourage book clubs – internal and external. Internally, you may start one yourself. What change do you want to make? Find the best book on the topic and start a group to read it together and discuss implications for your company.

2. External training

Sending team members to training outside your organization will inspire new ideas. This is particularly best done when individuals are sent. When you send teams, you may still end up with group think.

3. Online Events & Repositories

Live events like the Chick-fil-A Leadercast and repositories of management training like the American Management Association provide great opportunities for fresh ideas. Live events encourage your team to come together and make a highly visible investment in development. Repositories allow the flexibility of employee schedules.

4.Employee Share

Less common, but a great practice, is contract sharing of employees. If your organization has a strong, non-competitive relationship, such as with partners or vendors, share your employees. You can, in essence, set aside specific projects. The result is each team gains insight to another organization that they can bring back.

5. Consultants

Consultants have a bad reputation with many internal employees. However, when leveraged properly, these individuals can be a great resource for new insights. The key is to hire them for the individual contributors - not the managers. Consultants should be informing, educating and empowering your employees, not overshadowing them.

6. Conferences

Conferences are a mix of many suggestions here. An attendee who really invests in a conference can network with other professionals, gain insight from consultants and attend many presentations on new topics.

7. Professional Networks

Join professional networks – both locally and online. There are countless opportunities for these – even in niche fields. Professional networking groups offer a wealth of knowledge sharing and inspiration opportunities.

8. Lunch & Learn

Team members are passionate about many topics beyond their daily roles. Offer them a forum such as casual lunch presentations, open to the group, that they can present these ideas. These often work for formal knowledge sharing about topics within their role as well.

9. Idea Share Forum

Create a simple discussion forum on your intranet that enables employees to submit new ideas and suggestions. Then, allow the entire organization to rate each submission. The best ideas should rise to the top.

10. Performance Objectives:

Make it an expectation of your employees that they bring in new ideas and alternative approaches by including it in their performance objectives. To ensure this is successful, add a method of measurement (such 1 new idea a week).

This list is just the start. There are many ways to bring new ideas, solutions and culture to your organization. Like anything else worth doing, it just takes the effort to invest in it.

Question: Have you tried these or other solutions? How did it work?

I admit, as a technology manager, I may be a bit biased here. However, at the risk of sounding egotistical, I believe technology managers possess especially strong leadership potential. In fact, there is a growing trend of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) becoming Chief Operating Officers (COOs), Presidents and CEOs. In your own organization, have you noticed how often IT leads the organization in new policies and best practices? I think this is because our colleagues in these departments are among the best educated and experienced in leadership principles, such as the following:

Innovation

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” -  Steve Jobs

Leadership demands an ability to look to the future and understand broad trends in a given industry in order to develop tomorrow’s solutions. Individuals working in technology are always dealing with what’s coming next. Most technology projects are depreciated over 3 years – 5 at most. The useful life is often less. As a result, technology managers are among the best when it comes to innovation.

Risk Management

“The man who knows it can’t be done counts the risk, not the reward.” – Elbert Hubbard

There is a delicate balance of risk and reward in cultural leadership. Organizations need leaders that understand this balance and the degree of risk that is acceptable for their business models. When balancing the costs, development time, dependencies and other risks, technology managers become proficient at risk mitigation.

Communication

“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” – Lee Iacocca

Leaders who can not communicate effectively rarely remain leaders very long. Communication is also constantly required to be effective in technology management. The pace of change in information technology combined with the ever increasing dependency upon technology to do our daily jobs, results in effective communication as a basic skill of IT managers.

Listening

“If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.” – Albert Einstein

While effective communication includes listening, this is a skill so especially in demand for leaders that it deserves it’s own section. Similarly, effective technology managers are required to constantly listen to their customers. Business needs and organization requirements are constantly changing, evolving. As a result, the technology needs of stakeholders are always in flux. Technology managers that effectively build relationships with their customers must be great listeners.

Change Management

“Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

If your organization is not changing with the times, it will lose to the competition. Therefore, leaders must be effective at managing change. The combination of constant innovation in their field, balanced with the communication necessary to support it, make technology managers particularly effective change managers as well.

Cross Functional Support

”Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” – John Maxwell

To be an effective leader for an organization, you must be empathetic to a diverse array of needs. I’ve always said, their are two leadership roles in an organization that must be especially adept at comprehending the broad needs of stakeholders: Chief Financial Officers and Chief Information Officers. CFOs must understand the needs of each department to effectively leverage financial assets. CIOs must understand the business needs of each department to effectively prioritize and deliver information solutions.

So while I may be a bit biased, I’m not surprised to see a growing number of technology managers being recognized for broader leadership roles in their organizations. After all, who better to lead your organization than one who grasps innovation, balances risks, communicates effectively, listens intently, manages change and provides support to all stakeholders?

Question: Do you see benefits in the growing trend of technology managers promoted to broad leadership roles?

The best leaders today understand the power of relationships, especially when it comes to business. As a result, most leaders have a strong network of colleagues that, over the years, become friends. These friendships and business partnerships extend online as well. However, many straggling organizations still insist upon blocking traffic to “social sites”. In contrast, the best led companies do not fear social media – they embrace it. The strongest leaders leverage the benefits of social technology while addressing the risks in a manner that empowers their teams but protects the company. Below are 5 reasons great leaders should not fear social media and a balanced reflection on the risks.

1. Best Friends At Work
Who still believes that work is impersonal? When was it necessary to ensure that your business contacts are not also friends? Need we remind some organizations of the Gallup Organization’s findings from their study of high performing organizations:

Gallup… observed that employees who report having a best friend at work were¹:

• 43% more likely to report having received praise or recognition for their work in the last seven days.
• 37% more likely to report that someone at work encourages their development
• 35% more likely to report coworker commitment to quality.
• 28% more likely to report that in the last six months, someone at work has talked to them about their progress
• 27% more likely to report that the mission of their company makes them feel their job is important
• 27% more likely to report that their opinions seem to count at work.
• 21% more likely to report that at work, they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day.

2. Companies Don’t Buy & Sell, People Do
When it comes to major agreements and long term commitments, people do not simply buy something from a company. Instead, they build partnerships and gain understanding from those partners about that company and their products. Then, business partners create mutually beneficial, value generating agreements together. The net result, after years of success on both ends of those deals is a stronger relationship, often extending into friendships. Those friendships can generate trust and efficiency which transcends employers, creates stronger networks and brings value to the next company by which either partner is employed. No longer does a person bring only their experience and skills to a company that hires them, but they bring the skills, experience and trust of their network as well.

3. Who Do You Want in Your Foxhole?
When times get tough, who do you want in your foxhole with you? Someone you only know based on their numbers, contracts, functional requirements and other formalities? Do you really think such an individual will stick their neck out for you or go that extra mile, unless the compensation is there? Or, do you want someone you’ve known well, whose family you know by name and whose favorite charity you supported last year? If nothing else, it helps to know your business partner’s spouse will yell at them if they screw up a deal they committed to you on.

4. Innovation
Structured, internal, corporate innovation alone is too constrained for today’s global economy. Innovation does not work well in a vacuum. The more creative outlets and inlets you provide your entire staff, the greater the chance they will discover breakthrough innovations. As your staff listens to their friends complain about how the products your competitors make, fail to meet their needs, they will better understand the implications of your engineering, research & development. The more your teams hear their contacts mention the need for someone to invent a solution to xyz problem, the greater the chance your company will create and solve that new market problem.

5. Mass Dialogue
Never before in history, has the opportunity for mass dialogue existed in such a manner as what social media provides. Print media creates mass, one way communication. Television does the same. Static website are no better. Previous communications technologies equate to shouting at your customers. With social media, feedback mechanisms like rated reviews, number of views and frequency of comments provide a means by which leaders can proactively hear the unified voice that is their consumer mass. This creates, in essence, a platform by which leaders can carry on a mass dialogue, like never before.

Dark Side
Don’t get me wrong, their are risks inherent to social media as well. Yes, your employee could reveal some deep, dark, corporate secret. Or, someone claiming to speak on your organization’s behalf may slip and act unprofessionally in a business forum. There may even be a greater volume of technical risks, such as computer viruses, worms and social engineering in these mediums. However, the solution to these risks are the same they’ve always been: education, training, policy and appropriate network security. The solution is not cutting off your company from opportunities for fear of the unknown.

In the end, as technical leaders in your organization, it is up to you to set the expectations of the company with regard to innovative opportunities. This evolution in communication technology is no different. The next time you debate blocking the latest social media site, consider, instead, joining the site and putting your great staff to task in finding the right way to keep that channel open for the corporation to leverage all benefits, without exposing you to the usual risks.

1. http://gmj.gallup.com/content/511/Item-10-Best-Friend-Work.aspx July 10, 2009.

I should preface this one by stating it’s interesting what one’s mind thinks about when you are up for a 4 AM feeding with your newborn. However, I was sitting here staring at our Wii Balance Board during this particular feeding and remembered seeing some pretty fascinating hacks online.

The Wii system itself is pretty interesting. The use of relatively simple technology that is only moderately evolved from the days of the original Nintendo’s Duck Hunt emphasizes the ability of innovation in user interface to produce results as great as, or better than evolutions in graphics. But take that one step further and make these relatively simple technologies an open source platform for others to tweak and you have a plethora of opportunities for new Virtual Reality applications of inexpensive technologies.

Johnny Lee has shown how a nominal additional investment in hardware can produce a digital white board and highlights the benefits for educational institutions. He also shows how reversing the sensor bar and controller can produce a head tracking, VR helmet-like imitation. More recently, the Wii Balance Board has been hacked by guys in a German Artificial Intelligence lab and can be used to navigate Google Earth and virtual environments like World of Warcraft and Second Life. Who wouldn’t love to surf, both physically and figuratively, over their city anyway?

It is fascinating how, like so many successful evolutions of technology, Virtual Reality is not hitting us overnight with some single leap in evolution like so many predicted. Instead, it is creeping in among us through the continuous evolution of innovative interface implementations.

For more material on this topic, check out YouTube Wii Hacks and / or the clips below. As a bonus, in Johnny’s Lee’s famous hack video below, he mentions how YouTube has really expedited the evolution of innovations like these. Roughly quoting Johnny, “In 5 months an idea has gone from experimentation on my desktop to a commercially available product.”

Johnny Lee’s Hack Video, including VR head sensor:

The Wii Balance Board Hacks from Germany: