There I was, listening to a sales rep give a product presentation, laden with jokes as stale as day-old doughnuts. What’s more, he made the mistake of complaining about how much influence their software engineers had. He didn’t get it. Many executives in the Silicon Valley do.
Innovation allows software companies to compete and remain viable. When a company embraces an organic organization model, they enable employees to connect with one another and share ideas. In essence, the software engineers are empowered to create new products that will drive revenue gains and market share.
Still, there remain many companies that create vertical jobs and embrace hierarchical management models. They pay lip service to empowering employees--tin words that fall on deaf ears.
In The New Pioneers, Thomas Petzinger suggests that the connections created by each employee’s ensemble of relationships represents their true value. He captures a quote from David Weinberger:
"A sign of value to the organization will not be standing at the top of the heap but having the most hyper-linked roles. Integrative knowledge will become at least as important as specialized knowledge."
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