Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Introduction – what are strategic conversations?
- 2 The strategic conversations imperative
- 3 Strategic conversations in the wild
- 4 Engaging employees in management’s agenda
- 5 Strategizing and the leaders’ role
- 6 Putting strategic conversations into practice – innovation communities
- 7 Conversation trumps structure – new norms for dialog
- 8 Strategic conversations across geographies, generations, and the multitude
- 9 Engaging the world outside in the conversation
- 10 Creating a self-reinforcing innovation platform – collateral benefits
- 11 Measuring the future
- 12 Epilogue – on managing
- Further reading
- Notes
- Index
4 - Engaging employees in management’s agenda
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Introduction – what are strategic conversations?
- 2 The strategic conversations imperative
- 3 Strategic conversations in the wild
- 4 Engaging employees in management’s agenda
- 5 Strategizing and the leaders’ role
- 6 Putting strategic conversations into practice – innovation communities
- 7 Conversation trumps structure – new norms for dialog
- 8 Strategic conversations across geographies, generations, and the multitude
- 9 Engaging the world outside in the conversation
- 10 Creating a self-reinforcing innovation platform – collateral benefits
- 11 Measuring the future
- 12 Epilogue – on managing
- Further reading
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Circumstances vary so enormously in war, and are so indefinable, that a vast array of factors has to be appreciated . . . The man responsible for evaluating the whole must bring to his task the quality of intuition that perceives truth at every point.
Carl von Clausewitz, On warOn the surface, the two companies couldn’t be more dissimilar. To get to Rite-Solutions headquarters, you turn off the strip malls of Route 114 in Middletown, Rhode Island onto a nondescript side road named Corporate Place. The building is in a business park like thousands across America, definitely not a candidate for a write-up in Architectural Digest. There is even something generic about the company’s name. Its CEO and co-founder, Jim Lavoie, dresses business casual. By way of contrast, Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal’s (KBS+) headquarters occupies a spacious loft in Manhattan’s ultra-hip Tribeca neighborhood. KBS+’s Chairwoman and CEO Lori Senecal is as sophisticated as her surroundings and reputedly dresses in one color, black. Rite-Solutions’ 200 employees design mission-critical software for the Department of Defense and gaming industry. KBS+’s 500 employees help market premier brands like BMW and Puma.
Despite their differences, both companies evolved convergently (as biologists would put it) to adopt a common philosophy that allows them to capture lightening in a bottle. They both believe that success depends upon harnessing the genius of their employees to shape their organizations’ future. Senecal works to ensure that every employee “at all levels of the company adopts a growth mentality and essentially is a creative entrepreneur.” If anything, Lavoie’s vision is even more radical. Rite-Solutions is an employee-owned company that eschews the notion of hierarchy entirely; every employee in every function has an equal opportunity to contribute to shaping the business’ strategy.
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- Information
- Strategic ConversationsCreating and Directing the Entrepreneurial Workforce, pp. 48 - 70Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014