Page 119 - Harnessing the Strengths

102 ■ Servant-Leadership in the Intercultural Practice

manner. Servant-leaders, who are concerned with making
their organization a learning organization, often use this
technique.
Learning is a serious process and education is a seri-
ous business. There is also another way of learning that is
common in the business world and in daily life, which is
learning by trial and error. When we make mistakes the
fi rst time round, we learn to quickly correct them. Getting
to know your client, learning a language, trying to help or
love someone, combining cultures to draw in foreigners,
developing innovative activities: it is all a process of falling
down and getting back up again.
But experiential learning is not merely undisciplined
research on a “soft” subject. It is an important learning
process for serious and complex questions in order to elimi-
nate absolutely every mistake. To achieve this, mistakes are
purposely created and corrected in models and simulations,
after which the technique is ready for practice. World-class
companies need to be able to play—serious games—if
they really want to produce innovative products. Michael
Schrage, author of Serious Play, advises, “When gifted
innovators create, don’t listen to what they technically
describe but look at the models they make.” Whether it is
2
a spreadsheet that tests a new fi nancial product or a foam
rubber prototype for a calculator, what interests Schrage is
not the model itself, but the behavior that is inspired by it.
Schrage researches successful prototypes in companies
such as AT&T, Boeing, Microsoft, and DaimlerChrysler.
From this, he describes the sort of culture that favors
innovation:

The essential message of Serious Play is that tomor-
row’s innovations will increasingly be the by-
product of how companies and their customers