Polly LaBarre | Management Innovation eXchange

Inventing the Future Together: Introducing the Hackathon Pilot

By Polly LaBarre on March 10, 2011

Why can't we build organizations that are as resilient, inventive, inspiring, and accountable--as human--as the people who work within them? That's the driving question behind and the dream fueling the MIX. Of course, it's not just our dream--it's the shared dream of countless workers and leaders in every kind of organization around the world. Hundreds of you have already stood up for that dream with your contributions--your inspiring stories, pioneering ideas, experimental designs, passion, energy and time--here on the MIX. We are so energized by and grateful for those contributions--and we need more! We also know--and you've told us--that this is not enough. If we want to create what amounts to the open source code for Management 2.0, we can't just rely on the individual contributions of management innovators everywhere--we need those energetic and inspired contributors to work together to make real progress on a set of make-or-break challenges. http://www.managementexchange.com/moonshots That's why we're rolling out a set of power tools and new platforms for collaboration among MIXers. I'm thrilled to announce the launch of the first of those: the Hackathon Pilot--an experiment designed to coordinate efforts around tackling the Communities of Passion moonshot, http://www.managementexchange.com/moonshots/unleash-capability/enable-communities-of-passion explore new modes of collective creative...

Inventing the Future Together: Introducing the Hackathon Pilot

By Polly LaBarre on March 10, 2011

Why can't we build organizations that are as resilient, inventive, inspiring, and accountable--as human--as the people who work within them? That's the driving question behind and the dream fueling the MIX. Of course, it's not just our dream--it's the shared dream of countless workers and leaders in every kind of organization around the world. Hundreds of you have already stood up for that dream with your contributions--your inspiring stories, pioneering ideas, experimental designs, passion, energy and time--here on the MIX. We are so energized by and grateful for those contributions--and we need more! We also know--and you've told us--that this is not enough. If we want to create what amounts to the open source code for Management 2.0, we can't just rely on the individual contributions of management innovators everywhere--we need those energetic and inspired contributors to work together to make real progress on a set of make-or-break challenges . That's why we're rolling out a set of power tools and new platforms for collaboration among MIXers. I'm thrilled to announce the launch of the first of those: the Hackathon Pilot --an experiment designed to coordinate efforts around tackling the Communities of Passion moonshot...

Announcing the Winners of the HCI Human Capital M-Prize

By Polly LaBarre on March 9, 2011

Last night at the Human Capital Institute Summit in Atlanta, the MIX team announced the winners of the first Human Capital M-Prize.

We are delighted to share them with you:

Lisa Haneberg (Grand Prize) for her HACK
Start with a better question to create a better talent management system: the Talent Management Cloud

Joris Luijke for his STORY
Atlassian’s Big Experiment with Performance Reviews

Doug Solomon for his STORY
The Tube: IDEO Builds a Collaboration System that Inspires Through Passion

The judges ( Colin Price, Director of Global Organization Practice, McKinsey & Company, Marcus Buckingham, speaker and author of Now, Discover Your Strengths , John Boudreau, Center for Effective Organizations, University of Southern California, and Gary Hamel and the MIX team) were especially impressed by the intensive effort the ten semifinalists put into the final round—they gathered and incorporated feedback from peers, judges and the MIX team, polished their entries, and most importantly, connected with each other.

At last night's...

We Want Your Vote—And Your Ideas!

By Polly LaBarre on February 18, 2011

As we close out the semifinal round of the HCI Human Capital M-Prize , we wanted to offer up a quick take on each of the entries in the running—and encourage all of you to rate the entries, add your ideas and questions in the comments field.

These contributions are rich with ideas and insights around unleashing passion, inspiring extraordinary contribution, promoting freedom, inviting participation (even from the most unlikely sources), and subverting hierarchal power and control. Dig into these and offer up your own. This is just the beginning of our collective journey in creating organizations that are truly fit for human beings. We want to hear your voice!

The semifinal round ends on February 20th—winners will be announced at the HCI Human Capital Summit in Atlanta on March 8th and here on the MIX.

How to Start a Movement in Your Company
Story by David Choe
An inspiring 3-part narrative of real-world transformation led by an in-the-trenches innovator who unleashed a “swarm of initiative” around an urgent business challenge. Choe, a director of strategy at the $1 billion-firm Tyco Electronics, tells the story of taking...

When Best Practices Aren't Good Enough—Putting the Performance Review on Review

By Polly LaBarre on February 15, 2011

It's one of the toughest—and most important—questions in business: How do you mobilize and unleash the best gifts of every single person in your organization? And how do you create an environment and systems for work that ignite extraordinary passion, imagination, and initiative?

Few leaders would discount that imperative, yet it's still remarkable to encounter an organization in which people practices are built around human flourishing rather than designed to satisfy systems. Which is why it's so refreshing and instructive to spend a little time with the companies and individual represented in our outstanding batch of semifinalists for the HCI Human Capital M-Prize . They offer up so many insights and lessons for our collective project here on the MIX.

Take, for instance, the eight-year-old Australian software company Atlassian . Founded with the intent to become "a different kind of software company," Atlassian has also developed a very different way of working. The result: the company stands out as much for its fresh, energetic, relentlessly clever approach to engaging and unleashing people as it does for the software development and collaboration tools it makes.

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