Innovation and Servant-Leadership, part II
A recent post by Seth Godin caught my eye when thinking about ways that servant-leadership and innovation go together. His post, Bureaucracy=Death, has an excellent suggestion from a book of his:
Appoint a CNO—chief no officer. No longer can someone say no to an idea and leave it at that. If you want to turn something down, you’ve got to pass it on to your boss. Then either he says yes or gives it to his boss. For a "no" to be official, it’s got to be approved by the chief no officer and countersigned by every manager along the way.
Seth asks an excellent follow-up question: And what happens to any organization that creates a culture where maintaining the status quo requires your boss to give you the okay?
Appoint a CNO—chief no officer. No longer can someone say no to an idea and leave it at that. If you want to turn something down, you’ve got to pass it on to your boss. Then either he says yes or gives it to his boss. For a "no" to be official, it’s got to be approved by the chief no officer and countersigned by every manager along the way.
Seth asks an excellent follow-up question: And what happens to any organization that creates a culture where maintaining the status quo requires your boss to give you the okay?
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