You've been at this for three years. Can you document how your change strategy is working?
I'm more interested in anecdotal evidence than hard data. If you get 1,000 anecdotes and they all begin to fit together, then you've got a pattern that makes sense.
For example, a year ago a group of our general managers and I went to a law firm in San Francisco. They were choosing a supplier for all their West Coast offices. It was a significant piece of business.
I started talking about our change strategy. Their office administrator sat up and said, "That's your competitive advantage. Everybody can do everything else, but nobody else is doing this. Can we learn with you?" I told him, "You can if you're our customer. I don't think we'll share much with you if you go with a competitor." We got the business.
What we're learning is a different way of doing business, a different way of engaging people. How do you measure it? Every piece of common sense tells you that if you have a place where people come to work and have fun and find meaning and feel as if they're making a difference, that's a place where the profits will be better.
What have you learned about learning?
Learning is like anything else. The more we do it, the better and quicker people get. People make connections very fast. Learning enables the organization to have a fighting chance to keep up with change.
Also, once you create a culture where learning and inquiry are okay, then you learn from experiments. And you share the information throughout the organization. Information is the food of this natural system.
Where do you see this going in the future?
I believe that a revolution is under way in the world of business and in the world. Just look at what's happened in the last five years -- the barriers that have come down, the new thinking that has come out. The business model hasn't changed this dramatically in 70 years.
If you look around at business, at government, schools, and colleges, isn't it clear that it's time to think very differently? I say to people, "You have a choice. You can be the last of the old generation of managers or you can be the first of a new generation." The revolution is going to happen. It's just a matter of whether you're with it or you're behind it.
Alan M. Webber is a founding editor of Fast Company. Chris Turner can be reached by email (chris_turner@mc.xerox.com)
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