In-Teams.com

THE ONE THING.
At least since the dawn of the new millennium, the overabundance of choices available to consumers has been compressing product lifecycles. Many organizations refuse to deal with that reality and instead choose to cling to the tactics that used to work (in the last millennium) but no longer do. No matter, the diminished returns achieved by squeezing just a bit more efficiency out of production processes or instituting The Grind* sooner or later manifest themselves in the form of stubborn, flat-lined growth.

As upstarts disrupt industry after industry, upending old business models as they do so, forward-looking organizations have clued in to the fact that the next business wars won't be over things like tools, locations, or First Mover advantage. They will be fought over human capital.

Funny thing, though: Ask 100 business leaders to name the one quality the ideal 21st century employee possesses and they'll always choose traits like "leadership," "job experience," or "the ability to work well with others."

Close, but no cigar.

In a landscape evolving as fast as this one, the singular quality -- the one thing -- every person you hire must possess is the talent, the tendency, and the drive to innovate. And that's because, for the foreseeable future, organizations will be winning or losing based on offense.

*The Grind - a soul-crushing, no-fun-allowed atmosphere that presses metrics-wielding managers into perpetual hiring mode; replacing staff who drop out one after the other either because of burnout, because they care too much about the organization, or because they respect themselves too much to hang around to witness the inevitable.

BIG AND TALL.
Urgency and accountability are the two most crucial sides of the innovation equation. When a company succeeds in grabbing more than its "fair share" of a market, usually it's because it's shipping innovation. But then an interesting phenomenon I call "Mitchell's Law" occurs:

Mitchell's Law states, "As an organization succeeds, the individuals within it succeed also, stifling its ability to succeed further." How so? Well, it's mostly due to an increased fear of failure: All of a sudden, there's something to lose.

And how does this fear manifest itself? By making organizations behave "Small and Short." First, the urgency disappears and the vacuum left behind gets filled with a myriad of excuses: "Why ship it today when we can ship it next week? Let's arrange more meetings. Let's polish. Let's socialize. If every worthwhile idea is going be questioned or criticized anyway, why should we rush?"

And then there's the accountability side: Let's face it. a whole lot of meetings are events in which people sit around a table until someone finally says, "Oh, alright, I'll take the responsibility!"

Your team doesn't require more meetings and you don't need more time. What you need is to commit to embracing a special type of teamwork that specifically neutralizes Mitchell's Law; it's a teamwork I call "Big and Tall."

Big and Tall arises from desperation too but not the desperation of hopelessness. It's the healthy version that comes from being Big enough to realize you must continually innovate in order to thrive but also Tall enough to mean it when you confidently utter the mantra, "Hey, we've got this."