Organizations don’t fall by threats they noticed in time but by threats they didn’t see coming. The low innovative power of organizations is caused by 2D-managers and 2D-HRM who didn’t or wouldn’t see the harmful impact of job descriptions and competence management on creative entrepreneurship. Unconsciously they were successful in changing a whole generation of talented people into sheep.

Job Descriptions: Sheep are Born

If we look at 2D-management we see a manager who manages his team by tasks or job descriptions. Job descriptions and the related competence management are the best practice examples of today’s 2D-management generation.

However, something doesn’t feel right with these best practices. Take away all the window dressing and the only thing remaining is a list of tasks of what a team member has to do. We always try to find the right person for a job but still, there will always remain tasks in his job description for which he doesn’t have the talent or passion. In 2D-management thinking it is generally accepted that it is impossible to organize work in such a way that everyone has a job with only tasks for which he has the passion and the talents. Everyone is expected to take up tasks one doesn’t like to do.

Job descriptions and departments have become tangible fences that box in people in their 2D-organizations. People are required to stay within these fences, to perform tasks that do not fully meet their passions and talents, and undergo training that attempts to make them do better what they do not like to do in the first place. The latter is the result of the much praised 2D-competence management.

To me it’s pretty clear: put a fence around people and they become sheep … and that is the reason why creative entrepreneurship in our regions has almost ‘totally’ disappeared. We have built organizations that turn people into sheep rather than developing and using what makes us unique as human beings: passion and talent.

From Jobs to Roles: Ending the Sheep Drama

In the fast-moving 3D-era, it is impossible to survive if we do not better manage and use the natural talent and passion of people. We need creative and entrepreneurial team players. In order to succeed we must replace ‘job descriptions’ with ‘role descriptions’.

This seems to be a simple operation, but the consequences are huge. A 3D-manager breaks with job descriptions and competence management. He makes a cast list with all the necessary roles needed to move in the direction of his vision and then he begins the search for passionate talents that fill in the roles.

In a 3D-organization HR becomes a switchboard for casting passion and talents. The throughput of people working for various managers, business units, and even organizations will be the success indicator for the switch from jobs to roles.

This proposal, however, is a tragedy for 2D-managers who cannot imagine how they need to prepare for this. For 2D-HRM services is blasphemy because they have so much invested in static 2D-job descriptions and competence management that they can’t admit having invested in the wrong processes.

For 2D-trade unions this is hell because the entire job classification system and “working for one employer” belongs to the past.

For 3D-managers, -workers and -trade unions on the other hand, this movement is an opportunity because it will enable creative entrepreneurship by deploying the right talents in the right place.

So what do you want? Sheep or creative entrepreneurs? It is not a question of money, but one of courage. The courage to change.

I always associated SMART goals with positive things, such as sound corporate governance. Never in my life I would have thought that SMART would be threat to the people I work with. But things have changed and they continue to change.

When my team has to reach a certain goal, I chunk that goal into manageable parts and plans. Next, individuals commit to the plan. Eventually – if I want them to perform well against the plan – I assign them SMART goals.

SMART is one of those management acronyms that are taken for granted by everyone. It stands for:
S   – Specific, meaning: unambiguous, clear goals
M   – Measurable, meaning: ’if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’
A   – Attainable, meaning: a little stretch is OK
R   – Relevant, meaning: ’important to me’
T   – Traceable by setting a journey of interim goals

Table Soccer

That is what managers and consultants learn at business schools and it is what I have been proclaiming ever since graduating. No need to shoot holes in a concept that works, is there? Everyone understands it, shepherds love it and sheep flock eagerly on SMART meadows.

Hmmm… and that’s exactly where the problem is: rather than fueling or accelerating their performance, SMART goals are numbing very bit of initiative and creativity out of people. Rather than empowering people, with SMART goals I am putting a fence around them. I’m domesticating them with function descriptions and herding them within the fences of the status quo. As you can guess: that fence an illusion of security that makes people stop thinking.

A few weeks ago Jef Staes told me that it is better to start looking at SMART goals as the worst symptom of atrophy. Once you consistently need SMART goals for your organization to perform this means that your people have lost all of their self-propelling capacity. People have become sheep and the organization has lost all of its agility. You are playing table soccer with your people.

Houston

Why are SMART top-down controlled organizations with diligent employees in trouble? They’ve worked splendid in an environment where the amount of information was fixed. The manager receives the information, interprets and processes it and then hands out the instructions. In fact, this has been the secret of growth in our economy over the past decades.

But now a shift is happening: the amount of information is overwhelming and most people, teams and companies are paralyzed by the flood of information. Information has become the new element. We are overwhelmed by something we can’t get enough of. The result for SMART corporate decision-making is painstaking: as a central commander you need to process even more information faster. No matter how hard you try, you will always be too late in this new information-driven economy.

Go Dumb or stay Numb?

If you are a leader, the key to staying on top is to stop trying to stay on top. That’s right, the advice for decision makers is to get dumber by empowering their people. That way they stop being the single information processing bottleneck. By the way, isn’t it a coincidence that the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle?

Getting dumber will reduce the bottleneck in two ways:

1. Distributing the intelligence across their organization; turning the sheep into passionate knowledge hunters. And it’s still Ok to stay on top of decision-making. But continuing to be the single information-processing hub is paralyzing your organization.

2. Redefining intelligence. In reality intelligence is the social skill to work together in a network of experts. Joseph Chilton Pearce defines intelligence as the ability to interact. Knowledge is a social thing. Take the people away and you end up on ground zero.

The New SMART

In the old days looking forward was a good way to plan ahead. There was no ambiguous fog of information. Now the challenge is to look through the information clutter, visualizing a goal that is not yet visible. Some call it intuition, others call it gut-feeling. I call it the single most needed competence of today’s leaders: the skill to get out of their minds and into their senses.

For employees the transformation from a sheep to knowledge hunters will come as an electro-shock. After all, empowerment means taking responsibility above and beyond any fence that has been set up by them or their boss.

There are no fences. And soccer is no longer a table game.

A few weeks ago I purchased a Kindle, an e-reader for books, newspapers and blogs. I was quite amazed by the usability of my new gadget: I can read tons of books and subscribe to lots of newspapers… except Belgian newspapers.

Pinch

I pinched myself in the arm and checked the calendar: Why is my favorite newspaper De Standaard not available on Kindle in December 2009?

In an automated answer, they were kind enough to share a recent article explaining their point of view. Upon reading it I had to pinch myself a second time: "Corelio is waiting for e-readers that are easy to use and that can download the newspaper wireless."

Duh… looks like I am holding one of those in my hands, allowing me to subscribe wireless…

Here is a company whose unavoidable future I am holding in my hands, in a size as thin as most magazines and a weight lighter than a paperback book. The problem: Belgian newspapers are missing, unlike the French, German or UK newspapers (and even tabloids).

Switch

For several years Jef Staes has been pointing at the element ‘information’ as a competitive advantage. He calls it Switch 2D-3D. The moral of his story: ‘You can’t solve today’s problems with the tools and mindsets of yesterday’. Below you will find a one-minute interview with Jef Staes that was recorded during the bi-annual VOV-beurs for training & development. In 60 seconds he makes an intriguing point on how the Belgian economy is grinding to a halt: a complacent attitude towards information as a resource.

In the Middle of Crisis Lies Opportunity

Those who look at information as a resource will be the ones to compete on the edge. This is December 2009. In any organization – regardless of the sector – people struggle to make sense of information. Smart companies know that and seize the opportunity.

Unfortunately, things are not looking OK for Corelio. I don’t know much about the media landscape, but I know one thing: information should be their core business.

Not so when you open Corelio’s website. The one thing hitting you in the eye is the sentence "Printing is one of Corelio’s core activities".

WTF? Since when? And for how long? Until they get rescued by the government? Time has come to understand that "Established 1914" is no longer important. Instead, it has become a liability.

___________

Related Articles:

- Organisations in Search of a New Balance – Part 1 – November 12th, 2009
- A conflict isn’t always a bad thing – Part 5 – January 12th, 2009
- My Inconvenient Truth – part 1 – May 18th, 2008

Suppose I challenge you with following question: “How do you make your organisation capable of innovating in a very fast and much cheaper way?” What would be your answer as a CEO, business unit manager or HR director?

I’ve learned that, although we have been investing millions in management courses, today a lot of CEO’s and other decision makers are still struggling with making innovation happen. It sounds frightening but maybe we have been investing in old fashioned management models which do not take into account the world of today. This is the same as what happened in the car industry, they also ‘forgot’ to invest in new, energy-efficient models.

This sequence of 6 articles will help you in understanding what’s wrong with today’s “management-thinking” and will challenge you to reflect on possible alternatives. It will become a search for a new balance. A switch from 2D to 3D.

The Information Crisis

In 1978 I graduated as an industrial engineer in telecommunication, but as the years went by I became more and more fascinated by organisational development instead of software development. This resulted in an exciting professional rebirth. My passion for organisational development drove my eagerness to learn. During this learning process I experienced the evolution of the Internet firsthand.  Thanks to the internet’s speed increase, the availability of worldwide information sources and the massive introduction of video and social networks, I was able to learn informally and very fast. I still don’t have any formal degree in organizational development.

Because of this enormous access to free and valuable information we are experiencing an “information crisis”. We are facing a crisis in which 2 groups are opposing each other.  On one hand there are the passionate and talented people who will use these new sources of information to learn informally and extremely fast. And on the other hand there are those who have lost their passion and eagerness to learn and are stuck in the past. They still have formal degrees but are threatened by people without a formal degree but with more knowledge.

Switch 3D
 
While writing my book “My Organisation is a Jungle”, I recalled my early school time and my fascination about a colorful historical timeline hanging above the blackboard in the classroom. On this timeline, each period was given a name which was typical for a specific period, for instance the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. This classification enabled us, not only to describe our evolution but also to see the different crisis’s during the transition from one period to another.  During the beginning of every transition a large group of people saw the new period as a treat and a minority saw the same period as an opportunity. This can easily be compared with what’s happening today. Today it is not about stone, bronze or iron, it is about the element ‘information’.

Those companies or organisations who are able to use information very effective and efficient will win the competition. Information leads to creativity, creativity leads to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship leads to innovation. The biggest challenge for CEO’s and other decision makers is therefore the transformation of their slow moving 2D-organisations to 3D-organisations built to learn and innovate. 2D-organisations  aren’t built for passionate people eager to develop and use their talents. 2D-managers in 2D-organisations just don’t have the right competences to develop and handle people that are smarter than they are. 2D-managers are using old fashioned management models.

The chaotic period in which we are living and working today is the fascinating but dramatic transformation zone during which we are switching from the 2D-Age to the 3D-Age.  The flat 2D-Age, which is characterized by classroom-teaching, predictable routine and continuous improvement, is slowly making way for the 3D-Age.  This is the age in which more and more passionate talents will cause tidal waves of new information and innovation.  An age in which regions will compete and collaborate thanks to continuous, fast and durable innovation.

What’s next?
The answer depends on your attitude towards the growing availability of the element “information”.  Are you perceiving this as a threat and do you feel aversion towards this new 3D-World? Or do you look at it as an opportunity and does it itch to shape the 3D-World?

The following 5 articles will go deeper into the various transformation dramas and opportunities which are taking place today.  You will get acquainted with the battle between the new management concepts and the old ones. 

Step by step it will all get clear to you.

Unexpected – like innovation itself – another perspective that I’d like to add to this series: the newest insights on biodiversity. Some time ago, Jef Staes introduced the concept of a red monkey. According to Jef, the concept started to develop during his seminars when participants asked him where to start with very confrontational change projects.

At that moment, he just learned about the origin of the rich biodiversity in a rain forest. According to the latest insights in biodiversity, new species do not start in the middle of a forest but at the edge. At the edge! – where different species from different ecosystems ‘meet’. That’s when Jef created a metaphor of a brown monkey from the jungle who meets a red fish from the sea (an adjacent ecosystem). Through their conversation a new confrontational idea is born: a red monkey.

What would happen if that confrontational idea would be dropped in the middle of the jungle? It would be killed immediately. Jef notes that the same happens with confrontational ideas that are ‘dropped’ in the middle of an organization … they get killed as well. Innovation ‘never’ starts in the middle of an organization but on the edge, where ecosystems meet. In the below video you can see Jef explaining the concept.

In the long run, red monkeys are key if organizations are to survive.  A red monkey disturbs the balance in people, teams and organisations – it tilts the stability of an ecosystem, and therefore it will get killed if there is no ‘critical mass big enough to survive.

Innovation is the result of a red monkey that has managed to survive the initial conflict between these two opposing points of view. And that is why we need all that stuff about organizational change management: to get from the edge to the middle!  No need to mention that Jef is passionate about the subject; he even designed a bumper sticker:

For those of you who wonder how this red monkey metaphor relates to the previous articles in this small "conflict" series have a look at where I pasted the bumper sticker.

You will immediately note that it will take a serious amount of conflict before you can introduce the red monkey on the right hand side of that chasm. As I have written earlier: this is a step-by-step process and it requires a different view on resistance. Thanks to Jef it is now crystal clear that you should start at the edge and move to the middle – gradually as you implement all the stuff I’ve been blogging about over the past 2 years.

Bonus material for Dutch-speaking readers: Jef Staes talking about the next generation of young employees on a symposium about leadership in education organizations. You will note that Jef’s ideas have a lot in common with John Seely Brown when talking about the social life of information (aka: knowledge Management) and the gap / conflict / clash (whatever you want to name it) between generations.

Click here for part 1 of "Jongeren zijn anders"
Click here for part 2 of "Jongeren zijn anders"