Your company needs a Corporate Disorganizer
by Rute Sousa and Júlio Martins
“Some years ago, when starting a new role as an innovation manager in a long established family-owned company willing to revive its innovative character, a friend of mine gave me some powerful advice that I will never forget. He said I should see myself as a corporate disorganizer”, Rute said.
“As an organized person myself this sounded like a challenge. Time showed me that my friend was right. I learned it was all about creating an organized chaos that unlocks creativity, agility and innovation.”
Corporate companies are typically associated with complexity, hierarchy, process-rigidity, formality and slow pace. These traits may be stereotypes, but they are some of the most common obstacles to innovation in the corporate world. Innovation requires creativity, agility, freedom to experiment and question, cross-organizational communication and collaboration.
That’s why when you aim at making innovation happen in your company, you probably will have to start by shifting the installed mindset. It takes time and you won’t make it without a few bruises. It also requires a lot of resilience and a dose of courage. Being provocative, shaking existing rigid structures and decision models, making people feel uncomfortable and questioning their own unquestionable beliefs is part of it. Earning people’s trust while doing it is a must. So is showing them that it’s worth the effort.
The naming “corporate disorganizer” seems to come from an imagination exercise on next-generation jobs by Sparks & Honey, a trend-spotting firm from New York. That next generation is now there and the concept makes perfect sense today.
We have “jammed” on the traits of a corporate disorganizer, its importance for corporate companies, how challenging this role is for themselves and for the company, and, lastly, how to make it work.
What are the traits of corporate disorganizers?
They embrace ambiguity. Corporate disorganizers are comfortable with the uncertain, the unknown and the unclear. They prefer to take the risk associated with exploring new ideas, rather than overanalyzing complex and often contradictory information. In fact, they prefer to figure it out by themselves.
They challenge the status quo, continuously. Corporate disorganizers are both curious and creative. They can’t avoid questioning conventional wisdom and conformity. “Why?”, “Why not?” and “What if?” are common questions used to find and break orthodoxies and to expand possibilities that would be otherwise not considered.
They know how to deal with ideas rejection. Corporate disorganizers don’t take rejection personally. They know that idea rejection is often associated with fear of change, felt by the rejector. Or they see rejection as an opportunity to improve their ideas.
They have an agile mindset. In a constantly changing world, the capability to understand and quickly adapt to new realities is a necessity. Corporate disorganizers know the importance of speed. They promote effective organizational adaptability and the removal of uncritical rules and processes.
They have a growth mindset. They cultivate their talents and skills continuously and challenge others to do so.
They create a new order. They may “disorganize” established processes and structures, but they bring a new order, new values and principles.
What are the major challenges and how to overcome them?
Turning conflict into innovation
Challenging the status quo, hierarchies and breaking existing rules generates a lot of conflicts. Conflicting ideas, conflicting visions, conflicting mindsets and conflicting organizational models are just some of the conflicts you may expect. The challenge here is to manage all these conflicts successfully, avoiding stress and tension between employees and unleash creativity and innovation.
Accepting that conflict is an inherent part of innovation and that there will always be some damages and bruises, is a good starting point. Conflict management skills and taking accountability are powerful tools to deal with unavoidable conflicts.
Overcoming the risk of peer rejection
Just as the immunity system in the human body rejects any foreign object, organizations like order and tend to hunt any outsiders or disruptors to the incumbent culture. How often have we seen nonconformists, both on the bottom or top positions, ending up rejected by their organizations?
CEO and top management sponsorship are crucial here. This, of course, when the CEO himself/herself is not the corporate disorganizer. Effective communication from the top plays a fundamental role, as people need to understand the reason why change is needed and how they can take part in that change, alleviating their fear. Finding peers who share a similar vision, involving them in pioneer projects and sharing results within the organization is another way corporate disorganizers use to avoid rejection and build trust.
Accepting that innovation is not efficient and building an effective innovation process
Profitability and efficiency are of major importance in decision-making in the corporate world. But the innovation process is not efficient. It’s about experimenting, failing-learning-fixing fast and continuously exploring unknown territories. How to explain to the organization that there is a different paradigm in what concerns innovation? How to avoid the feeling that some people, such as the corporate disorganizer, have more room for experimentation than others who have to stick to high efficient processes?
Again, communication and sponsorship play an important role, but also giving everyone the possibility to participate in innovation helps building trust in the new “organized chaos”. For the sake of organizational balance, corporate disorganizers need to create an effective innovation process, a process that is understood by all and manageable in parallel with the processes followed within the business as usual.
Your company needs a corporate disorganizer. Set up the right environment and let innovation culture flourish naturally!
