TODAYS INSPIRATION
How brilliantly managed chaos sparks success inside Nike, Box, Cisco, Foursquare, Intuit, and more.
Photos by Adam Fedderly
About This Series
Clara Shih
Youngest Starbucks board member, author of The Facebook Era.
You have to optimize for the first derivative. Even the biggest, most traditional companies must be more nimble.
Troy Carter
Lady Gaga’s business manager runs a high-impact, big-money global operation with just 20 people.
We’re in a new era, and that better get you excited. Being scared by change doesn’t help.
“YOU HAVE TO BUILD AN ORGANIZATION THAT IS CAPABLE OF ACTING LIKE A STARTUP BUT CAN OPERATE AT LARGE SCALE SIMULTANEOUSLY.”
Aaron Levie
27-year-old college dropout, refocused his cloud-computing firm to serve huge clients like P&G.
Businesses need a cultural DNA that encourages a rhythm ofconstant reinvention.
Open Revolution
“LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT AMBIGUITY. YOU NEED A BALANCE BETWEEN COMMAND-AND-CONTROL AND BOTTOM-UP. IT’S NOT ONE OR THE OTHER.”
Padmasree Warrior
Has 1.4 million Twitter followers, meditates daily, writes haiku.
With so much information available, leaders need time away to clear the noise, so they can identify the important signals.
- “Sometimes it’s good to see raw ideas at a basic level.” –Mark Parker, CEO of Nike, which employs 44,000 staffers around the globe
- “Today, we need to listen more carefully. I read what people say on Twitter, my friends on Path, in addition to formal media. I look for patterns, and then I post questions back to my network.” –Padmasree Warrior, chief strategy and technology officer at 67,000-employee Cisco Systems
- “If you don’t go to every level of your company, you distance yourself from the marketplace and from your people.” –Aaron Levie, CEO of 600-person Box
Shared Consciousness
“A SMARTER ORGANIZATION NEEDS MULTIPLE, DIFFERENT KINDS OF BRAINS, OF INTELLIGENCE, RATHER THAN SPECIALISTS.”
John Landgraf
Provocative story-telling, fromThe Shield to Louie, has driven up ratings among all age groups
MANTRA
Conservative tried-and-true strategies are a recipe for disaster in a fast-moving economy.
Small Advantages
“WE HAD TO CHANGE OUR STRUCTURE TO BECOME A NETWORK. WE HAD TO GO FOR FLEXIBILITY.”
Stanley McChrystal
Ran Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and Afghanistan; commanded all U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan.
MANTRA
The wisest decisions are made by those closest to the problem–regardless of their seniority.
At Nike, Parker sees his role as identifying, and disrupting, areas that threaten to become static. “There’s a traditional way that shoes have been manufactured for hundreds of years,” he offers as an example. “If we said, ‘Okay, we have the formula,’ that’s myopic.” Earlier this year, Nike introduced Flyknit, a technology that allows shoes to be sewn from thread, rather than cut from bolts of fabric–the result being a lighter shoe that uses less material. “You look at the potential,” says Parker, “it could be game-changing.”
The Cadence of Change
“THE OLD DAYS ARE LONG GONE. WE’D WORRY ABOUT USING ONE TOOL ACROSS THE WHOLE ORGANIZATION. IT HAS TO BE SITUATIONAL.”
Terri Kelly
Runs sprawling 10,000-person company that pumps out multiple innovation.
MANTRA
It’s easier to start with creativity, and then put structures around that, than the other way around.
Intuit also maintains a three-year road map that is just as fluid. “We have a decision-by-experiment culture,” Smith explains. “Instead of declaring, ‘Here is the future functionality we will have in 24 months and 36 months’ and doggedly building to that, we are now running experiments in hours and days. If something works, we double-down on it. If it doesn’t, we discard it and move on.”
Are Smith’s ambitions for his company and his people high? Of course–almost impossibly so. But his high-wire, paradoxical management has worked. Faced with possible commoditization from free Internet services, Intuit has maintained its leadership through a combination of new products and smart acquisitions, including the personal-finance aggregator Mint.com. Over the five years Smith has been CEO, Intuit stock is up 105%. That measure of success is just as validating now as it was in the old economy.
The End of Coddling
Angela Blanchard