11 ways to turn into an Exponential Individual.

Less than a year ago, driven by mere curiosity, I was attending an event hosted by TalentGarden Milano together with my friend Giulia. The event was focused on launching the 2014 edition of Pioneers Festival (and the lucky Giulia also won a free ticket!), but something else equally caught my attention.

A young woman went on stage and spoke about a magic place where bright minds from all over the world meet and work together to leverage on technological innovation to address the most urgent social issues. Bottom-line: come up with something that can impact at least a billion people.

That lady’s name was Caterina, and she had just come back from that magic place, located in San Francisco’s Bay Area, called Singularity University. Her mission right then was to allow other Italians to get there, through a massive scholarship sponsored by the Axelera association.

Joining that crew was not part of my plans at that time, but that concept and that fascinating name (Singularity University — how cool is that?!) kept floating in my mind.

I went on researching and talking with people who had some kind of interaction with that environment. Some common traits started emerging out of those individuals: everyone seemed pretty smart, definitely interested in global issues and somehow technology, clearly optimistic about the future of humankind, and most of all extremely excited about what they were doing.

The reason of this excitement and optimism was the concept that we live in an age in which technology is allowing society to grow and evolve at the speed of Moore’s law (exponential) , with the new key resource being information — abundant — rather than matter alone — scarce by definition. This information and the new digital age breakthroughs let us manage “matter” in a way more efficient and radical way, achieving ridiculous growth in very short time, disrupting existing business models — and tackling some previously untamable global challenges.

Seems complex — maybe it is — but it’s well explained by Peter Diamandis’ best selling book “Abundance”.

Thing is, other smart people at Singularity University started analyzing those organizations that achieved this exponential growth, across sectors. They called them Exponential Organizations (ExOs), and a few weeks ago Singularity University’s former executive director Salim Ismail, together with Michael S. Malone and Yuri Van Geest, came out with a book in which they try to define those organizations and identify the conditions that make them perform so crazily.

This book is mindblowing — I think I’ve never read anything this fast since the second Harry Potter book.

It captures you, excites you, and most importantly proves you that exponential growth is possible. And if you are a firm optimistic individual as myself, it makes you start believing that this is the kind of Organizations that have the potential to change the world for the better. Great food for thought.

Through this intense reading, I started feeling that the same paradigms and elements presented in the book could be applicable to people, similarly to what “Business Model You” did to the “Business Model Generation” movement.

How can an individual put him/herself in the conditions of growing (emotionally and intellectually first of all) at an exponential rate? As a matter of fact, each one of us is an organization: specific stakeholders, objectives, partnerships, relationships, activities.

What follows is a humble attempt to translate the Exponential Organizations’ defining elements to an individual sphere.

I apologize in advance for the hectoliter of mistakes and inaccuracy that will follow — I’m just a kid.

How can we become exponential ourselves?

1. Have a clear, engaging vision.

Massive Transformationa Purpose (MTP)

Every Exponential Organization simply doesn’t work if not driven by a Massive Transformational Purpose: a vision, an ambition, a direction that drives people and stakeholders towards action, keeps them committed to the business and excited to do their best to contribute to this dream. Good examples are Google’s “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” or AIESEC’s “engage and develop every young person in the world”.

Why shouldn’t individuals have a similar — even stronger drive?

It’s proven that successful (in the broadest possible sense) people have clear and ambitious visions for themselves, as a source of direction, hope, strengths to persist against all odds and connect with people with similar dreams. We all need an MTP, never to stop learning and adding some extra spices to our life.

The external perspective: SCALE

(Staff on demand, Community and crowd, Algorithms, Leveraged assets, Engagement)

The proposed model examines ExOs from two perspectives, the first being the right-brain one: its attributes relate to the Organization’s interconnection with the external reality.

It’s about managing uncertainty, growth, creativity.

2. Define your core support system and don’t be afraid of letting go.

Staff on Demand

An Exponential Organization demands HR flexibility and short-term commitments, beside a strong core network of people that are as engaged to the Organizational vision as its leadership body. This allows them to float through market turbulences, expand and reduce their capacity without traumatizing the organizational habits, and cut useless overheads.

This globalized 21st Century Society puts us in the conditions to have a very similar approach to our personal network: while relationships, friendships, networks come and go — all of them enriching our personal journey in the way they can — we all need a core group of people to rely on, that can support us and share our vision and journey. Be it family, friends, a partner — there’s no time for lonely heroes. At the same time, we shouldn’t be afraid of creating lighter project-based engagements and networking with people.

3. Listen to what the Crowd has to say.

Community and Crowd

Exponential Organizations balance the limited amount of committed HR with a constant engagement with their community (stakeholders, followers, partners) and crowd (people anyhow affected or interested by the business), to get feedback, exposure, learning — outsourcing a lot of elements of the business model, capitalizing on their interest.

Again, the Social Network Era allows us to do the same on a personal level. It’s pretty easy to build or destroy a reputation just by exposing ourselves to the crowd. Sharing our dreams, vision, engaging people in conversations allows us to revise and refresh our opinions and intentions by understanding what people around us think. Even outside of the web, participating to the life of our communities through attending events, doing some active volunteering work or just even hanging around with people helps us test our assumptions and find our fit in this messy world.

4. Learn, learn, learn.

Algorithms

“Every company will soon become a software company”

That’s a mantra I’ve ran into several times in the past weeks. Who would have ever thought that hotel chains would find their biggest competitor in a platform as Airbnb (forecasted to soon become the biggest ‘hospitality chain’ in the world)?

The secret lies in algorithms, learning processes that make the organization evolve and learn from the astounding amount of data that the current information society .

For an individual, learning is more important nowadays than it ever was in history. Even the knowledge that is taught now in Universities is more and more likely to become obsolete by the time that current freshmen will graduate. In the same way in which educational systems need to adapt towards a “teach to learn” approach, we need to acknowledge the fact that learning is a non-stopping process.

We need to keep on seeking for new information, be available to adapt to the new trends and set new ones ourselves. Tools are everywhere: from MOOCs to white papers, from reading articles to seeking for the advice from coaches and mentors: it’s again just a matter of accepting our need to learn and humbly pursuing it by all means. It’s fun!

5. Borrow more, buy less.

Leveraged assets

An exponential organization tries to take the best out of any available resource — and this means, most of the times, avoiding purchases and seeking for assets that are available (and paid for) only when actually needed. We’re talking about leasing, crowdsourcing, outsourcing.

We are in the era of the Sharing Economy (or, as my friend Alberto said in his Masters’ Dissertation, the “Pop Economy”). We don’t like buying, committing, wasting.

We have a sense of responsibility towards our planet — crowded — and our budgets — short.

Sharing platforms like Blablacar, Airbnb, Couchsurfing, as well as phenomena like Purchasing Groups are showing us the bright side of the digital age: our neighbourhood is the world. Let’s capitalize on that and start trusting people again.

6. Ask for help.

Engagement

Most Exponential Organizations are not afraid to ask for help. Connecting with their networks, they build such a strong trust-based relationship that empowers the community itself to come out with ideas and systems that make their business models savvier and constantly up to date with the market demands.

Also as individuals, it’s crucial to develop a clear network of supporters that can bring our life journey to the next level. It’s definitely an individual kind of journey, but the biggest mistake we could do would be making it a lonely one: asking for help and support from the people we trust by engaging them in our mission (here our personal MTP can definitely help) is key to reach our life ambitions.

The internal perspective: IDEAS

(Interfaces, Dashboards, Experimentation, Autonomy, Social technologies)

The second perspective is the left-brain one: what systems and processes does an ExO put in place to leverage on the external trends?

This time we talk about dealing with order, control, stability.

7. Define your sources of information.

Interfaces

In an ExO, interfaces are the filtering and matching processes by which those organizations bridge from SCALE externalities to internal IDEAS control frameworks.

Examples vary from Google AdWords (connecting external advertisers to internal traffic), to Uber (managing the drivers’ community, connecting it with the external request trends).

For an individual, interfaces may represent the way we understand what’s going on in the world outside, and learn from it.

How do we collect information? How much of it? Do we have a clear end goal while seeking for information, in this data-abundant era?

An Exponential Individual should have a selected list of credible information sources, from public media to specific friends and connections, so not to get lost in the knowledge ocean we’re swimming in.

8. Set clear goals and be transparent about them.

Dashboards

An Exponential Organization monitors its performances in a constant and focused way, through systems like OKR (the ‘mutant version’ of Key Performance Indicators): Objectives and Key Resources, a methodology started by Intel in 1999 that provides transparent and goal-driven tracking to everyone, from individuals to top management teams, making sure that all measurements are actually useful and relevant, not falling in the doom of vanity metrics.

Same goes, in my opinion, with people. Are we clear on our end goal and how each of our decisions will bring us closer of further from there? Are we transparent with the people surrounding us on our final objective and what we are doing to get there? This is the only way to build a true support system for our leadership journey.

9. Be Stupid.

Experimentation

Absence of movement and creativity is an ExO’s worst enemy. Testing, innovating, refreshing business models is the sole thing that keeps them alive. Even if this means recovering from sound failures: that’s fine, if it happens fast enough: “we just learned another way not to build a lightbulb”, Edison would say.

Flexible models and the ability not to fall in love with early ideas are conditions that allow that kind of permission-less innovation - without having too many broken bones.

Everyone, from Harvard Professors to Instagram teens, know and talk about the concept of going out of our zone of comfort.

Learning happens only when doing something we don’t know: failure may be a possible consequences of taking risks, but true success only comes out of risking as well. Sir Richard Branson’s latest book says much better than I could about the abundance of this element in his leadership journey: the “Screw it, let’s do it” attitude is now a global business mantra.

Even if, in my humble opinion, nothing beats Diesel’s “Be Stupid” philosophy.

10. Don’t care about titles.

Autonomy

The organizational structure of Exponential Organizations hates pointless hierarchy: it’s fully based on the concept of holacracy. Wikipedia says:

“Holacracy is a social technology or system of organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a fractal holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested at the top of a hierarchy.”

A Zappos-style management approach, whose pranks and limits I see very well described by Augusto De Franco’s 2009 TED Talk.

I see the Autonomy concept applicable to single Exponential Individuals from two perspectives:

1. Leadership is not a matter of position: it’s a matter of contents. Don’t abuse of your power, don’t look for recognition. Seek for learning and contribution, instead. Proud humbleness — “Host Leadership”, that’s how cool people call it.
2. Anyone can have an answer to your questions: wage, opinions, sexual orientation, gender do not matter. There’s only one way to unlock knowledge and learn at exponential rates: learn together with others. And there’s only one way to start: ask.

11. Use your Social Networks to learn.

Social Technologies

ExOs make massive use of collaborative tools, social sharing, emotional sensing to provide the space for real-time conversations. This minimizes internal communications’ latency time, extends the Organization’s reach and productivity at the same time, often capitalizing on already existing technologies. Podio is a great example, but we all heard about Facebook being hands on a “Facebook at Work” project.

How to use social connectivity for our personal growth?

This is probably the easiest part. Networks of all kinds allow us to get answers wherever we are, whenever we ask them, from anyone.

The true point would be: how to use our social media without falling into the “GYPSY Syndrome”, overinflating our digital self for the sake of coping with societal expectations, rather than being authentic and showing our doubts and vulnerability? Most of growth may come from criticism, rather than from likes.

Or, you can be just like James Blunt and screw it all.

I’m not quite sure of how much Exponential growth this behavior may bring, but his Twitter feed is nothing but a hilarious collection of him destroying his ‘haters’ with amazing 140-character statements.

This article was inspired by Exponential Organizations, a book published in 2014 and written by S. Ismail, Y. Van Geest and M. S. Malone.

I (unfortunately) do not share any kind of profit with the book authors, but I totally recommend you to give it a shot as soon as you can, and you’ll be able to say “I read it before it was cool.”

You hipster!