Like neurons in the brain, individuals need to be connected together and communicate effectively if organisations are to survive today’s turbulent economic climate. Greg O’Shea and Gary Ashton reveal how to create the neural organisation that will be flexible and agile enough to thrive, let alone survive, the unpredictable world of business.
The organisation can be likened to a brain. Neurons in the brain are connected together and communicate with each other to help the body survive and thrive. In much the same way, individuals within organisations play the role of neurons. Like the brain, decisions made by individuals or teams affect the evolution of the organisation as a whole and everyone in it.
In the last 15 years we have seen the emergence of this as a model for the design and leadership of organisations. Taking as its starting point that human organisations are complex systems, we begin to understand the organisation as a large number of individuals, interacting locally in a dynamic, non-linear fashion so that order and patterns of behaviour emerge. In the ideal ‘self organised’, intelligent organisation, there is less need for leaders/managers to organise, because just like brain activity, we get ‘order for free’.
Brain malfunction
However, unlike the incredibly interconnected, beautiful mind, organisations often make the mistake of limiting the ‘neural’ connections with silos of activity and rigid functions. This traditional view sees the organisation as a clockwork-like machine, with fixed teams of people in preprogrammed work. In the brain, such limited interaction would cause the human body to malfunction and ultimately die.
What businesses may not realise is that when there is a failure of individuals interacting appropriately with others, they face the same fate as a malfunctioning mind. Their response to market and competitive activity slows down, ultimately threatening the organisation’s ability to survive. This is exactly what was happening to one high-tech company, when it recently sought advice from ER Consultants. We discovered that the launch of new products was being delayed largely because of limited interaction between departments. Its linear, overly controlled approach of managing its product development process was causing severe delays in getting products to market. In today’s turbulent business environment, reacting to changes too slowly with such a rigid approach makes it difficult for an organisation to survive, let alone thrive. Only by understanding how it operates in a more holistic way such as by seeing how the parts interact and fit together through Whole System Events (see section on ‘Brain Surgery for Complex Problems’ below) – are organisations able to speed up their response time.
Another manifestation of the traditional view of organisation arises when those in management believe that only they are the brain, and act as the sole leadership engine, separate from its body – in other words their workforce and systems. In this scenario, management try to direct the rest of the business to think, act and interact in this way, limiting the possibilities and opportunities for connection and communication. The upshot of this is a misaligned brain and body, which leads to organisational paralysis. This is one of the problems that got M&S into difficulties a few years back.
Balancing the left and right brains
Another common feature between the brain and the organisation is that most activity is concentrated in one of the two hemispheres; either the left brain (which governs logical functions such as language, numeracy, communication and computation) or the right brain (which governs holistic, creative thinking). In Western culture, the left hemisphere tends to dominate the right. The same tends to happen within organisations, where the right brain functions are often perceived to be quite weak and subservient to the left brain’s function of business planning and budgeting. How to balance the strengths of both sides is a challenge that organisation development managers have grappled with over many years. Creating a way of working that combines divergent, exploratory, holistic thinking with the convergent, rational thought process is not simple. But it can be done through creating a neural organisation. (See section on ‘Creating the Beautiful Mind below)
Such organisations have been built to offer far more flexibility in how things are delivered, whilst maintaining the focus on the essential. This type of organisation is based on what is called ‘purposeful self-organising’. They release creativity by setting people free, allowing them to use all of their brain capacity instead of the oftenquoted 10 percent. Here, human ingenuity is released by supporting open expression of ideas and participation in decision-making.
Genius organisation
In the neural networked organisation, creativity is present through the power of self-organisation and co-evolution. When the future is uncertain, the neural organisation is flexible enough to adapt, creative enough to innovate, and responsive enough to learn and improvise. We have worked with several software development SMEs who exhibit these characteristics. But can this approach be taken with bigger corporations that have a tendency to kill off such behaviours in favour of assumptions about hierarchy, fragmentation and left-brain efficiency-driven behaviours?
Occasionally, we find companies brave enough to make this approach work successfully in big businesses. Good examples include some Scandinavian organisations, like Novo Nordisk and Nokia. They are continually flexible, adapting to the changes in the environment. When the work is predictable and repeated, then a fixed, hierarchical approach is used. But where tasks and objectives are more fuzzy, networked clusters of people come together to define the objective, and negotiate with each other on what needs doing. No separate change processes are needed because it is changing all the time and they support open communication in which there are no formal team or department borders between people. In these Scandinavian neural networked organisations, there is more room for self-fulfilment; motivation is better, people are more energetic, and have enough creative freedom and productive focus to make them feel they are building something meaningful.
The neural networked organisation gives space for people to interconnect and interact globally in the understanding of the strategic environment and the co-creation of unit level strategies. In this way, strategic thinking is the result of hundreds if not thousands of interconnections, swapping thoughts and energy to create new intelligence about strategic actions. These interconnections create true learning organisations which ‘learn’ how to adapt in the shifting environment.
ER Consultants can help businesses to achieve a neural networked state by running ‘strategising’ workshops where current strategic thinking is explained in visual format and then ‘chewed over’ by teams throughout the organisation, with improvements fed back up the chain. This ensures that the strategy reflects a myriad of conversations, that has allowed all employees to understand and make sense of the strategy, to take ownership for it, and to allow them on a day-to-day basis to make strategic-led decisions.
For more information, contact greg.oshea@erconsulants.co.uk gary.ashton@erconsultants.co.uk
Creating the Beautiful Mind
Like all beautiful minds, the neural networked organisation searches for clarity – in accountabilities, responsibilities and mutual expectations – in the face of the fuzzy environment in which it lives. ER Consultants help to build such organisations in the following way:
Direct the network primarily by purpose and principles
Every member is a leader, leading him or herself. There is no need for managers in the traditional sense. Instead there is a need for new roles like network co-ordinators who focus on helping others make sense of the big picture and supporting others clarify and make sense of how they identify with the organisation and how they connect with others in the neural network.
Building personal purpose and role within the organisation
Every one is given a chance to use their full potential and is expected to contribute to the full in order to fulfil the purpose of the whole neural network.
Clarify what our common purpose is
Identify why we are together. Why should we want to be interconnected and inter-dependent? Why should we trust each other? Create a set of sentences that tell people what our purpose is.
Build common values
How will we behave together? What behaviours do we respect and expect of each other? How do our behaviours and values translate into principles? What are the principles that will guide us?
Build a framework for the network
Negotiate with each other to create a network that is aligned to a common purpose; agile and adaptable to its changing environment, and accountable,
with a clear understanding and ownership of how the network operates and how decisions get made and implemented.
BRAIN SURGERY FOR COMPLEX PROBLEMS
ER Consultants’ ‘Whole System Event’ is brain surgery for today’s complex organisations, with their multiplicity of demands and challenges, be they businesses or public bodies. These events enable organisations to fast-track solutions to complex problems. The beauty of it is, we will not tackle a broken limb or diseased organ as if the rest of the body is not involved!
So such an event will typically bring together – in real-time– a ‘slice’ of your whole system – maybe one hundred or more people, over two days – be they shareholders, regulators, executives, customers, competitors, unions, managers, teams, etc. The event design group invites a mix of known and unknown quantities to take part.
During these events, dynamic exercises bring complex data, insights and actions to the surface – the outputs, learning and capacity building is instantaneous. You will get a lot of real time products – strategies that already have ownership, project teams that already have priorities and committed resources, innovative ideas and process improvements that might otherwise have taken months to detect or never be discovered through other research or diagnosis. Working with the networks in this live way will show you just what your organisation’s brainpower can achieve!
ER Consultants has worked with large and small businesses to develop strategy, product development and business processes, and for stakeholder engagement. Whole systems events can achieve inter-organisational development.
Local authorities have used us in this way to help create a common vision in mixed communities around issues such as housing, environment, educational inclusion and diversity.
We have used these events in parts of the National Health Service to help them map their future scenarios for improving services and health outcomes.
Currently we are working with large central government agencies to map out new services and implementation of major policy programmes.
To discuss how this approach can be applied to your organisation, contact anne.bennett@erconsultants.co.uk
