I started using the word “experiment” with clients shortly after the Great Reset. When you don’t know what the future will look like, Silicon Valley has long believed that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” And Hamel immediately returns to “experiments,” experiments in inventing our own futures:
Where do we experiment? How do you live in the future so other people want to follow you? How do you become one of those connectors bringing ideas and talent and resources together? That’s, again, a critical work of leadership today.
How might you actually go about this? You have to start with moving creative decisions down closer to the front lines. To do that in a responsible and effective way, information and accountability have to move down as well. As Hamel observes, you start with the “fundamental principles about empowerment, transparency, meritocracy, information, and accountability.”
This new world comes with guardrails just as today’s world does: But they’re far closer to the front lines:
So [yes, of course] there are preconditions here. This is not some romantic thing—you know, “let’s just give everybody more power” —because that’s probably chaos. But if we equip them, give them information, make them accountable to their peers, shorten the feedback cycles, then I think you can push a lot of that authority down in organizations.
I can hear you thinking already: Yes, well, splendid notion to be sure, but (a) how do we get people engaged because leadership is, after all, leadership’s job, and (b) can they be trusted?
Those will be our topics for the next installment.
Bruce,
What you describe here has elements of two common problems on other areas: 1) succession in new companies; 2) administration of university departments. The unified vision and commitment to initial intellectual framework of the founders of an enterprise feed a contention that no other set of qualifications, even well after the initial founding, is realistic. Academic departments are infamous for a belief that the Chair should leave everyone else alone, and woe be to the Chair who is thought to be intellectually second-rate or a “careerist”.
The dysfunction that comes from both examples is legendary. What is common to both, and also to your proposition, is that the people who are supposed to be members of a community at a decision-making level act is if they do not understand that the life of their community depends on the continued functioning of the economic circulatory system. That is not the only sub-system that is important, and no one thinks that it is. But cash flow, backed ultimately by profits is essential to the continued existence of the functioning entity.
the sort of innovation required to change law firms can come from the top as well. Look at the example of Peter Kalis at K&L Gates. He released his firm financials and rightfully challenged the authenticity of the AmLaw 100. He believes in organic growth – not Swiss Verein merger mania. He has orchestrated mergers..yes. In key international markets. He’s one law firm managing partner to emulate – and I believe change can and should come from the top as well as other ranks within a law firm.