The enterprise of the future
Yet we are still working within the same structures and arrangements as we were a century ago with organisations that were created to serve the industrial revolution. The structures that were created then were designed to reflect the need for permanence and stability, to generate efficient production with rigid and clear lines of demarcation and leadership structures to ensure compliance. We believe a new vision for the enterprise of the future is long overdue and urgently needed. This is because the rules have changed – and in some cases been obliterated - by a working world transforming around us at an ever-increasing speed. We are like the magician’s apprentice, having let loose new and exciting possibilities without fully understanding the consequences and we are now struggling to control them. The difference is, we don’t have the ‘older and wiser’ mentor who knows what to do and can rescue us. We are entering new territory and we need a radically different approach.
For this to happen, we need to start challenging one of the key underlying assumptions about operating in the world of work; that it requires positional power and control. This assumption no longer serves us well, and does - and will continue to – hold us back.
The starting point is to redefine what we mean by ‘power’ in this context. The need to be ‘in’ power, to hold it and maintain it underpins most of our organisation structures and vertical hierarchies. These have been virtually unchanged in organisations throughout the western world since the beginning of the last century. To rethink this takes a fundamental shift from power as a noun (ie to have, hold or maintain power) - to power as a verb (ie to being able to use our collective will to power the organisation). In other words, to establish that we are all there to create the energy to build and sustain our organisation.
We look forward to a time when our organisations can meet the challenge head on, can organically change and respond and can move with, rather than fight against, the complexity and turbulence of today’s world of work.
