If you ask organizations what they try to achieve, you will receive responses that all look different. They will typically reference the official purpose of the organization (NGO, car manufacturer, consulting, etc.) and then say what more or less specific goal is to be achieved. But in their essence, what they all strive for is a high performance organization.

To get there an awful lot of things is done: Systems and policies will be put in place, the results analyzed relative to what was expected, and then things will be adjusted because the outcome did not live up to expectations. I am convinced that the core reason for this is simply that the diversity of staff has not been taken into account.

I cannot offer a solution that claims to solve this issue. In fact I am fairly convinced that would again be falling into the trap of ignoring differences – in that case between organizations rather than individuals. But I have come up with an experimental approach that will work for some organizations:

Ask people what they think they can contribute outside their regular function.

You will be surprised to see what your staff has to offer in terms of capabilities and, more importantly, dedication. What you can effectively do with such an activity, is break barriers that a conventional organization puts around creativity. I see many of the traditional organization concepts out there as mechanistic, coming from the era of Taylorism and scientific management. That does not necessarily mean that all of it is unsuitable. But we should certainly apply scrutiny as to whether something is still the right tool for today.

The approach is somewhat similar to an individual curriculum in school. You recognize that people are different, and build upon that. What you achieve, overall, is better performance of the organization. It happens on multiple levels:

• You foster people’s creativity: See it as a competitive advantage caused by a disruptive model
• Fewer people will leave the organization: They realize that their current environment is something not to be found in many other places
• You quickly see who is in for the money (i.e. for themselves only)
• Boundaries (often called silos) become more open
• Many people have knowledge and ideas outside their official capacity. That can be harvested to bring fresh wind into other departments without the need to hire external consultants. Those cause demotivation because the team is effectively told that they are not trusted. Also, internal folks need much less ramp-up because they know the organization. (Yes, sometimes you will still need external folks.)

Is this something like a think tank? Yes and no. A think tank, at least in classical terms, is again a typical organization and the concept has been around for a long time. And while part of its job is to provide out-of-the-box thinking, it usually performs that from within a conventional organization.

This approach is not for all people. In fact a large portion of your staff is probably more or less ok with how things are now. The rules give them certainty and boundaries, in which they can operate safely. That is fine and there is a lot of important tasks where this is in fact the only option you have. (Think of accounting and how much of it is regulated by law.)

But as soon as we need to create a competitive advantage, creativity is the only thing that allows an organization to get ahead of others and also stay there. The people needed for this are, for the most part, not motivated by money. They will still ask for a competitive salary, but that is a side factor only. What they demand, though, is an environment of like-minded people and freedom to achieve what they were hired for.

It would be foolish trying to introduce this broadly into an organization that has so far been lead in a more or less conventional way. But you can take the concept of incubators and apply it not on the product level but to organizational development. Reach out to the entire company and ask for teams to apply for a test run. They should develop the details how they want to “run the show” on their own. Some guidance is of course ok, but this will effectively be their first test.

This is the core idea, and likely a lot more detail needs to be figured out before applying this broadly. But I tend to think that it does not help to do this in advance, let alone in a one-size-fits-all way. Each organization (and probably even team) should start their own journey. And letting people figure this out by themselves can only boost creativity and motivation.

I just read a message in the news that a company which, among other things, runs an online job portal for software developers, plans to lay off staff for that portal. The argument made in the news interview, was that this line of business was particularly affected by COVID-19 and to save costs 30 people would be fired. The organization in question, and that is a critical point for this post, has several business lines, and some of the less affected are operating in markets with far less growth potential. Or in other words: they are the core business.

This is a classic example of sacrificing a company’s future and long-term success for some quarterly or yearly goals. Of course there can be situations, which are so extreme that this is the only option. But, frankly, this usually also means that not one but ten things have gone wrong and that also over a longer period of time. So in the majority of cases such an approach is simply an example of what I consider incompetent management.

Let me come back to the reasoning (as per the aforementioned interview) for this job cut. Since when is it a good idea, unless the company is at the brink of bankruptcy, to look primarily (or even only) at the contribution to the financial bottom link for making such decisions. It is in my view at the core of good management to balance the present and future of the organization. And the job market for software developers is certainly something I consider to grow substantially.

I also want to come back shortly to the idea of “core business” and what its properties are. The most important one is certainly financial contribution. But this is more a consequence of a number of underlying properties (think balanced scorecard). In this context the most relevant one is that it is an established business. Or in other words: living off the past. Of course there are exceptions, but for non-startup organizations core business usually means a mature market, investments that are largely written off, well established processes and procedures, etc. Also innovation is hardly found in such an environment.

For a well-run company the approach is always that the current revenues fund the investments for the next big thing. Cutting back on emerging business either means that people have meanwhile realized that it is not such a great idea as initially thought, or that the situation is really bad. But I think it is mostly about personal bonuses of managers and nothing else. Yes, that sounds cynical. But if you have looked the history of businesses in the last couple of decades, it is the most probable cause.