If you want to move from hierarchies and command-and-control, then you need to develop a shared purpose to drive activity and success. This also implies that people need the freedom to move from purpose to purpose, otherwise you just have an illusion covering up command-and-control in disguise. This is my brainstorm through this often-glossed-over logic.
Shared purpose is at the heart of (social) business, as declared by an upcoming book and many others in decades past. However, social business also declares that not everyone may agree with the core idea that someone wants to develop a shared purpose around, even when many others do. So at any one time, for any one shared purpose there is some percentage of participants that join into that view out of the available total pool of people. The larger the pool, the larger the numbers, although the percentage itself is rarely ever 100%.
If you look at other shared purpose ideas, then they each have some percentage of that same pool—let's assume its the same group for simplicity. There isn't anything that prevents some people being in multiple shared popurse ideas at the same time although there's probably many individual limits to how many different ideas each person my join into.
Let's switch the view from that of the pool as a whole (the organization) to an individual's point of view.
The three common aspects behind belonging to shared purposes were iterated by Etienne Wenger some years ago:
- imagination – you agree the vision is feasible or possible
- alignment – you agree the vision or idea meets your own views or goals
- engagement – you participate in activities around the idea
(Some would argue there's a fourth 'social' aspect: advocacy – getting others to be part of it)
It is possible to accept any one of the aspects without the others. Many consider that engaging in an activity automatically means that you share the vision and it aligns with your view, although strictly speaking that isn't true, only an assumption. Ask how many people agree with military action but have never engaged in it. Then ask how many people have engaged in activities they were doing without understanding why or even totally agreeing with it. Ideally, truly being part of a shared purpose as a group or community requires your agreement of all three. I don't think you have to be an advocate necessarily.
If you were to do something beyond just agree with that shared purpose then you're talking engagement, not just imagination or alignment. You can dedicate your effort to the shared purpose some of the time or even perhaps all of your time. You could even have multiple purposes you want to engage in.
However, even if you can dual or multi-purpose across efforts, at some point you will hit the limits of time, as in not enough time to do everything you want to—something your kids probably don't understand yet.
There is something implied in all of this in social business: you have the freedom to dedicate your time to a shared purpose.
What if that is outside your job area? A lot of independent consultants and management experts I have heard are happy to say, “Do what you love.” Well, unless you are lucky enough to be in that job that allows you to contribute to that shared purpose all the time that you want, then the situation implies that you will need the flexibility or mobility to go from job to job. You will also very likely you need to maintain stability or sacrifice (e.g., income, available resources and tools, being able to pay your bills, etc.) to follow your passion. Don't kid yourself: your views on shared purposes will also change over time, so eventually you may want to change jobs regardless.
The points:
- Job mobility or flexibility to choose the work in which you want to engage becomes a central aspect of social business.
- You have the freedom to engage in the activities behind the purposes to which you feel most aligned.
- You have the ability to switch purposes entirely in a graceful manner—not leave people hanging if you are a working on a key dependency;
- You do not have expensive 'switching' costs; e.g., have to be hired by another group entirely, look for a new job, etc.
- The flexibility to work and report to multiple purposes should also be allowed; the implications:
- you may have multiple leaders (or if you really want to still call them 'managers') to work with.
- You need to figure out how to balance your time spent on each activity
- The availability to bring people into the shared purpose
- Some see this as having enough 'job openings', in which case they have budgets and headcounts to rationalize
- Or you can see this as having enough work to spread around as new people join. After all, if someone wants to engage and contribute, it is a big downer to tell them that you have no need for them or nothing for them to do.
Now ask if your organization provides this level of social business maturity where they can leverage their people resources this freely. If so, then you are one of the very lucky few. It's not impossible and not just an industry-specific thing. Gary Hamel and the Management Innovation Exchange have shared many examples of companies engaging in such free flowing models. Top two longstanding examples from Hamel that come to mind is materials and research company W.L. Gore & Associates, and food processor, Morning Star. Would you institute such a model for your workforce?
My question for the social business thinkers out there is if this state of work mobility is necessary. If so, are we looking at a large scale change in how we employ people? What happens when you look simply beyond employees and into other parties (customers, the public, anyone really) who want to contribute to the work?
