Mozilla Fire

How does your organization compare to IE giant-killer Mozilla's leadership philosophy? 

Published over a year ago in Inc.,  these ideas are far from stale. Lizard Wranlger, Mitchell Baker, offers these touchstones for building a high performance organization that is highly adaptive and delivers deep loyalty, even from people who aren't be paid by Mozilla. Here are her seven principles:

It's the community, stupid. The best course of action isn't necessarily the one that will prove the most immediately profitable. The best decisions are the ones the win the most buy-in from the most people. Just ask. There seem to be no limit to what volunteers are willing and able to do for an organization they believe in. But hardly anyone thinks to ask. Lead by following. Paradoxically, manager can be more influential by judiciously declining to exert control. Nurture renegades. Interesting things happen when people are allowed to break the rules. Firefox, for instance, was created not by Mozilla's main development team, but by a couple of programmers who splintered off in another direction. Think hybrid. Open-source approaches can go further when they're paired with conventional approaches. Find ways to blend community-driven efforts into your current operations, rather than jumping whole-hog into open-source. Think globally. There's a mass of opportunity outside of this continent. Shut up. Getting the most out of people, and winning their loyalty, is sometimes just a matter of listening to them - very carefully and all the time.