Tara Hunt’s latest post relating her visit to India for BarCampBangalore should be required reading for U.S. business leaders in companies large and small. Here are the money quotes:

…Friedman way underestimated it.

Believing [that India only provides cheap and plentiful labor while the Western world owns creative engineering] will be that ethnocentric idea that leads to the dive of the North American economy. Far from being merely the rooms full of workhorse coding monkeys, performing the mundane tasks, the ideas coming out of BarCampBangalore are better than any I’ve heard at US camps.

The key here is to understand that, in the essence of the chunky long tail, there are markets out there that have more potential than we could ever dream of in North America. Untapped. Underrepresented. And unlimited. And, although now we in North America see ourselves as the default and everyone else as the ‘other’ (I won’t go into backing this statement up here, but we certainly can have a conversation about it to come), it won’t be long until we realize that we are dead wrong. The western countries represent the smaller piece of the online pie.

I attended a meeting last month during which the implications of Friedman’s book were discussed. Much of the conversation centered around India and other developing countries as solely a source of cheap technical talent. I told the group that, to me, Friedman’s flat world represents not only access to new labor pools, but also access to new customer markets. One of the attendees, the owner of a small technology services firm, stated matter-of-factly that “small companies don’t want [access to foreign markets].” I think my jaw dropped. I sure hope, for the sake of our country’s future, that his mindset isn’t prevalent among small companies here in the U.S.

There are an estimated 2,000 blogs operating by Microsoft employees. Robert Scoble’s blog is probably the most famous, but anonymous blogger Mini-Microsoft is close behind him, and fast becoming a symbol of how blogs have given today’s workforce a new voice.

Mini usually delivers criticism of Microsoft’s ways. In fact, hundreds of employees anonymously air their frustration on his blog. And practically everyone at Microsoft is listening – Scoble has noted that it’s rare to find an employee who doesn’t read Mini. In this story, Business Week reports that Mini is a prominent example of a nationwide trend:

Employee bloggers are shining a bright light on the inner workings of their companies and thrusting all sorts of bottled-up frustrations out in the open. Whispered conversations suddenly become broadcast publicly. That puts a huge amount of power in the hands of employees — for good or ill. Indeed, the balance of power between employer and employee may be shifting. Analyst Charlene Li of Forrester Research advises companies not to try to suppress their bloggers. “You can keep it hidden or get those voices out there and deal with the problem,” she says.

This past weekend, after taking a self-imposed two-week-long break from blogging, Scoble has attempted to shift his fellow employees’ attentions from problems to solutions with How Microsoft can shut down Mini-Microsoft. These quotes speak to the heart of his message:

[E]mployees tell me they hit too many policies. Bureacracy. Politics. Committeeisms. And too much centralization of power and decision making authority. They also tell me they don’t feel like we’re on a mission to improve the world, like Gates led in the 1980s with his cry “a computer should be on every desktop.” That they don’t feel pride in our advertising and marketing and naming. That they feel we aren’t making the kind of “bet the company” bets that Microsoft had in the past…

[W]e need a big dream. A moonshot. The kind of challenge that’ll keep [the minds of the next generation of college grads] engaged. That’ll give everyone in the company pride when it’s accomplished.

I dream of a day where every Microsoft employee feels like they are part of a mission, a positive mission for the improvement of all humankind. Where they feel like they are being compensated fairly, and if they don’t feel it’s fair, that they at least see what behaviors will bring better compensation. Where Microsoft customers and shareholders feel excited by our vision, marketing, and service execution again…

Give us all a mission we would get excited by.

His moonshot ideas are bold, possibly not feasible, maybe totally off-base or even stupid in some cases. But that’s not the point. The point is that an employee of one of the most powerful companies in the world is conveying his own vision for making the company better to a broad internal and external audience. And he’s challenging others to do the same:

What do you think? Even if you think I’m on some good drugs, why don’t you put forward your ideas instead of just tearing mine down. It’s easy to tear down other people’s ideas. It’s hard to come up with interesting ideas to push things forward.

There’s another lesson to consider from Scoble’s post. IMO, he is spot on with the dream/mission message. I think there’s a lot of disgruntled talent out there, looking for a cause to join more than a fatter paycheck. Too many folks are seeking pay increases to acquire sources of enjoyment and stimulation to fill the gap left by uninspiring workplaces. And word has it that the younger generation earning new college degrees over the next decade or so are much more mission-oriented than money-hungry.

Seems to me that if you’re a leader, and you want to attract the best talent, your message (and thinking) should probably be aligned more with “change the world” than with “make a million [or billion]” (Bert Decker’s latest post offers some good ideas for getting there). And don’t assume that the two goals are mutually exclusive — many who seek first to change the world often end up with millions/billions anyway.

Update:
Doug Miller wrote one heck of a finish to this post.