This article was taken from the April issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
Set goals, then back off
In November 1999, Henry Stewart made a decision. Then 40 years old, the founder and CEO of Happy Computers had been running the London-based company since 1990, and it was turning over around £1.1 million a year.
But he wanted to grow the business further, so he set his sights on the e-learning market. "I gave our trainer Lucy Blake, who was in charge of the project, clear instructions not to create our own materials but to go away and see how we could use other people's,"
Stewart says. "Two months later she came back and guess what she's done? She'd created all her own materials and a whole new way of doing e-learning. She'd done the opposite of what I'd asked for and so laid the basis for a million pound business." More precisely, the turnover for 2007-2008 was £2.3 million.
Since then, he has made "pre-approval" a central tenet of his operation: Stewart allocates budget and sets goals but doesn't dictate how his staff meet them. "The main block to innovation in most organisations is management. Pre-approval goes into everything from how our appraisal system works, to the setup of the café," he says. "Actually, I had an email from a freelance trainer praising some changes. I looked at them and didn't know any of them had happened, and then I thought that if those had come across my desk I'd have rejected them."
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
