In an ecosystem where everybody participates, everybody contributes and everyone belongs, the biggest challenge for business leaders is to orchestrate the right set of people and circumstances for culture and innovation to flourish.
What is its design? Is it static or a continuum? What technological and human skills are required to co-create and sustain a continuous cycle of engagement, growth and impact? Only one thing is certain — collaboration, agility and good intent are not enough for a culture of innovation to flourish.
No enterprise on the planet is immune to the Emergent paradigm — a context where collective identity, community and federated leadership are re-writing the rules of corporate engagement, innovation and stakeholder value.
At an operational level the challenge is learning to manage the tension between effective systems of control and the autonomous and interdependent nature of ‘synergist’ culture. It calls for radical transparency and intervention and simultaneously presents business leaders with an extraordinary opportunity to transform the company-manufactures-consumer-buys paradigm.
Interestingly, while everyone is talking innovation, few companies in Australia actually possess the critical acumen and capacity for co-creation. Most companies dance to the tune of their shareholders instead of exploring ways to innovate their business model to be more relevant or focusing on collective benefit for all stakeholders.
The stakes are high and will determine whether companies forge long-term sustainability, or fail to escape the gravity of a dying institutional model.
What has become staggeringly clear is that traditional mechanisms for culture change have become outmoded, and executives from the boardroom down are scrambling to identify authentic ways to drive corporate innovation and performance.
With employees and customers vehemently opposed to the lack of transparency in politics and power, the solution for businesses isn’t a kneejerk abandonment of silos in an attempt to demonstrate openness by embracing a flatter operational model. Silos are not the problem. In fact, silos are highly functional groups that simply require greater cohesion with each other.
The problem is isolation.
What’s needed is connection — a conscious shift to an inter-dependent and adaptive system that has both the speed and agility to support the intangibles of innovation that often occur where human beings coalesce. I’m talking about a continuous cycle of innovation, evolution and realignment.
Transformation starts by listening and then communicating a willingness to co-create — with customers, partners, suppliers, community and so on. It is not about more surveys and more data, or more optimised campaigns. Forging long-term sustainability starts by listening without agenda. It is about identification and respect. It demands intuition, authenticity and open dialogue. Continued sustainability is about honouring and understanding your customers, and knowing them so intimately that you predict what they need before they ask.
By building loyalty with communities, organisations can reduce their dependence on external suppliers and agencies, developing their own capability to drive movements for the future. This is not to say that agencies have no role but that businesses will be in a better position if they possess internal capability to reduce costs associated with campaign-driven communications, marketing and innovation. In fact, there has never been a more important time in the history of business for organisations to level up and learn how to lead their very own cultural movement — a movement that might start small but can ripple out to more and more people. (In part III, I provide valuable tools to help you start this ripple effect.)
One of the questions I am most often asked by business leaders is ‘How do we turn the institutional ship around while maintaining business as usual?’ I tell them innovation in its most basic form starts with listening, and then communicating a willingness to connect. It isn’t rocket science. Leaders who want to make a difference are realising that success is less about perfection and more about honest dialogue and inquiry. Hence, they are jumping into the fray and abandoning the isolated thinking of the institution, and replacing this with more experimental and interdependent systems and ways of working. Those who embrace mess, complexity and variation and who welcome the inclusion of customers and employees as contributors of their innovation and growth will thrive.
Disruption is no respecter of industry or individual. Iconic brands such as Volvo, BlackBerry and Abercrombie & Fitch are in crisis and on the verge of extinction, symptomatic of market saturation and direct competition, misalignment of values and failure to adapt to the shifting consumer landscape. Once the darlings of industry they now find themselves on the outside of a conversation with consumers they once owned, freefalling into oblivion with the stark realisation that legacy systems and past achievement no longer serve them.
No crystal balls or enterprise unicorns exist to ensure survival. Living to see another day in business is about recognising the ‘writing on the industry wall’ as an invitation to evolve to a more conscious and connected operating model. History proves the theory that co-creation is key.
Leaders who want to make a difference are abandoning outmoded systems and upskilling in an attempt to identify, connect and amass the collective power of their ecosystem.