If You're Part of the Cream, You're Gonna Get Licked

Submitted by Holly on Wed, 06/16/2010 - 5:37am
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Charlene LiCharlene Li

Since Anna and I are in DC doing recon for 11NTC (you're coming, right?), we're doing our best to take advantage of all the awesome that DC has to offer.  Lucky for us, our great pals Maddy and Lindy at Social Fish organized a Buzz 2010 breakfast with Charlene Li, who just released her latest book, Open Leadership.

Like us, Charlene thinks that leadership isn't just at the top.  Everyone can be a leader in their organizations, and everyone can bring openness - through social media - to their work.  The tension - that funny feeling we get about opening up - she says comes from the fact that this new openness is driven by relationships.  Relationships, at least good ones, aren't about control. 

The fear of open, the fear of not being in control manifests itself in some interesting ways organizationally. At a pre-workshop breakfast she pointed out what she calls "The Oreo Effect."  Often, she sees senior managers and people at the bottom of the org chart pushing for openness, meeting resistance at that middle manager level - the cream of the Oreo. If openness is flattening our organizations and shortening the distance between the lowest rung of our org chart and the top, then what happens to those folks in the middle?

They get licked.

Unless they get on board and figure out how to marry the push for social media with the goals for their departments and demonstrate real meaning for the work their staff are engaging in. Which brings us to Charlene's definition of Open Leadership: "Having the confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control while inspiring a commitment from people to accomplish goals."

For those who are ready to dive into open leadership, Charlene is as practical as she was in Groundswell, sharing elements of openness to help you get started.  First, she outlines tactics for information sharing in an open way:

 

  • Explaining (here's why we made this choice)
  • Updating (here's the latest news on this issue)
  • Conversing (responding to dialogue)
  • Open Mic (tell us what you think)
  • Crowdsourcing (help us solve this problem)
  • Platforms (setting standards and data exchange)

 

How many of these elements do you employ at your organization? I like to think that at NTEN we implement a lot of these, but I had to think long and hard about that when Charlene asked us to then conduct an openness audit and score how open we are in all of these information sharing areas.  I won't tell you what I scored NTEN at. Instead, I'll first as YOU to score us.

Complete the NTEN openness audit.

Tell us how good you think we are at being open!  I'll follow up with a post comparing your scores to the one I gave us.  AND - one lucky survey respondent will get a SIGNED copy of Charlene's new book. Oh, and you can get a copy of the audit for your own organization as well.

And in the meantime, let us know - are you the cookie or the cream?  And what are you doing about it?