Most enterprises have a single operating system (the organisational chart) and according to John Kotter’s book XLR8, this is essential to ‘keeping the trains running’ however, fails at encouraging breakthrough innovation – something that is needed in today’s integrated and networked world. The organisational chart and processes dictate how systems, reporting lines and people capability should be used for work, yet it doesn’t truly define how innovation and agility is meant to be curated and re-deployed for the benefit of the organisational system.
What exactly does this mean though? Every enterprise strives to perfect their operating mandate and employ a tapestry of tools and systems to augment their efforts at knowledge management. Emails, social business tools, intranets and companywide emails are transmission mechanisms that aim to influence and nudge the right type of collaborative behaviours in the context of teamwork and strategy. They are sanctified as effective catalysts of change and order. However, they are not effective in the absence of transformational processes and rules that govern the way they are deployed!
The enterprise comprises of a cornucopia of domain and external systems spanning CRM, ERP, Business Applications, Websites, Dynamic Databases and Business Intelligence tools. These all exist to ensure the firm is able to take inputs to throughputs and ultimately deliver productive outputs. However, how do you configure and deploy domain systems that not only leverages tacit knowledge to the enterprise but also explicit knowledge that emerges through the interaction of front line, middle and back office teams in a focused effort to drive enterprise collaboration, sales team effectiveness and emergence?
Whilst we can appreciate the bombardments of company wide emails, intranets, knowledge management libraries and social business tools in the organisation from leaders, change agents and consultants alike – this is no substitute against tapping into the collective via tools inspiring open innovation and emergent order from the bottom up.
In order to facilitate this type of behaviour enterprises need to adopt subset of simple rules which when grouped together product complex emergent outcomes. For example, the study of ant colonies found that every ant observes three zones, the member to member, member to environment and member to colony – thereby looking out for threats and opportunities and leveraging the masses of scale to achieve amazing levels of strength.
This backs that notion that intelligence is no longer centralised and is in fact dispersed and requires a unifying mechanism to emerge and unify.
Practically – this can be implemented in the enterprise though the following suggestive means which are by no means exhaustive but will definitely lead to the integration of explicit knowledge with those that was rooted and ensconced deeply in organisational DNA (implicit knowledge). By adopting the following three principles; CRM systems, intranets, extranets all unify and there is a strong degree of enterprise coherence.
Create architectures of participation: This means encouraging active sharing and knowledge management through communication tools and/or business social media platforms such as Yammer, Slack, Microsoft Teams. By doing so, you portray an open innovation approach by allowing energy and fruitful communication activities within a semi-closed ecosystem. Higher management have visibility to the ideas that emanate from the front line and some of the most ground breaking innovations have developed this way
Identify undershot consumers: These customers are consuming but are frustrated with its limitations and are willing to pay incrementally more for additional product features and product augmentation along dimensions that matter most to them. Here, its important to use the CRM system itself to find astute and timely opportunities to invite the customer into the product manufacturing process. Perhaps there is opportunity to up-sell and cross sell to them. By allowing front line intelligence to flourish, the propensity for this task to be successful is amplified.
Implement Accidental Innovation Capture: This ties in with creating architectures of participation and is focused on creating a distributed destination repositories of ideas that are conceived not through focus groups, meetings or brainstorming sessions but by serendipity. Front line teams should be able to deposit brief encapsulations of ideas that originate from the depths of creativity. These can then be built upon and nurtured through a capability maturity and innovation development model. Ultimately, this kind of accidental innovation capture is one that leverages explicit knowledge that develops freely and is often the most insightful.
thealphaswarmer appreciate insights over the years from multiple sources of innovation and management books.
Ultimately, the book has taught me that it’s important to think about how to ‘engage your organisation more like the living thing and less like a machine’. It cannot be managed but rather perturbed. Bringing order from chaos is the natural process that complex adaptive systems undertake. To learn more about this, I recommend refreshing yourself on the following article.
