Creating Creation Companies
(Adapted from a Paper presented by Barry Mapp in 1994 at the ERIK Network European Conference “Regional Successes in Creating and Connecting Companies – European Union Perspectives”)
Let’s take a preliminary look at the differences between a “Compliance Company” and a “Creation Company”. These are terms that I like, that were first penned by Tom McGehee in his book Whoosh.
Today a key business challenge is to recognise and realise the full potential of each organisation. However when we continue to lead and manage our organisations in the same way as we have always done, we are going to get what we have always got. The call to lead and manage in a totally different way – to transform “western management”- was first issued by W.Edwards Deming. Many have cherry-picked from Deming’s ideas but few have attempted to transform management along the lines that he proposed.
Most organisations continue to be run in “the old ways” based on “old psychology”,“old science” and “old management” principles (each of these terms will be explored more fully in later blogs). As Russell Ackoff pointed out a few years ago, most business schools are part of the problem because they still teach “old way” approaches. However more and more iconoclasts of our era, from different fields and domains, are backing the need to transform management thinking. Tom McGehee is one of many calling for a change in our thinking. He calls the transformed organisation a “Creation Company” and the old-style organisation a “Compliance Company” – terms that I will use also.
Compliance Companies, whether they realise this or not, erect barriers to change and innovation by insisting on control of (1)information, (2)resources and (3)decision making, in order to preserve the status quo. In such companies (which remain the vast majority) people have never been trusted to supervise themselves and inspect their own work. People are never able to do their best efforts because the management systems get in the way.
Coming Next: So what makes a “Creation Company”?
