I spent most of the extended weekend relaxing and catching up on a week’s worth of errands in the wake of the SHRM Annual Conference (SHRM15).

In doing so, I happened to go through some of my notes and remembered that one the speakers at a session I attended also has a TED Talk online.

The session was “The Emerging World of Work in the Participation Age”, with Chuck Blakeman, and it was incredible.

In the session, Blakeman described how organizations that work in what he referred to as “the participation age” were significantly more successful than those that don’t. Industrial age practices of management – or the way we’ve always done it – don’t bring out the best in an organization’s employees.

Participation Age organizations do this, and they do it with great results. In his session, Blakeman quoted the co-founder of WL Gore & Associates as follows:

“The simplicity and order of an authoritarian organization make it an almost irresistible temptation. Yet it is counter to the principles of individual freedom and smothers the creative growth of man.” – Bill Gore

The TED Talk linked below covers a lot of the same material that Blakeman included in our 1-hour session at SHRM15. Of course, at the conference he went into much more detail, but you can gather a lot of the same key insights from this 15-minute video.

Check it out:

Also, be sure to check out his website for articles on the same subject and give him a follow on Twitter!

Related articles from his website:

• Everybody Should Play the Business Owner’s Game, Not Just Owners
• 3 Major Workplace Shifts You Need to Pay Attention To
• Working 9 to 5 Is Antithetical To Being Human