What can the legendary Algonquin Round Table show managers about innovation? Nat Benchley moderated a symposium of literati to celebrate the 90th Anniversary of Dorothy Parker’s Algonquin Round Table last Monday night at Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel. I heard New York Times bestselling author Jane Green, Joel Stein, Paula Froelich, Michael Musto, and Morgan Spurlock engage in repartee to commemorate the original Round Table’s witty conversations.
From 1919 until 1929, a brilliant group of famed communicators– writers, actors, and critics–bantered at lunch in the Algonquin Hotel. Their scintillating ideas and opinions “changed the nature of American comedy and established the tastes of a new period in the arts and theatre” according to Brooks Atkinson, theatre critic for The New Yorker.
What do the imaginative minds of the Round Table tell us about today’s workplace? These thinkers forged Innovation. Innovation can only thrive when communication flows freely. The Round Table creatives listened to, argued against, and built upon each other’s ideas. They did not censure their thoughts in order to protect their jobs like so many people today. Their ideas resulted in best selling books, plays, and top newspaper columns.
Are you fostering an innovative environment where employees are free to state their creative, if differing, ideas? Can you help your staff debate ideas and not attack people?
The more you tease out dissimilar thoughts while you manage
relationships, the greater the cutting-edge work.