Organizational structure to serve your company and the world.
Everything in the company starts with the individual. If individuals are at their best the company is too. Let’s start by taking a look at individual needs according to Maslow’s research.
In the developed world where basic needs are covered. The psychological and self-fulfillment needs are lacking making our society depressing. One of today’s global problems is untapped human potential. People thrive when they work on something that has meaning to them and the world around them. “Employees who have meaning don’t just stick around longer. They also report 1.7 times higher job satisfaction, and are 1.4 times more engaged at work.”, “Increasing a sense of meaningfulness at work is one of the most potent–and underutilized–ways to increase productivity, engagement, and performance.” — Fast Company’s article covering research studies.
There are various innovations within organizational models such as Holacracy and Teal Organizational paradigm. The video below showcases some of it.
It is in the company’s interest to help people to thrive which helps the company to thrive as well. It should be a mutually beneficial venture beyond the salary. Often people just serve companies and the economy. But it should be the other way around too! Companies should be rooted in the individual, helping people fulfill their potential and finding their ikigai.
It should be understandable that this takes time and exploration, people should have time to explore the world of knowledge and their own projects. It is therefore optimal that people are helped with such at the company and/or given more time outside of the company. Google has 20% garage time where people can work on their own projects within the company. This led to many of the company’s innovations. It’s also important with continuous education e.g. where people teach each other in the form of mentorship.
The underlying qualities are what’s more important than learned professional skills. Good qualities such as deep philosophical thinking can be used in many different areas within the company. A software engineer with good logical and strategic qualities can, for example, help in the company’s strategic planning work. A person with a good imagination can use those skills in areas beyond the job title. The aim is to bring out the best out of people, those good qualities that people have, in different areas. People will also know and understand more about the company and how it functions which helps them to contribute to the company in a better way. It also fights the modern alienation at work and brings belongingness. The company’s structure should allow people to be more free in what they do, beyond the job title they hold. At the core, people are free and not bound to any specific profession. We are, in the first place, human beings who are here to explore the world, trying to figure things out and we are inherently keen to do/work on various things. Therefore, people should be able to try out different roles, see where they can help beyond their job title. So people can rotate in different roles and see if there are undiscovered potential and work that fits them best. At Spotify and LinkedIn, people don’t do the same job for more than 2 years purposefully. Companies empower people to envision and pursue their passions. https://nordic.businessinsider.com/spotify-jobs-change-every-two-years-2018-8/
Many also have monotonous, boring, chores jobs which no human being likes to do all day. Every human can feel pain and suffering and it is upon all of us to minimize the misery of each human being. And instead maximize the flourishment of all. That’s why just as in any collective household, people ought to rotate to get the chores done. And everyone should have the energy, required knowledge/information to participate and contribute to the organization, society and the world at large. That’s why the organizational environment and culture should stimulate such thorugh balance between chores and creative work. Through inclusive processes that involve people in the organization. Great ideas can come from anywhere. From people that you don’t expect it from. A cleaner, receptionist, administrator or anyone else. Everyone has their collection of experiences, perspectives and abilities that might be just that missing piece.
People should also have time for important things in life. Everyone has some personal challenges that would need more time in order to be taken care of. People and the world would benefit from us taking the time and exploring the wealth of knowledge thus making better choices. That’s why traditional full-time should become flex-time, more of the part-time/less-working-hours by default. The work should be flexible and synthesize with other aspects of life and society. Life and the world around you, is so much more and we need time to do it all. The company should not limit the person’s life and development, it should embrace it. If people have healthy lives in all of its aspects, then the company, economy, society and the world as a whole will also be healthy. Companies need to adjust to that instead of people adjusting to the unhealthy way of doing things.
Often companies don’t even know how people who work there feel and how/what they think. The company needs to constantly check-in with co-workers. For that, there are tools such as &frankly.
How companies are organized and how it affects the whole society and economy.
As companies and organizations play a big role in our society, the way organizations are structured is very important. Today’s structure of organizing companies tends to create many problems. The economy that incentivizes the economic growth no matter the activity upon which the money is made, with few stakeholders and decision-makers at the top which makes it more probable that the companies take self-interested/short-sighted decisions, getting into the wrong side of history instead of being remembered for good. It also makes employees passive, executing what has come from the top without questioning it. This is bound to create problems. It creates “the tragedy of the commons” where self-interest ends up destroying the world including those who took self-interested actions. This disregards the truth of interconnectedness and interdependence of us all and the world.
The economy and companies impose the rules on people, top-down approach, people are often not even asked the way it’d be optimal for them, thus the environment is oftentimes non-optimal, making people stressed out which contributes to them not bringing out the best to the company and which on the grander level creates many of the societal problems. It also makes people unmotivated and not caring about the company as they don’t feel like part of it. People should participate in the company’s decisions. That also trains people to be more active on a societal level.
People and companies are so consumed by and are caught up in their own matters that they don’t give themselves time to zoom out, think and reflect more deeply about our lives, the world and the meaning of it all. That rips us of a feature that makes us human in the first place. The ability to think, reflect and reason. That way we miss the bigger picture. That’s when and where societal and personal issues begin and grow. By exercising abilities that make us human one becomes more human… living more consciously… living a better life.
The future of organizing companies
There is another way of organizing our companies, our economy and society. The ownership economy is described in the playlist below.
The current economic system tends to end up giving power to the few and it tends to direct entities towards putting profits before societal or ecological values. Because there are few who make decisions on the behalf of the many the chances of negative externalities are larger, meaning that the negative consequences of decisions won’t affect people making those decisions. To avoid this flaw that generated and keeps generating so many of our problems in the world, we need more economic democracy i.e. to democratize ownership and decision-making. This, combined with meritocracy and giving a weighted power and respect to scientific knowledge and units, would lead to better governance of entities of all sizes. There will not be a good world unless everyone creates and sustains such a world through inclusion and active participation.
It’s not only good for society but for the companies performance as well. Empirical research has shown that Democratic companies or Cooperatives tend to have better productivity than conventional companies and also are significantly better at managing crises, with fewer bankruptcies and fewer redundancies.
The co-operative way of running companies is the future of company structure. The world’s problems are forcing us to rethink the way things are done. It’s good to start adapting now. This is the most practical and effective way to create change on an organizational and societal level, which will change how things are done in society as a whole. For example, if people are expected to co-run companies the education they receive will focus on the needed and fundamental qualities such as: being curious and seeking answers to questions of interest; seeking what’s best; thinking logically/rationally/deeply/reasonably/critically; questioning everything including own biases; be open-minded; seek knowledge, explore and experiment; to be creative and imaginative etc. “Don’t give a man fish, teach him how to fish”. With those skills, people will find their way to the best answers and solutions and it will be of their interest to do so as they will take an active part in the company and society. Better decisions will be made when more people are on the other side, making decisions that will affect them and the people around them.
Co-operatives will make people more thoughtful and active in organizations and society. It would also cover the needs of people according to Maslow’s hierarchy, psychological need in the form belongingness to the organization, the work they do and co-workers. This fosters the belongingness to the society as the whole. Self-actualization needs would also be covered as people would have greater drive and motivation to contribute and grow as a person. Healthy people (mentally, physically) produce a healthy economy. Where people don’t serve the economy but where the economy serves people.
Making organizational changes.
Iceberg model:
The root cause in everything is people’s mental models.
First people need to have the right mindset. Without it and motivation, all else is kind of useless. Try to change the system and you’ll hit the wall of people who think otherwise or have other interests.
Think outside of the box in communication with others. Talk not about a particular problem, talk about bigger picture topics in light of which all else becomes irrelevant.
Rather than fighting for a particular problem (which is just a symptom of deeper held beliefs) with an idea and trying to push it through by persuading people who have different interests and worldviews. One can think outside of the box, take a step back and get people to think about the bigger picture and change the mental models that fuel their stands i.e. which in turn will change people’s interests and views. Then, by self-motivation, people will join you, given you are right. Not only that, but it will also change their views and they will do what’s right otherwise, it will become their new way of living and looking at the world.
There should be a culture where everyone is on the same journey of seeking the truth, figuring out what’s best and what’s right, updating the beliefs in the light of new evidence. Once people have the right foundation, they themselves will question and seek the right and best answers in those various problems. Virtuous people will find the way as Aristotle reasoned.
Having a deeper understanding helps us to not react to the events and problems that occurred and persist because of the underlying structure of the collective, but to change our’s and other’s views, that will, in turn, change the system itself, which will solve many problems at once.
We can raise the quality of our decisions, our life and the world by making knowledge-seeking & deep-thinking part of our lives. Explore and use the internet’s valuable resources to your advantage. There are educational Youtube channels/videos to subscribe to, Podcasts, Books, Audiobook summaries, Courses. There are countless self-improvement, philosophical, psychological, scientific material out there.
//Towards the biggest positive world-impact.
