LEVERAGE POINTS for a New Workplace, New World
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September 21, 2000 Issue 4

Welcome to LEVERAGE POINTS for a New Workplace, New World! This e-bulletin, free from Pegasus Communications, delivers news and ideas to help you create both a thriving business and a rewarding workplace community. LEVERAGE POINTS spotlights evolutionary advances in leadership, change management, personal development, and organizational design. Every issue delivers nuggets of innovative thought, practical knowledge, and pointers to key resources in the field. Please forward LEVERAGE POINTS to your colleagues and friends!

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IN THIS ISSUE
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WORDS OF WISDOM
R. I. Fitzhenry, Tom Stoppard

FROM THE FIELD
Self-Organizing to Success: Semco's Experiment in Managing Without Control

SHOP TALK
Is Emotional Intelligence a Fad or a Fundamental Skillset? and Reader Response to the Role of Technology in Learning

LEARNING LINKS
Drifting Goals: The Challenge of Conflicting Priorities by Daniel H. Kim

NEW FROM PEGASUS
Special Discounts for LEVERAGE POINTS Subscribers on THE LEMMING DILEMMA: LIVING WITH PURPOSE, LEADING WITH VISION

NOTABLE EVENTS
December 4-5, 2000. System Dynamics for Senior Managers, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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WORDS OF WISDOM
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"Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity."
--R. I. Fitzhenry

"A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong."
--Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (Faber and Faber, 1993).

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FROM THE FIELD
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Self-Organizing to Success: Semco's Experiment in Managing Without Control

For the past 20 years, Brazilian-based Semco has been "able to transform itself continuously and organically--without formulating complicated mission statements and strategies, announcing a bunch of top-down directives, or bringing in an army of change-management consultants." How? By giving employees freedom to choose their projects, their schedules, their career tracks--even the company's strategic direction.

Sound like a recipe for anarchy? On the contrary, owner Ricardo Semler believes that this laissez-faire philosophy has led to Semco's success in adapting to the needs of a changing business world. Whereas in the early 1990s, the company manufactured pumps and washing machines, today, through employee initiatives, almost 75 percent of its business is in services. Semler anticipates that in 2001, 25 percent of revenues will come from new Internet ventures.

Semler believes that people act in their own best interests. So, employees can take as much leave time as they want, but they must reapply for their jobs every six months. They also choose how they are compensated, based on 11 different options. These policies encourage self-regulation rather than top-down enforcement and control.

Semco's unorthodox approach has paid off. In 10 years, revenues at the $160-million company have quadrupled, and the staff has grown from 450 to 1,300 employees. The turnover rate in the past six years has been less than 1 percent.

Source: "How We Went Digital Without a Strategy" by Ricardo Semler, Harvard Business Review, September-October 2000.

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SHOP TALK
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Is Emotional Intelligence--as defined by Daniel Goleman
and others--a fad or a fundamental skillset?

Please take a minute to share your thoughts about this issue at the Leverage Points Discussion forum, part of our new online Community Bulletin Board. Go to our Community Bulletin Board and Forums, and look for the Leverage Points Discussions forum. Selected comments will be shared in a future issue of LEVERAGE POINTS.

From Issue #3:
How can technology help--or hinder--the learning process?

Useful technology is inexpensive, involves human beings, and actually addresses the issues relevant to that moment. For instance, to discover where to focus efforts in relation to customer complaints, it is adequate to use Post-Its or just a whiteboard and a pen to sort the complaints into categories. No tabulation software or forms are necessary.

Gadgetry, often electronic, always inhuman, is technology's common guise today. Thus, we have "odorless" videoconferences, teleconferences, and software for training. But for technology to help the learning process, it must perform tasks that we cannot perform or that would take us years to perform (e.g. electronic searches), or it must complement our sensory apparatus (e.g, by helping us organize information into useable chunks).

Technology helps when it complements our senses. It hinders when it attempts to bypass or replace them.

Brendan Flanagan
EDS EMEA Training & Development

Readers who wish to continue this discussion are invited to go to our new bulletin board in the Community section of our Web site at Community Bulletin Board and Forums. Look for the LEVERAGE POINTS Discussions forum.

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LINKS TO LEARNING
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Drifting Goals: The Challenge of Conflicting Priorities
by Daniel H. Kim

You arrive at 9:00, when your first meeting at your new job is scheduled to start. You find that you're the only one there. Around 9:05, some of your coworkers show up, and by 9:10, everyone has arrived. So, what do you learn from this experience? Probably the same thing the others have learned--that the real starting time for meetings is never the stated time.

This is a common example of the "Drifting Goals" archetypal structure. We say 9:00 a.m., but we tacitly accept that it's O.K. to begin the meeting late. So why don't we just schedule the meeting for 9:15? Because then it's likely to start at 9:30! It seems that once we compromise a little, we are headed down a slippery slope with no bottom in sight.

One leverage point would be to emphasize the importance of starting as scheduled and to ask what it would take to meet that commitment. We may discover that 9 a.m. is not the best time to accomplish this goal because of competing variables such as traffic and urgent messages to return. The principle is to establish the importance of meeting a specific goal in the context of multiple goals, and then to set up structures to minimize the conflicts between competing priorities.

Read the complete article.

Readers who wish to discuss this topic are invited to go to our new bulletin board in the Community section of our Web site at http://www.pegasuscom.com/community.html. Just click on the Community Bulletin Board and Forums link.

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NEW FROM PEGASUS
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Special Discounts for LEVERAGE POINTS Subscribers

THE LEMMING DILEMMA: LIVING WITH PURPOSE, LEADING WITH VISION is the third volume in our popular Learning Fables Series. This book introduces the crucial organizational learning discipline of personal mastery--the ongoing process of discovering what you really care about and working with resolve to achieve it. Through October 15, subscribers to LEVERAGE POINTS can order THE LEMMING DILEMMA for the discounted price of $14.95, $5.00 off the cover price. THE LEMMING DILEMMA TRANSPARENCY MASTERS, designed to help you use the book in trainings or groups, are available for $54.95, $15.00 off the cover price. To order, go to http://www.pegasuscom.com and use the "Search and Order" function to locate the items in the online catalog and add them to the Shopping Cart. Enter the Priority Code TLD to receive the discounted price for either or both titles. Discounts will not appear on your order confirmation page, but will be deducted from the charge to your credit card.

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NOTABLE EVENTS
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December 4-5, 2000. System Dynamics for Senior Managers, a program in the MIT Sloan School Executive Series on Management and Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This intensive program for senior technical and general managers explores a set of innovative management tools for brainstorming, dynamic thinking, understanding complex interrelationships, tracking the behavior of business systems over time, and creating the building blocks of successful business strategies. For more information, contact Maureen Tracy at 781-239-1111.

For a complete calendar of events, go to
http://www.pegasuscom.com/calendar.html.

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FINDING PEGASUS
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