We embarked on consciously building Virgin into a brand which stood for quality, value, fun and a sense of challenge. We also developed these ideas in the belief that our first priority should be the people who work for the companies, then the customers, then the shareholders. Because if the staff are motivated then the customers will be happy, and the shareholders will then benefit through the company’s success

the comment about top down, bottom up = the change to servant leadership.

See your organisation chart in your mind, see that it is like a pyramid the inference is the most important person is either chair, ceo. With servant leadership invert the pyramid and see the most important people in your organisation. Typically this the front line staff that meet the customer.

how this works for you in connection with intelligent organisation and the need for servant leadership the ability and the RIGHT to challenge the current method of motivation and structure of delivery in the organisation to enable the creation of intelligent organisation.
Also thinking about it – see it as leaders look after the employee, the employee looks after the customer, the customer looks after that shareholder = happy organisation.

Does your manager/leader help this? Can you see how this is in your organisation.

Eric – i hope so – since both yours seem to be – well at least according the arrvark’d dvd =>

Clearly we need to start our own company so that we can keep idiots from being promoted and ensure that people aren’t hired into positions they don’t have the talent to accomplish. Except then _we’d_ be the annoying bosses that the employees complain about. Dammit!

This is basically the only way I’ve been able to deal with the problem. When faced with someone whose performance is intractably poor, I’ve always tried to “work around” them. The problem is that for some reason, people like this seem to keep getting promoted, and they often end up in managerial positions.

Those are harder to work around – they’re literally like the pointy-haired boss in Dilbert. While you can essentially devote half your time to keeping them “spinning” (with the plate spinning analogy), then use the other half to get the team spinning without them, it a.) sucks up a huge portion of your time, and b.) drives you FUCKING BATSHIT CRAZY.

Recently, I’ve been trying to take a less antagonistic tack with the assumption that everyone comes from a place of good intentions – that everyone *wants* what’s best, but simply doesn’t understand how to achieve it. It’s helped in some cases, and been totally wrong in others. But the main problem is that some people have good intentions, they want the best, but the position that they’re in requires a modicum of talent that they simply don’t have.

In those cases, I don’t have a clue what to do.

The only thing I can think of is to create pockets of excellence, small teams where you do control who’s involved simply by not inviting others. That may be easier said than done in more formal work environments where you don’t choose who is on your team, like, say, the video game industry. Sorry, dude.