By: Chuck Frey
Respect is a key ingredient for building a long-term, sustainable innovation competence within any organization.
Respect is a key ingredient for successfully bringing a new creation to market. In other words, innovation. At the highest level, senior managers should have respect for both the future of the organization and for the people they are responsible for guiding.
The senior management team needs to be seen by the troops as having their best interests in mind, and not just pumping up the stock price. If the senior managers are viewed within the company as being self-serving and unconcerned about the long-term success of the firm, the creativity and focus needed across the company will not flourish.
On a daily basis, people need to maintain civility and recognize the needs of their coworkers, as well as to maintain a respect for the growth of their organizations. With all the technology available via texting, e-mail, Twitter, and other communication tools, people are splitting their attention into smaller bits of time with increasing complexity of information. Communication (i.e., both understanding and being understood) is very difficult under the best of circumstances, and common respect for one another is the platform humans use to create the trust necessary to enable communication.
Respect for the customer is the baseline for building any product or service company. As consumers, we have all purchased products that failed to meet our expectation, or the expectations the vendor has set through their branding efforts. We have all encountered poor service and been frustrated by a supplier’s seeming lack of concern for our needs.
To effectively and profitably find and meet the needs of customers, it is vital to remember that the customer or user is a person with complex human needs. Respect for and understanding of these needs is the basis for building a long-term, sustainable innovation competence within any organization.