The following excerpt is from Glenn Llopis’s book The Innovation Mentality. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Today’s employees want more from the workplace. They need their leaders to have their backs. But too many leaders are operating in survival mode and thus don’t share enough of themselves to protect their own domain. Without leaders to sponsor and mentor high-potential employees, many are reckoning with the changing terrain on their own, which puts their organizations at risk.
When brands don’t invest in and retain the right people intelligence, they lose marketplace opportunity. And with a workplace and a marketplace that are becoming younger, more diverse, technologically savvy and globally connected, leaders should become more intent on seeing what lies around, beneath and beyond what they seek for their businesses as a growth strategy. But too many leaders today don’t create workplaces that value diversity of thought. Millennials, women and other diverse populations are more inclined to see, show, grow and share — and value them all — but cannot manage in the wrong types of environments that don’t allow them to be more of themselves.
We see this in the demands Millennials are making on the companies they’re willing to work for — and the kinds of companies they’re creating. They want transparency. They want community environments that give back. They want a new kind of trust based on clarity, consistency and contact rather than hierarchy and authority. They want to agree to devote their talents to a particular organization for as long as it allows their personal brand and its value proposition to develop and remain relevant. And when they can’t get what they require, they move on.
In today’s fast-paced, talent-based, trust-demanding world of work, remaining competitive requires alignment around a set of values, beliefs and behaviors. These values must then become part of and define a company’s culture beyond words in training manuals and annual reports. Culture must be a conscious choice and created by design, not by accident. Without shared values that everyone can embrace and act on, corporate cultures harbor contradictions and conflicts, creating environments where leadership agendas abound and disengaged employees lack the right mindset to perform at their best. By contrast, the shared values that cultivate the best corporate cultures serve as the ultimate platforms to drive growth, innovation and opportunity.
Nurturing shared…