Since Steve Jobs died last week, much has been said and written about his approach to business and product development—especially his belief that “a lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.” In a post to last week’s Harvard Business Review’s HBR Blog Network, Roberto Verganti, author of Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean, discusses Jobs’s management style. “There was orthodox management, and then there was Steve Jobs,” Verganti writes, adding that perhaps Jobs's most interesting technique was to manage by meaning. “[This] requires recognizing that people are human: they have rational, cultural and emotional dimensions, and they appreciate the person who creates a meaning for them to embrace.” Verganti adds, “Jobs also offered meaning to his employees. . . . Jobs infused them with a sense of mission.”
What are you doing to create meaning and infuse your employees with a sense of mission about safety? Could safety be something that management (at least) won’t truly know it wants until you show it to them?
Read the full HBR blog post here.
A Blog From the American Society of Safety Engineers