Online hierarchies are inherently dynamic. The moment someone stops adding value to the community, his influence starts to wane.
Over time, a successful company will acquire much in the way of resources and momentum, and these things often insulate it from reality once it has stopped being successful.
An adaptable company is one that captures more than its fair share of new opportunities. It's always redefining its 'core business' in ways that open up new avenues for growth.
You can't build an adaptable organization without adaptable people - and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to.
In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge.
It's not unusual for a would-be entrepreneur to get turned down half a dozen times before finding a willing investor - yet in most companies, it takes only one 'nyet' to kill a project stone dead.
To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous.
Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today.
In most languages, 'control' is the first synonym for the word 'manage.' Control is about spotting and correcting deviations from pre-defined standards; thus to control, one must first constrain.
The fact is, society is made more hospitable by every individual who acts as if 'do unto others' really was a rule.
While one should never underestimate the ability of risk-besotted financiers to wreak havoc, the real threat to capitalism isn't unfettered financial cunning. It is, instead, the unwillingness of executives to confront the changing expectations of their stakeholders.
It's not just that individuals have lost faith in the integrity of their leaders, it's that they no longer believe society's most powerful institutions are acting in their interests.
You have to train people how to be business innovators. If you don't train them, the quality of the ideas that you get in an innovation marketplace is not likely to be high.
During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic.
I live a half mile from the San Andreas fault - a fact that bubbles up into my consciousness every time some other part of the world experiences an earthquake. I sometimes wonder whether this subterranean sense of impending disaster is at least partly responsible for Silicon Valley's feverish, get-it-done-yesterday work norms.
Truth be told, there are lots of companies that provide exemplary phone support. DirecTV, Virgin America and Apple are a few that regularly exceed my expectations.
In an ideal world, an individual's institutional power would be correlated perfectly with his or her value-add. In practice, this is seldom the case.