The Dandelion principle as a catalyst for change
In Deloitte’s 2015 Global Human Capital Trends report, culture and engagement was rated the most important issue overall, slightly edging out leadership (the no.1 issue the previous year). In many organizations today, company values don’t go beyond the acronym one memorizes to win a prize during new joiner orientation or captions that decorate the office walls. The workforce mix is fast changing and is becoming increasingly diverse; research indicates that in the next three years, 50% of the workforce will be constituted by young adults who are referred to by different tags like Millennials, Gen Y, Gen Next, Echo Boomers, etc. The corporate structures, processes and environment that worked in the past decade may not be adequate to support the demands of this young workforce.
I am a strong believer in the fact that people don’t come in perfect packages. Even the best of employees are usually very good at certain things and not as good at others. In most occasions the context in which employees operate determines how they perform irrespective of the skill levels. Company culture or values is a key aspect that significantly influences the context in which employees work and interact with each other on a day to day basis. Ironically, the same executives who are respondents to some of these surveys (like Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends report), in most occasions limit themselves to providing lip service and don’t walk the talk when it comes to company values. Most recent Wells Fargo scandal is an example of the devastating impact that is possible due to the leadership becoming extremely transactional and losing sight of the organizational values with a singular focus of demonstrating short term value to shareholders.
Among others, Innovation is probably one of the most abused words in the past decade but perhaps the key to any company’s sustained growth in current times. Low cost and efficient operations are no longer seen as differentiators and the start-up era is fundamentally built on the foundation of innovation and how it looks to potentially overhaul the way businesses will operate in future. Diversity, lateral thinking, challenging status quo, not playing by the rules, out of the box thinking, etc. are some of the tag lines that you may hear from experts and leaders when talking about innovation. One central piece to be able to achieve some of these tag lines is the willingness to constantly update the company culture and identify means to operationalize the values in a way that it is visible and relevant to the diverse workforce.
Robert D. Austin and Thorkil Sonne in their research paper on The Dandelion Principle: Redesigning work for the Innovation Economy, talk about the dandelion, which to most people is a weed that can spoil a beautiful lawn, as a workplace metaphor. The dandelion has many positive characteristics like roots can be roasted to make a coffee substitute, leaves are edible and can be used in soups, they are excellent sources of calcium, potassium, iron and manganese and full of vitamins A, C, E, K, riboflavin and beta-carotene. There is even research underway to confirm if the extract from dandelion roots could have cancer-combating potential. Despite its positive qualities the dandelion’s presence in a carefully maintained lawn makes it a weed thereby highlighting the importance of context. Specialisterine is an example organization which has embedded within its culture the spirit of the dandelion principle by designing work contexts to suit staff’s traits and capabilities, thereby realizing otherwise untapped value.
The dandelion principle is a great means for organizations to understand the importance of context and its correlation with value creation. As outlined in the research paper on The Dandelion Principle: Redesigning work for the Innovation Economy” Innovation is less about averages and more about understanding outliers with a focus on increasing interesting variation to eventually identifying value in some of the variants.” This requires a big shift in mind-set and habits of the past wherein continuous improvement meant reducing variation and effective management of averages. This task seems even more daunting when you put into context that we are dealing with human resources and not machines. This article aims to introduce the concept of the dandelion principle as a possible catalyst for change to create a truly inclusive work culture, where it isn’t about managing diversity but leveraging it for generating greater value across the stakeholder spectrum.
References: The Dandelion Principle: Redesigning work for the Innovation Economy, Robert D. Austin and Thorkil Sonne
