Do You Know Where You’re Going To?
I think change happens from the bottom-up and the middle-out as the cumulative effect of a million different actions and decisions rather than through top-down programmes. That’s why I don’t have a lot of time for goals and mission and vision statements and all that guff. However, I do believe it’s important to have some sort of idea of what you are aiming for, some concept of a better future that enables you to set the direction in the here and now.
It doesn’t have to be particularly detailed, you don’t even have to be able to articulate it that well. It could be more of a feeling, an intuition, a sense. It can something rather intangible but you need to believe there’s something better and that you can get there.
It’s an act of imagination, to create this sense of the future state you are aiming for. You need to fuel that imagination and that’s why I think it’s really important to look at possible alternative models, ways of doing things and examples of organisations that have already travelled some way towards their own vision of nirvana.
The pirates only sailed to edges of the map because they knew that was where the treasure lay, because that’s where they could realise their dreams of riches beyond compare. They didn’t do it just for a lark.
It’s also important because the way organisations operate suppresses our imagination and limits our awareness. They often encourage a state of ‘learned helplessness’ and conformity so that you are pliant and easier to manage. They discourage your dreams as ‘flights of fancy’ and tell you there is no alternative to the status quo. Looking at how other organisations operate on different principles and using different approaches shows that there are alternatives and give you the facts to challenge how things are.
So this week I’m going to explore a few of those approaches and examples and invite you to look into them more closely. They can fire your imagination and strengthen your resolve keep going when you run into the inevitable headwinds and obstructions you will face trying to build your new Jerusalem.
Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Every organisation needs to work out its own version of ‘the future of work’ and in this sense we are at a break point in organisational development, in my view. The ‘cut and paste’ approach of the past, rolling out best practice or the latest management fad across (and often over) the organisation just won’t cut it any more. McKinsey’s can’t solve this problem for you, you need to something fully bespoke and they only have off-the-peg stuff that barely fits and falls apart at the first bit of stress it comes under.
However, I do think there are a some trends that will become common. My view is that organisations are evolving towards networks of small, self-organising teams connected through organisational tech platforms that provide communication, information exchange and core functions. The boundaries of these organisations will increasingly be porous, which will allow an ecosystem to develop around them.
This will mean the dismantling of the hierarchies and the silos that are common today and the removal of vast swathes of bureaucracy. It will also mean a big reduction in middle management roles, whilst those that remain will be about coaching and enabling rather than the directing, order giving and overseeing that we see today.
There will be much more focus on meeting the diverse needs of the people engaged in the work and realising of the potential that they have. As work becomes much more about uniquely human things like creativity, compassion and relationships then this will increasing become an imperative.
There will be much more diversity in how organisations operate and they will evolve continuously as each plots it’s own path.
I had a stab at describing ‘The Decrapified Workplace’ a while ago but this is a broader view. Whilst I think about this primarily for knowledge workers, much of this could apply more broadly. Even the move to greater autonomy, flexible and mobile working, and asynchronous work flows will impact all sorts of work settings. In fact, those trends are observable now.
Of course, the only certain thing about my projections is that they will be wrong, to a greater or lesser degree. That’s the interesting bit. That’s where the treasure lies!
It’s Ain’t What You Do, It’s The Way That You Do It
When it comes to organisations that are examples of different approaches, we tend to find the same ones come up time and again in business books and the business media. However, it’s still quite a long list
It really all began with Riccardo Semler and his book 'Maverick', which described how he implemented his revolutionary ideas for self-organising in his family’s company, Semco.
Another early pioneer was Yvon Chouinard at Patagonia, who recently made the headlines by giving the company ‘to the planet’. One of his books is “Let my people go surfing”, which gives you a flavour of his principles.
For me, Frederick Laloux’s book 'Reinventing Organizations' first opened my eyes to what is possible. Laloux found a number of companies that had evolved beyond the current organisational model, embracing self-organisation, whole self and evolving purpose as guiding principles. These included Buurtzorg, the dutch community nursing provider that used self-management to put the nurses back in the centre of the service; Morning Star, the US tomato-processing company that doesn’t have any managers; and FAVI, a French engineering company that competes globally through self-organising teams.
Inspired by Laloux’s book, Corporate Rebels came up with their ‘bucket list’ of progressive companies that they then visited and reported on, both on their website and in their book. They visited some of the ones I’ve mentioned and a host more like Handelsbanken and our own Happy Co. here in the UK (Henry Stuart, the Happy CEO, is well worth following on LinkedIN).
Another company getting a lot of attentions right now is Haier, the Chinese white goods manufacturer. They have been on a path of reinvention for over 30 years and their latest iteration is known as ReyDanHeyi. It is essentially the type of structure I described above. They organisation consists of over 4000 ‘micro-enterprises’ networked together through the Haier platform, which provides them with the corporate support services so that they can focus entirely on serving their customers. They exist within an ecosystem that includes suppliers, collaborators, research institutes and universities and even competitors.
There are many others that I could mention, from Matt Black Systems in the UK who provide parts for the aerospace industry to the Mondragon co-operative in Spain. What they have in common is that they are NOT hierarchical, command-and-control, fear-driven organisations. That and the fact that they are outperforming their competitors and providing a much more human-centric and rewarding workplace for the people that work for them.
The point is that examples exist in all industries, in organisations that do all sorts of things, in all sorts of economies and of all sorts of sizes. Wherever you are right now, when people tell you that change is not possible or that better approaches won’t work, they are just wrong. There will be an example out there that proves otherwise.
These organisations are not perfect. Some have run into problems, some that were previously hailed have been found to have flaws (BrewDog and Basecamp spring to mind) and were not as they appeared to be. Often, this is not a problem with their approach but with the humans that run them. It was ever thus, that’s what being more human means. We see people in the round, flaws and all, including their dark side. That’s what makes life interesting.
But they do show that there are other, better ways of doing things. And that change is not only possible but desirable.
House Of Fun
My own vision of what’s possible comes from the first part of my career. I worked in a couple of bits of BT that were inspiring and fun places to work. They were very supportive environments that encouraged you to come up with ideas and allowed you to run with them. They enabled you to explore and grow as an individual.
In both we were bringing new technology to new markets, so no-one could claim to know what they were doing. As a result, they were very open and experimental and full of possibility. They were also very free of process and control (partly because the technology didn’t exist for that sort of micro-management).
To me, it was a playground. I loved working in that environment, I developed enormously as a person and as a leader and had a lot of fun. I became part of a close-knit and high-performing team, which I now realised was a blessing that many don’t experience in the workplace (I’m still in touch with many of them today).
So I know what’s possible because I experienced it. I also much preferred it to the second part of my career, which was like being in a prison. (I’m still trying to figure out what crime I committed to end up there and why it is that more workplaces have become prisons rather than playgrounds.)
I encourage you to research the examples that I have given above and to follow your curiosity to find others (you’ll be surprised at how many there are). Create your own vision of what the future could look like, find your own sources of inspiration, get excited by the possibilities.
The only thing I insist on is that it has to be a playground and not a prison. We’ve got more than enough of the latter. It’s time to set ourselves free
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