New times, new skills for leaders: How to curate the crowd to drive business growth

Until recently,  leadership models featured a heavy dose of character and charisma-building tips (for inspiring others), sport-analogy-filled guidance (for leading teams) and mindfulness (for thinking deeply before acting).  Because companies were thought to be a combination of well-oiled and efficient machine + high performing competitive team + congregation of loyalists + inspired assemblage of visionaries, their leaders had to be well-equipped to handle all of the twists and turns associated with each of the business models and learn to be tough, popular, in-touch, inspiring, insightful, and forward-thinking, all at once.

New Times call for new leadership models beyond "Father Knows Best"

Get Ready to Lead Differently in 2011
But, these are new times. As we turn the corner from 2010 to 2011, we are less likely to need the skills of a 1950s father (who knew best) and more likely to find inspiration from the talents of a fine editor + conductor + moderator + curator—someone who assembles the very best ideas, innovations, people, and processes, and molds them into something that drives the company forward.

To prepare to be great leaders in the coming year, we need to turn up the volume on an entirely different dynamic—the dynamic of the crowdsourced world, where everyone’s input in the webosphere is visible to many (like customer comments on Yelp or TripAdvisor) and where ideas for our next business innovation can be inspired by brilliance among many, sometimes outside our own organizations.

Learn to Curate the Voices of the Crowd

Worst nightmare: a crowd of Homer Simpsons designing a power plant for my neighborhood

Crowdsourcing is a term that was coined in 2006 by Jeff Howe to describe the phenomenon where the wisdom of crowds drove innovation. I’m not a fan of asking everyone to vote or contribute to everything as a way to build a compelling business strategy. (Worst-case scenario—a crowd of Homer Simpsons designing a nuclear power plant in my neighborhood.) But, businesses preparing for 2011 need to get with the program and try at least one crowdsourced initiative (even on a small scale) to test “the power of many” as a source for ideas somewhere within the organization.

There are entire business models based on crowdsourcing and large-scale polling, like Victors and Spoils, an ad agency that sends creative projects out for bid to people all over the world, InnoCentive, that creates contests to solve problems, and Wikipedia, that relies on contributions of everyone to hone their encyclopedia’s content. And, there are tools like Quirky that help a crowd to collaborate on a group-led design of a product. Quirky’s crowds have already designed grocery store bags that don’t squish or break tomatoes, iPad cradles, and composters.

So, what’s the role of a leader in this new world of many voices? Our recommendations are simple:

1. Put crowdsourcing on your 2011 to do list.
2. Identify an area in your company where casting a wider net of input could lead to a better widget or where reaching out to your customers could provide valuable insights, before you set out on a new course.
3. Commit to a small-scale, crowdsourced project.
4. Develop your own list of leadership attributes that make you great at listening to new voices and responding to crowd-inspired ideas.

Let the crowd’s voice be heard—what are the traits that matter when you’re the curator, and not the one who always knows best?

MUSICAL CODA
New Times by Violent Femmes

Violent Femmes: New Times

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

I’m the guard. At one time

This was rather pleasant

The poets they still had to muse

Over the classicism of clean shoes

But who today still knows a button stick

Well, that’s the new times

That’s the new times

That’s the new times