We all remember that famous quote by Peter Drucker (that some say he never said). However, in a changing ...
We all remember that famous quote by Peter Drucker (that some say he never said). However, in a changing environment, bureaucracy devours innovative culture during all four meals of the day, every day. It’s time to hack the system.
By Martín Padulla for staffingsmericalatina
An innovative culture encourages taking risks, experimenting, and challenging established norms to propose new solutions. It transforms organizations by focusing on individuals as members of a team committed to a greater purpose. Aligning the personal purposes of each team member with this greater purpose is one of the primary tasks of a transformational leader. Many such leaders succeed in making this greater purpose a massive transformative purpose—a motivating and challenging super-vision.
For these leaders, culture is their main mission. Satya Nadella, the transformational CEO of Microsoft, asserts that the “C” in CEO should stand for “Culture.” The best CEOs today perceive themselves as architects of a growth-mindset culture, people-centered, with continuous learning at its core.
Defining, adapting, or transforming the values, beliefs, and behaviors that shape the daily work environment directly impacts a company’s results. A leader focused on integral human development as a means to achieve outcomes is like a farmer who diligently tends to every detail daily, performing multiple tasks to ensure a good harvest. They understand they are managing a progressive process, which ultimately reveals itself in what people do when the leader is not present. Creating spaces for psychological safety, fostering trust and autonomy, building networks, and promoting emotional and social connection for co-creation, collaboration, and innovation all have a significant impact.
What is the key element for an innovative culture?
The indispensable component is diversity, broadly defined, which must be effectively managed. Two aspects are vital for this approach: diversity of perspectives and diversity of work forms. Both focus on people, help internalize mistakes as opportunities, contribute to creativity and innovation, generate new solutions for distinct problems, allow for broader and better experimentation and scaling, and reinforce and amplify each other. Technology, platforms, and workforce solutions are strategic allies on this path.
A culture with a growth mindset and continuous learning demands individualized consideration within this diversity. It requires transformational leadership that inspires, generates a shared sense of purpose, values critical thinking, fosters new ideas, grants autonomy, and builds trust.
Addressing the individual development needs of team members striving for high performance is demanding. It requires constant emotional connection and overcoming transactional resistance accustomed to the mere exchange of benefits for performance. It’s about resilience, full commitment, and a significant personal challenge: aiming to create redarchies rather than sustaining hierarchies, breaking the status quo instead of upholding it. It involves distinct skills, profound introspection, and serious dialogue with the ego.
The role of diversity and agility
The multiplicity of perspectives and knowledge and the diverse work styles bring flexibility and fluidity, enabling adaptive structures to respond swiftly to changes.
Debureaucratization and the reduction of rigid processes provide agility in adapting to environmental shifts, bringing us closer to a transcendent concept: humanocracy. Humanocracy is an organizational approach that places people at the center, eliminating the barriers of traditional bureaucracy. It’s about leveraging human talent and generating real impact through it.
Just as schools were, for a long time, the perfect response to industrialization and the technology that best explained the world, bureaucracy was also key to standardizing and achieving efficiency where chaos and despotism once reigned. Hamel and Zanini, in their book Humanocracy, suggest that “…bureaucracy has earned a place of honor in the pantheon of humanity’s inventions.”
Both are technologies with their possibilities and limitations, products of their times. In a turbulent and polarized world, there is a consensus that things have changed significantly since the 19th century and continue to change rapidly.
While culture once ate strategy for breakfast, today, bureaucracy devours innovative culture during all four meals of the day, every day. Culture still translates strategy into daily actions and behaviors that explain a company’s results. However, to achieve innovation, to make it exponential, to have a real impact, it’s essential to break free from the bureaucracy that hinders talent development.
The path forward
It’s possible to do so. Bureaucracy made us believe that changes occur at the top of the pyramid. Today, we know that’s not true and that bureaucrats will never eradicate bureaucracy.
To change an organization, we must first change how we manage. This means performing a bureaucracy detox, reflecting on our management and leadership styles, asking key questions, and remembering that transformations are never achieved alone. Finding partners for the challenge is essential. Start small, test, and scale. It’s a fascinating, revolutionary process.
Many indicators suggest that the time has come to hack the system, to eradicate what prevents human potential from flourishing. It’s possible to create better jobs and extraordinary companies where human potential knows no bounds.
It’s not easy, but the effort is worth it. Because it is imperative.
