Leading For Innovation And Organizing For Results

Adaptive Man

Famed management guru Peter F. Drucker defined innovation as, "Change that creates a new dimension of performance." That new dimension, of course, is the constant struggle to produce faster and with more efficiency. Drucker goes even further, arguing that businesses exist to accomplish two things only: To engage in marketing activities and to innovate. For today’s leaders, innovation is more important than marketing or any other function. In a rapidly changing marketplace, the creative and innovative contributions of each worker must be successfully tapped.

Given that humans are the product of evolution, a process of continual change and adaptation over thousands of years, how is it that we have come to view ourselves as resistant to further evolution? Does it make any sense that out of some 50 million species, it is only ours that balks at the "c" word, change. Once people and their organizations are viewed as complex and adaptive biological systems, their intractability seems suspect. In fact, it becomes much easier to drive successful organizational change if you begin with the premise that people are creative and able to change as needed.

The...