I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, because I think it’s the best indictment of NIH I’ve run across, but I had to wait until I hadn’t had a conversation about the subject for a while so that my posting wouldn’t appear directed.
“[I]t should be noted that the main reason for the Romans becoming masters of the world was that, having fought successively against all peoples, they always gave up their own practices as soon as they found better ones.” Montesquieu C., Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, Hacket, 1999, p.24 (Wikipedia)
The moral of the story is…obvious, I should think.
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Alexander the Great did something similar. He adopted some of the customs of the cultures that he conquered and had his armies adopt them. This actually led to some problems as some of his senior officers were unhappy with the new customs. So I guess the moral of that one is that it’s not enough for a leader to embrace other customs and best practices; it has to be part of the organization’s culture.
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