Action learning: part 2

 

Delegation, letting people find their own way, is one of the key factors in productivity and innovation. Google allow their employees one day in five to do what they want – so long as they record the results. 50% of their new stuff comes from this day; not just ideas – products. Alistair Mant is fond of claiming that the East India Company had the biggest and most successful management development programme ever. They hired the bright sons of the British middle class and sent them off to India to rule over pieces of it the size of Wales. The only stipulation was that each 'deputy commissioner' had to send a monthly report back to London. Any advice that might have been offered would have been laughably irrelevant by the time ships and horses had delivered the mail. This organisation of DCs stayed in power for 100 years and – by the standards of the day – the commissioners were resoundingly successful at the job they’d been hired to do.