Collective innovation, everyone’s job

Every day it is more evident that we have to address new challenges collectively, both in society and in organizations. And innovation is no exception to this rule. Gone are the days when innovation was the exclusive preserve of the charismatic leader and his transformative vision, or of the plans designed by an innovation department. To meet the challenges of the Age of Collaboration, we need to make innovation everyone’s job.

There is no magic wand to achieve this noble goal of innovating together. What’s more, the changes we need to make are far from simple. But they are imperative if we are to bridge the gap that currently separates the rhetoric of our organizations and reality. To make leadership and innovation everyone’s job, we will have to change the old ways of doing things, as will many of our collective assumptions. It will be necessary to take our organizations out of their “comfort zone”, and take them from “business as usual” to “innovation as usual”. In other words, we will have to explore new ways to ensure that innovation is not a sporadic reaction to inevitable changes in the markets, led by a few at the top of the pyramid, and becomes a reality in the day-to-day life of our organizations: everyone’s work. Small initiatives at all levels can achieve very significant changes in the sustainability and competitiveness of organizations.

In today’s conversation I’m going to explain why, in my opinion, redarchy is the natural organizational structure to make innovation everyone’s job. As in Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, networked organizational structures make it possible for all members of the organization, from the first to the last, to get involved in innovation, to participate in the creation of new products and services, to contribute from anywhere, wherever they are. And it also allows us to break down the traditional barriers of the organization to make the most of the innovative potential arising from collective intelligence and collaboration.

A Matter of People

The values that drive innovation are at the top of a person’s skill triangle. To create and innovate, we don’t need people to be obedient. It’s not even enough for them to have the right knowledge. What we need is for them to be creative and motivated, to be involved and adaptable, to put passion and creativity into what they do.

That’s why we say that innovation is a matter of people, not tasks or processes. What we need is not obedience and diligence – key factors for production in the Industrial Age – but creativity and passion, ingredients that are very difficult to achieve within a highly hierarchical organization.

Hierarchical structures – by their very essence and functioning – are incapable of promoting participation, individual responsibility and self-management, all of which are vital elements to motivate each person, and to ignite the spark of passion for what we do. And experience shows us every day how the functional hierarchical structures of business units or operating divisions become competitive in the fight for internal resources, and often forget that collaboration is the most powerful way to create value. They forget, therefore, that the culture of collaboration is, today, at the heart of the capacity for innovation.

The more we cling to traditional hierarchies, the further we move away from the enormous possibilities offered by the new era of collaboration to create open, agile, and flexible organizations, where we can give our best and create economic and social value in a sustainable way. Undoubtedly, redarchy is a more natural organizational structure for this new way of doing things.

More confidence and less fear

Collaboration has become the key to taking a step higher in the level of productivity. It is through collaboration that we can implement new ways of working, breaking down vertical silos and new ways of relating to customers. So much so that, today, an organization can only be truly competitive when it takes full advantage of the tools and collaboration models that the new era offers us.

The use of these 2.0 tools, and the new mental models that accompany them, allows us to approach customers in a different way, and helps us to enhance the internal communication of the organization, to strengthen relationships and commitment, to work remotely, and to find and maintain the talent and creativity we need. But none of this is possible in hierarchical, power-oriented structures where management and control systems reflect a deep mistrust between superiors and subordinates. That is why we say that it is a matter of greater trust and less fear. Fear paralyzes and distrust demoralizes. Open innovation can only thrive in networked organizations with a high level of transparency and mutual trust among all stakeholders.

The need for new contribution frameworks

The vast majority of organizations are still hierarchical, but the fact is that these organizations are finding it difficult to grow and adapt to an increasingly uncertain, complex, and global environment. As a result, key people for the future of the organization cannot be promoted to new areas of contribution, there are no opportunities for promotion, and that means that, in the end, there is a suffocating “flattening” that the hierarchy is unable to manage.

People need a convincing answer to the question “what about mine?”, but even today, contribution frameworks are strongly associated with accountability frameworks or, in other words, the delegation of power and authority that each person has within the hierarchy of that organization. Since there is no possibility of promotion, each employee continues to contribute in his or her “job-description” field, i.e., performing exclusively the specific task for which he or she was hired. The problem is that we have ended up confusing “standard positions” with “standard people”, when the reality is that we are all born with an enormous creative capacity.

This framework of contribution has ended up degenerating into a real pathology within organizations: vertical silos and watertight departments that slow down any innovation initiative because each person believes that they can and should only perform the task for which they were hired.

Organizational structures in functional or business “silos” polarize conflicts by promoting the interests of some groups over others. At a time when organizations have no borders, and when we have to make innovation everyone’s job, to relate and co-create with our customers in a different way, this model is simply absurd and unsustainable. Above all, the structure of functional silos considerably limits the organization’s ability to experiment and renew itself.

The redarchic organisational model provides an effective response to this problem in an increasingly interdependent world, insofar as it allows experimentation and provides us with an open and people-centred framework for contribution, in which everyone can and should participate with their innovation initiatives. Think about it: How many people in your organization should you ask permission to do something innovative outside of your area of responsibility? Involvement, and collaboration on an equal footing, are the keys to achieving the commitment of our collaborators to innovation, and to overcoming the typical compartmentalization of hierarchical structures, and the adverse consequences of an internal competition in which we all lose.

Co-creation with clients and users

The redarchical model naturally fosters, always based on a participatory culture, the involvement of all the members who are part of the organization and, therefore, constitutes the perfect framework for designing and executing practices with great innovative potential, such as co-creation.

Co-creation is a new paradigm of open innovation that essentially consists of the direct participation of the customer and users in the process of developing solutions, products and services. The key idea is that, in the face of invention, innovation is a collective phenomenon and not an individual one, and that by involving other actors in our processes we are able to create new products and services different from the current ones.

The value of co-creation is enormous because, at the end of the production process, all the actors – the organization, the customers and the users – have “bought” the idea: it cannot be otherwise, since they themselves have participated directly in its creation and elaboration. This is a radical difference, and a great advantage, compared to the previous situation: when we create something together, we no longer need to convince each other. The result of the co-creation process is the result of participation, and does not need to be “sold”, so it allows us to escape the tedious and unproductive “rhetoric” of organizations.

Innovative cultures without passion killers

In my long professional experience, I have been able to verify that, on many occasions, the lack of good ideas, creative capacity or resources for innovation are not the greatest obstacles to innovation. In more than a few organizations, the problems lie in a set of barriers to innovation, which are capable of killing the passion of the most fervent of our innovators. Among the most common are functional silos, the pressure of the urgent, the day-to-day, the excessive focus on short-term results, the risk aversion to making mistakes, the low tolerance for failures, and the “things have always been done this way”.

I’m guessing some of these things will sound familiar to you, and they will apply to your own organization. Hence, in our work to make innovation everyone’s job, we must always start with a diagnosis of our organizational culture. This diagnosis should allow us to detect – and prioritize for collective action – the main inhibitors to innovation.

Redarchy is key to innovation

The challenges we face are extraordinarily complex, and it is obvious that we cannot solve them by acting from the top of the pyramid. The answer no longer lies in a single person – no matter how brilliant he or she may be – but in collective intelligence, in the interactions that arise from collaborating and sharing our knowledge in global and open networks. In the new context, the redarchy emerges as a model of natural organizational structure to foster open innovation.

Traditionally, organizations define their organizational structures following a process of differentiation of the different jobs and standardization of the tasks to be carried out by the people who occupy them. What ensures productive efficiency is scalability, based on the standardization of individual contributions. The coordination and alignment of individual objectives with those of the company is achieved through hierarchy, which, as an imposed order, establishes the relations of formal authority between superiors and subordinates. This organizational model – which, let’s not forget, has made possible the enormous advances of the industrial age – prioritizes efficiency and scalability over innovation, and continuous improvement over disruptive change. Precisely for this reason, it is becoming increasingly clear that hierarchy is not the natural organizational model for addressing today’s increasingly uncertain, complex and changing organizational challenges.

In contrast to the traditional hierarchical organizational model, in which orders are imposed and run exclusively from the top down, the redarchy works from the bottom up: decisions and solutions emerge naturally as spontaneous distillations of collective intelligence. Redarchic structures – as in the case of Facebook or Twitter – are flat and open, and are based on trust and added value. Unlike hierarchical structures, which tend to perpetuate the status quo, redarchies are dynamic, and order is established at all times based on the added value brought to the community. Anyone can come up with an idea, identify a barrier, or propose an innovation initiative. That is why we say that the redarchy is the natural organizational structure for open innovation.

The mere fact of collaborating and sharing on an equal footing generates interactions, proposals and innovative solutions, and allows the activity to be transferred, in a natural way, to the nodes where value is really being added to the organization. In other words, in redarchical organizations, order is not imposed from above, in a cascade, but emerges from below, the result of collaborative relationships. The relationships are multidirectional and networked. Agents are endowed with decision-making and organisational skills, and relate to each other freely and openly.

In a world where information flows freely, transparency is inevitable, just as it is in networked organizations. Everyone knows exactly what each one brings to the table. This allows us to know and recognize innovation: who brings innovative initiatives, who creates solutions, who generates problems, who solves them, who proposes ideas, who removes obstacles and barriers, who shares, who collaborates, who uploads videos, who shares photographs, who exudes creativity and passion, etc.

The end result is the transparency of added value: no one is able to dose the information to use it for their own benefit; no one can hide in his office, armed with a charge; Everyone knows who brings value to the organization, and innovation initiatives can overcome the obstacles to move naturally to those nodes of value generation.

The Need for a New Balance Sheet

The important thing, as transformational leaders, is that we learn to manage paradoxes. It’s not about choosing black or white, redarchy or hierarchy. The key is to manage the paradox properly, and that means finding a balance between the needs of efficiency and scalability and the demands of flexibility, passion and creativity.

If your company is dedicated to production, and the main objective is productive efficiency in the performance of tasks, you will have to place yourself closer to the hierarchical model. But if, on the other hand, you are looking for a more creative company, capable of adapting to changes, and facing the market that is to come; If, in short, the future is more important to your business than the past, then you will have no choice but to make the leap into the network.