Dancing On The Ceiling
If you want to improve the performance of a collective (i.e. a team, group, organisation), then you have two options. You can raise the floor, or you can raise the ceiling.
Whilst organisations talk a lot about raising the ceiling, their actions are all about raising the floor.
Efficiency is about raising the floor, improving the minimum level of something. Processes are all about standardisation, making sure the execution of work is always above a certain level. Job Descriptions are all about what must be done, not what could possibly be done. Recruitment is about finding people who meet a set level of qualification. Training is about getting people up to a level of capability. ‘Best Practice’ is focused on levelling up to a standard set by ‘best in class’ organisations or industry bodies.
This has brought about major leaps in performance over the past several decades, and with it, an unprecedented level of growth in profits and prosperity. The biggest gains were earlier on, as most organisations were poorly run and managed and, consequently, rather inefficient. As time has progressed, the tools and techniques for ‘raising the floor’ have become more powerful and plentiful. They have been taught on MBA courses, productised and sold in by BigCon, and become the modus operandi of business.
But now, they have run out of steam. The gains are marginal and also fleeting, as the environment is changing so quickly and radically that they are soon irrelevant. It’s not uncommon for changes in external conditions to overtake the implementation of the latest change programme, rendering it redundant before it’s even been delivered.
We’ve raised the floor so far that it’s now almost up at the ceiling.
It’s time to look at raising the ceiling.
Dancing On The Ceiling
Raising the ceiling is about focusing on potential and opportunity. It’s about looking at what’s possible rather than what is mandatory. It’s expansive rather than restrictive. It’s forward-focused rather than backwards looking.
Progressive organisations are naturally focused on raising the ceiling. It’s not a binary choice though. If you focus on the ceiling, the floor looks after itself because you have to raise it in order to reach higher. Whereas the opposite is pretty much true. If you are focused on raising the floor, it’s extremely hard to raise the ceiling at the same time because the ‘floor focus’ permeates everything you do.
We need a shift in focus, which in turn requires a shift in thinking.
Stuck
I believe such a shift would be transformative. However, if we look at recent experience, the chances of it happening in today’s world seem small to negligible.
We’ve had two shocks that showed existing systems aren’t working. The Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and the COVID pandemic in 2020. Both were opportunities to learn some lessons and make some changes. In both cases, the lessons were largely ignored and the changes heavily resisted.
In fact, what has resulted instead is a detachment of business and the financial system from the real world, the one where most of us live. That’s why we see booming stock markets and improving financial indicators at the same time as many people are struggling to meet their rent or mortgage costs, seeing their grocery bill rise and rise and are having to cut back on luxuries.
There’s also been an insulation from reality for the status quo, especially the rich (and the people in the C-Suite are rich, and getting richer). More recently, politics has also been somewhat detached from reality through the rise of populism and a spread of authoritarianism around the world. And Trump, of course, who actively works to detach his followers from things like truth, facts and reality.
In each of these realms - finance, business and politics - fear is not only increasing but dominating. When fear walks in, innovation, creativity and progress walk out.
It’s not very encouraging, is it?
And yet…
Looking For Clues
Organisations have always been somewhat detached from the real world, an enchanted space where we live in a false reality. We pretend to believe things we know are not true, to believe in illogical ‘laws’ and ignore the evidence of our own eyes. Some of us may be aware of submitting to a collective delusion but many of us don’t fully realise it until we leave. Then we wonder what madness must have overcome us at the time.
As organisations become increasingly unhinged and begin to fall apart, more and more of us reject the illusion and the spell of the enchantment is broken. We may have to continue to pretend to believe for reasons of survival and earning a crust but we are no longer sustaining the illusion.
Some will become rebellious, some will subvert the organisations from within, some will opt-out and be more piratical. What we will all do look for is hope, for a better alternative and we will start to seek those other futures out.
We’ll start to look up at the ceiling. And there are many of us.
I’m reminded of what Buckminster Fuller said about the future:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
There are people building the new models, progressive organisations that are focused on potential and possibility. There are people looking at different ways of ‘being’ in the world. Additionally, Gen Z have a very different perspective that is not compatible with the existing systems and are refusing to engage and actively looking for those alternatives instead.
It’s time for us to ‘Be More Pirate’ too. The pirates of the Golden Age didn’t set out to change the world, they set out to change their world, and through doing that they eventually changed the world too. They didn’t just reject the status quo, they didn’t just reject the rules, they replaced the rules with better ones and established a new order that was superior to what they were subject to before. They made a society defined by themselves for themselves.
I don’t know if the existing system will collapse, although I do think there will be some major casualties and sudden disappearances of established players. There will be a gradual decay because we can see it happening already. However, what is more likely is absorption and adoption of the new models, an evolution of the status quo. (That’s not to say it will be a smooth transition though.)
We can see some of this happening already. The Corporate Rebels blog this week talked about attending the ZeroDX Awards conference, which is organized annually by Haier, Thinkers50, and Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini’s MLab to celebrate the world’s most pioneering companies. This is people coming together to build new models.
Haier’s groundbreaking RenDanHeYi model has established it as the leading white goods manufacturer in the world and it had taken over more established brands such as Candy and GE. It continues to forge into new areas through its philosophy of ‘zero distance to customer’ and an ethos that allows every employee to become an entrepreneur. Its driving force and chairman, Zhang Ruimin, believes everyone has that entrepreneurial potential but are constrained by bureaucracy, so that is stripped away. He believes in respecting the dignity of individuals, which comes from the ability to contribute meaningfully and be recognised for it.
Gary Hamel and Michael Zanini also focus on reducing bureaucracy and releasing human potential in their book ‘Humanocracy’, which they are releasing a second, updated edition of shortly. Their MLab encourages and supports companies to adopt a more human-centred approach.
Corporate Rebels themselves promote progressive practices through their courses, their own network of Rebel Cells and by actually investing in companies and helping them transform. They also regularly highlight pioneering organisations that are doing ‘work’ differently and being more human centred.
There are voices out there and they are starting to come together. If you want to know how to build a new model, the clues are there. (Hint: You could do a lot worse than check out the links above).
This is how change really happens. Slowly, and then all at once.
It also starts at the edges of the map, just out of sight of most of us. And then one day, it hoves into view and it seems obvious.
And the darkest hour is just before dawn, right? Stay hopeful.
Work Punks
The latest Work Punks episode has dropped and it’s the one where we talk about the 4-day week. See, that’s another alternative, not as radical as some but one that’s getting some traction with smaller organisations and improving people’s experience of work. Another cause for hope.
Anyway, check out our conversation on YouTube. Or if you’d prefer to listen whilst you walk the dog or do the housework, you’ll find it on your favourite podcast App (just search for Work Punks). Although it’s only 15 minutes long, so you might as well listen to the previous episodes as well whilst you’re at it!
Great post Colin. It made me think about communities of ambition and aspiration rather than communities of practise. It's on my mind. Thanks for triggering it.