Leadership is all about driving the team forward to achieve a common goals and objectives of the organization. Leader must have a clear objective and demonstrate effective leadership capability. In the case of IDEO who were given the project to redesign the shopping cart completely in just five days, didn’t believe in hierarchy of bosses as the boss can’t have the insightful idea of the project and without it the boss can’t lead the team with a clear vision in a very highly innovative work environment. They don’t have a clear leadership position when they start to work with no titles and positions coming in play and all the other people in the team being from a diverse professional background ranging from MBA graduate to one from a medical field. They challenged the process by taking the project and the deadline of five days which shows the ability to take risks and trying out new ideas. In the concept of the practices of exemplary leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2012), the leader challenged the process.
As IDEO provided everyone the same ground to stand on the project development, everyone had the same power of influence. All the members of the team divided in groups and individually were given equal part to play in the project. This makes the member of the team feel valued as they’re contributing towards the completion of the project, making them motivated and want to give their best every moment. The concept of building on the idea instead of criticizing the ideas of others fosters collaboration and evolution of the ideas to mature further. It can also be referred to as locus of control as it makes people think that they’re responsible for the project and contribute even in chaotic and tiring situations.
Teamwork is clearly visible in IDEO and their workstyle with team forming from people ranging from a wide professional background of engineers, MBA graduate, linguist, marketing expert, psychologist and several others. It is hard to predict from outside that the team will jell in and be able to perform but on field, they excel. The trust is there and the person elected as project lead is because of him being good with people and not based on seniority shows the feeling of the compact team.
In addition to that, IDEO is able to influence innovation with proper planning, research by asking the right question to the right people and working as a team listening to all the viewpoints and working towards a solution. Furthermore, the teams work to build on the ideas that they have created and not discredit it, enabling them to further enhance the product innovatively to give shape to an innovative product as required.
To pin point and say a certain leadership style will work and the other won’t is really difficult as there’s nothing that is right in any situation. A leadership style which is right and worked for a group mightn’t work for others. But to answer the question, IDEO leadership style fostered collaboration, teamwork, leadership and innovation as it allows everyone to have their say on the product development equally with no heads. But if there’s someone at a higher up level and tries to influence his/her ideas on the project while not being willing to listen to what the team comes up with, the entire flow will collapse and cause the project to cripple. If the same idea is taken into software development, it’s very unlikely that it’ll work as the development process requires a very rigid process most of the times with clear instructions on what’s needed from the software as the output. So, the leader here must be a person to oversee all the groups or a group leads who is overlooked by the leader and the team must follow the workflow.
References
Kouzes, J., & Posner, B. (2012). The Leadership Challenge (5th ed.). Somerset: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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Leadership is all about driving the team forward to achieve a common goals and objectives of the organization. Leader must have a clear objective and demonstrate effective leadership capability. In the case of IDEO who were given the project to redesign the shopping cart completely in just five days, didn’t believe in hierarchy of bosses as the boss can’t have the insightful idea of the project and without it the boss can’t lead the team with a clear vision in a very highly innovative work environment. They don’t have a clear leadership position when they start to work with no titles and positions coming in play and all the other people in the team being from a diverse professional background ranging from MBA graduate to one from a medical field. They challenged the process by taking the project and the deadline of five days which shows the ability to take risks and trying out new ideas. In the concept of the practices of exemplary leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2012), the leader challenged the process.
As IDEO provided everyone the same ground to stand on the project development, everyone had the same power of influence. All the members of the team divided in groups and individually were given equal part to play in the project. This makes the member of the team feel valued as they’re contributing towards the completion of the project, making them motivated and want to give their best every moment. The concept of building on the idea instead of criticizing the ideas of others fosters collaboration and evolution of the ideas to mature further. It can also be referred to as locus of control as it makes people think that they’re responsible for the project and contribute even in chaotic and tiring situations.
Teamwork is clearly visible in IDEO and their workstyle with team forming from people ranging from a wide professional background of engineers, MBA graduate, linguist, marketing expert, psychologist and several others. It is hard to predict from outside that the team will jell in and be able to perform but on field, they excel. The trust is there and the person elected as project lead is because of him being good with people and not based on seniority shows the feeling of the compact team.
In addition to that, IDEO is able to influence innovation with proper planning, research by asking the right question to the right people and working as a team listening to all the viewpoints and working towards a solution. Furthermore, the teams work to build on the ideas that they have created and not discredit it, enabling them to further enhance the product innovatively to give shape to an innovative product as required.
To pin point and say a certain leadership style will work and the other won’t is really difficult as there’s nothing that is right in any situation. A leadership style which is right and worked for a group mightn’t work for others. But to answer the question, IDEO leadership style fostered collaboration, teamwork, leadership and innovation as it allows everyone to have their say on the product development equally with no heads. But if there’s someone at a higher up level and tries to influence his/her ideas on the project while not being willing to listen to what the team comes up with, the entire flow will collapse and cause the project to cripple. If the same idea is taken into software development, it’s very unlikely that it’ll work as the development process requires a very rigid process most of the times with clear instructions on what’s needed from the software as the output. So, the leader here must be a person to oversee all the groups or a group leads who is overlooked by the leader and the team must follow the workflow.
References
Kouzes, J., & Posner, B. (2012). The Leadership Challenge (5th ed.). Somerset: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.