Organisations – Curious about change

For corporates, as Liz Edwards has highlighted in an earlier comment, the transfer of power or at least decision making to the individual has a multitude of implications. Firstly as we are seeing today, the nature of the competition for talent has changed already. It is not simply a corporate’s peers or that high profile startup which are in the war for the same talent – it’s all the other ways that talent might earn money. It is probably inevitable that the best talent has the widest opportunities in general terms.

·Secondly in identifying and attracting talent it could be as much about understanding the life cycles, and stages of life of the target audiences. Those who are poised to prize security of income above novelty or flexibility or who have a low risk appetite. This could, but probably isn’t true definitively, mean that young graduates or those starting out in the world of work are not the most obvious choice, at least for jobs that require some longevity. The whole concept of a career path may need to encompass spells, potentially long spells, outside the corporate world. And perhaps most interestingly, there may be a decline in the availability of experienced leaders and managers who, with a degree of financial security, look for other novel, and more flexible ways to work. Covid may have demonstrated the pluses and minuses of working from home, but there are other compelling possibilities to maintain it.

Thirdly, the offer corporates make will need to be relevant in the concept of the wider earnings portfolio not simply as measured against market norms for that job. What development is offered? How will it help build a network of valuable relationships? What business acumen will someone get? How flexibly can someone work – can they continue with different aspects of their portfolio whilst in full time work? These are not new issues, but they could become massively more complex.

In short, corporates are going to have to be able to see through the eyes of the talent they seek to attract – more so than ever, and what they see there may feel increasingly alien from their own world

So thinking about collaboration led me onto a favourite shift of mine which is the need to be externally focused rather than internally. I’m not just talking about ‘customer centricity’ – but about a perspective of the organisation as a set of external relationships within a network rather than focusing on the entity as the node. The picture below indicates some of these systemic relationships and their consequences

External governance

And when we look at traditional leadership structures, this systemic perspective and hence the web of relationships doesn’t readily map across – the CEO tends to be only role instinctively viewed as systemic. Which is one reason why frequently, for example in innovation, you will see that the CEO sponsorship is a critical success factor. And yet is that really the answer? To make the CEO the owner of all of the above?

Surely not! It seems to me that there are at least two potential routes (which are not mutually exclusive!) for the future – a redefinition of leadership roles to become more systemic and more externally focused – some organisations CDO’s (Chief Data Officer) look like a move in this direction – although they may not be consciously articulated that way. Or (and?) leadership evolves into something more of a collective activity – and one which may not sit at the ‘top’ of the organisation but much closer to the ‘coal face’ or the ecosystem it inhabits.

That kind of devolved management is increasingly being discussed – but to date I’ve seen it analysed from the OD point of view – how it relates to the internal organisation. Thinking it through from the wider net of relationships opens up the possibility of not just engaging but involving those outside the organisation as well as a much more radical perspective of what devolved management might cover