To increase the speed of information sharing, remove departmental and hierarchal business silos and barriers to progress by embedding universal strategy cross-functionally in each team. With minimal (if any) inhibition, targeted actions will yield maximum results in the least amount of time.
Guess who said,
“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success nor dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarm-ness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor, and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who does not truly believe in anything new until they have had experience of it.”
Sounds like a post-modernist culture guru, right? It was Niccolo Machiavelli in 1513! It is amazing that 500 years later, we find ourselves in the same boat. On August 2 the National Labor Board (NLRB) revised the standard for whether work rules violate the NLRA, regardless of whether the employer is unionized, and regardless of intent of the policy. If a work policy can be reasonably interpreted as coercive, it has a reasonable tendency to chill employees from exercising their NLRA rights (cited here). In other words, it would be considered evidence of a culture meant to stifle workers from seeking their legal rights (to unionize, e.g.,). You can see evidence of the hierarchy the NLRB is targeting in Machiavelli's quote, with "profit by the old order" and "have laws in their favor".
Coercive rules are the quickest, most efficient way to establish control over your workforce. But let's face it, they are also the least inventive, least attractive, least cerebral, and most controlling and restrictive way to unify behavior. Employers might have the best motives for establishing policy (e.g., fairness), but if you think about it for just a minute, you can see how they do nothing to establish a workforce ready to act, since the brakes are on "from the get-go" as it relates to the work environment. In many ways, employers subliminally through policy, put the lid on creativity and freedom, and then try to invoke, cheerlead, or incentivize it out through job descriptors, initiatives, and culture values (like innovation, team player, servant leadership, etc.) It is not uncommon for employers to claim transparency and have policy restricting speech (e.g., in an investigation, discussing wages, insubordination, etc.). If you have this going on, even if not in writing, this disparity is killing your business potential.
What's more, Gen Z employees, who by 2026 will be the largest generation in the workforce, are more likely to dislike and question authority and the reasoning behind rules and requirements. This is because the modern political and societal climate is shifting the methodology from weeding out bad behavior, to one of a communal nature. Because of this shift, if you want to attract new talent, you will need to foster a culture of inclusion, safety, community, development, progression and advancement. The good news is this is a cultural foundation to agility. But how do you accomplish this?
It is a simple answer, though perhaps multifaceted in composition. Embed agility by increasing the speed of information sharing. With the right knowledge management practices, businesses can develop an agility and resiliency, on both an individual and group level. To do this, employees must have freedom in the workplace. Cybernetics laws, which facilitate effective and speedy communication tells us to have:
A recursive operations structure to reduce, even eliminate hierarchy (and bureaucracy)
Power distributed and pushed down (devolution)--a "direction, not detail" strategy
Knowledge management fostering response and resiliency--speedy, easy access
Decision making ability and authority moved as close to the problem as possible
Informed policy making, responsive to the "variety" of the environment (e.g., not waiting until law enforcement says to change!)
With all of this in place, a business would have few restrictions on employee thinking, learning, responding and acting in support of the business-you don't want them to have to wait for you to say "go!" or "ship it!". This requires a workforce trained in problem solving and information sharing. Employees need to know how to engage, and mangers need to know how to receive engagement and foster more. Meetings are action-oriented, question posing and answering sessions. Every moment of the day progresses outcomes and anticipates and prepares for the future. People are truly emancipated (in information and authority) to act according to knowledge they have of the business purpose and direction.
Even the better designed businesses have business structures (departments) to provide clarity and benefit to organizations. They facilitate resource consolidation to complete work and develop expertise. They buttress responsibility, accountability, budgeting, and they help create workflows and identity for individuals to understand work and easily understand the way they can contribute. But they also impede relationships and information sharing and create silos of information, power and resource that can reduce access. What should businesses do to breakdown such barriers?
Drs. Laura and Derek Cabrera published a paper (cited below) on solving the problem of organizational silos. This involves using a cognitive jig called an "RDS", where you breakdown the existing relationship into its parts, causality of parts, and overtly distinguish where boundaries lie. Minimally, discourse and distinguish the function, people, processes, infrastructure and technology that exists and ought to exist in the relationship. In any departmental conflict (resources, priorities, etc.) there may be two "sides", but there are three agents-the "for", and the "against", but also the relationship between, which is where the power is housed. When time is spent understanding this relationship, starting with similarities, and then differences, and how to turn challenges into opportunities, this power can be released in support of company purpose. This approach can be directed at any relationship scale, people, teams, initiatives, departments, divisions, enterprises, communities, and environments. This is the power of a "cognitive jig", it's application and usefulness lie in its fractal nature (applicable at any scope) and context-agnosticism (universal application). At the same time, you move forward, developing the business "direction, not detail" strategy, as people learn to work together for a common purpose.
I want to clarify; I am in no way advocating a free-for-all workplace. Your recruiting, training, goal setting, knowledge management, communication, and mentoring processes should weed out undesirable traits, and foster behavior and engagement to increase employee retention, exceptional customer focus, and step-ahead outcomes. Embrace the power of expectation and accountability.
Cabrera, D., Cabrera, L. (2018). Connecting Silos, Solving the problem of organizational silos using a simple systems thinking approach. Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
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