In a February post, I suggested we see organizations like we see nectarines: sweet stuff on the outside, pit in the middle. The sweet stuff is the value the organization delivers to the world in the form of products and services. “Sweet workers” are the “operatives” directly responsible for delivering that value. They are the firemen who put the water on the fire, the basketball players who put the ball into the hoop, the soldiers who stand guard on the wall, and so on.
In a more recent post, I suggested we scrap the high-low idea of hierarchy for the in-out idea of innerarchy. Staying with the sweet-on-the-outside and pit-in-the-middle way of seeing organizations, I suggested we see the operative workers as the “sweet workers,” the outside parts of the organization that touch the customers, and all the non-operative workers as the “pit workers,” the inside parts of the organization.
Effective leaders are “sweeter leaders.” They know the difference between the sweet stuff and the pit. And their goal is to maximize the sweet stuff, not grow the pit. Ineffective leaders, on the other hand, confuse pit and sweet.
What would happen if everyone on the inside of the organization, meaning all the administrative staff and managers whose whole existence should be to support and coordinate the sweet workers, focused completely on growing the sweet instead of getting so pit-focused? What would happen if everyone saw themselves as “sweeter leaders”?
