Page 167 - The Resilient Organization

154 Part Four: Step 3. Rehearsing a Culture of Resilience

SOME STRATEGIES FOR UNLEASHING HUMAN POTENTIAL

• Engagement and passion for innovation: Focus on the potential con-
tribution the work can make, not its technical execution, as a mana-
gerial challenge (see Chapter 11, “Postcard No. 1 from the Silicon
Valley, California: For the Love of It!—The Resilience of Amateurs”).
• Crowdsourcing: Bring the masses to contribute through social
media and open organizing (see Chapter 12, “Postcard No. 2 from
Hanover, New Hampshire: ‘We Want Our Country Back!’—The
Emergence and Resilience of Open Organizing”).
• Institutional activism: How to develop politically smart strategies
for change no matter where you are in the organizational hierarchy
(see Chapter 13, “Postcard No. 3 from San Jose, California: Tempered
Radicalism and Management Practices That Stick”).
• Inventive experimentation: A passionate call for developing manage-
ment innovations jointly with scholars and practitioners through
inventive experimentation (see Chapter 14, “Postcard No. 4 from
Woodside, California: The Challenge of Inventive Experimentation to
Management Research—Or, Who Is Responsible for Developing
New Management Practice?”).

Still other promising strategies may include these:

• User-driven innovation: Search for already-existing solutions
invented by lead users who are closest to the inventive need.
• Positive psychology: Make use of low-cost ways to increase people’s
motivation (focus on life-giving forces rather than shortcomings or
illnesses).
• Open innovation: Source innovative ideas and solutions from any-
where in the world (similar to crowdsourcing).

Think of the four stories that follow as postcards from the resilience
edge. They are hopefully provocative but also tempered. They tell tales
of different aspects of resilience—of love, of rise to the challenge, of
communities, of countries, of experimentation, and of institutions. The
first postcard is about the amateur in us.