How 'community' can drive digital transformation

Two problematic areas for today's organisations are employee engagement and digital transformation.

Although organisations want employees to share knowledge, care about their work, and embrace digital ways of working, they often try to impose these desires on top of the existing culture of work. And attempts to impose culture change from above will always be met with resistance.

The problem is that we have two sets of forces pushing against each other: an outdated, hierarchical view of work based on a 20th century industrial model of organisation, and a 'socialised' view of work stemming from a desire to harness the power of online communities and networks.

These two opposing approaches to organisation are fundamentally incompatible, and this is a key reason why many organisations are struggling with digital transformation. Digital provides an entirely new way to approach work, collaboration, and organisation, but if transformation is undertaken with a 20th century industrial mindset then it will not reap the full benefits that digital offers. This is not a new problem, as Cham (2014) notes by referencing the argument made by Marshal McLuhan back in the 1960s:

"If we try to understand digital transformation with an industrial mindset we are 'walking backwards into the future'"

In the hyperconnected 21st century, we should be designing organisations around community, not work. Millenials have grown up in a hyperconnected age, they instinctively participate in a wide variety of communities, and they expect the modern workplace to function in the same way as their connected personal existence. So it is no surprise that they often become quickly disengaged when confronted with bureaucratic, hierarchical organisations using outdated technologies that bear little resemblance to the community-oriented tools to which they are accustomed.

So how can we design work around community?

If you look at start-ups, community happens automatically. Everyone knows everyone else, and has a good idea what they are working on. There are never enough people to do the work that needs to be done, so everyone has to help each other out on a daily basis. There is a strong sense of shared purpose, and an urgency that binds the team together. Each employee has to make important decisions under pressure, giving them a strong sense of connection to the vision and purpose of the start-up. Autonomy and initiative are essential.

And most of all, people talk to each other all the time. There is almost no hierarchy to quash the inherent creativity of the team. All ideas regarding how to improve the business are welcomed, discussed, adapted and implemented.

The challenge for larger organistions and businesses is how to reimagine their operational model around principles of community. If we designed our organisations around community, not just around work, things could be very different.

"Putting community at the centre of the organisation fundamentally changes the motivation to do work"

Communities develop around a clear purpose, and this purpose is what drives people to engage with the community. Establishing a clear purpose for an organisation (beyond simply making money for shareholders) is therefore a valuable way of tackling the problem of a disengaged workforce. Designing an organisation as a community turns it into a place where people are emotionally engaged, share knowledge instinctively, and collaborate on shared projects with a strong sense of purpose. And in a knowledge economy, these three factors are fundamental to an effective, engaged, and digitally literate workforce.

Digital transformation represents an attempt to harness the innate human desire to share useful information and participate in purposeful communities. But any digital transformation strategy that focuses on platforms instead of people is almost certain to fail - successful transformation is dependent on understanding what motivates people to participate in communities.

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References

2014  Cham, K.L. “"Virtually An Alternative ? The Medium, The Message and The User Experience; Collective Agency in Digital Spaces and Embodied Social Change", 5th LAEMOS Colloquium on Organization Studies Constructing Alternatives: How can we organize for alternative social, economic, and ecological balance?, Havana, Cuba http://laemos.com

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Creative, meaningful work is the goal. For everyone.

This post first appeared on the Creative Huddle blog.

If you didn't need to earn money, what would you do? You'd be on a permanent holiday, with all the free time in the world. It would be amazing for a while. Lots of travelling, seeing the world. But after a year or so you'd get bored. You'd have to find something to do to keep yourself busy, something to give your life meaning.

Meaningful work is our goal. When our work is meaningful, it doesn’t feel like work. When we are involved in a creative project that matters to us, we are completely engaged, we lose track of time, and we have a clear sense of purpose. So imagine if we could get paid for it as well. How amazing would that be?
 
In our recent Creativity at Work survey, we asked people to state how they felt when they were being creative. They said things like:

• Happy and sometimes exhausted
• Good. Fulfilled. Inspired. Motivated
• I get motivated, feel fully invested in wanting ideas to succeed and thoroughly enjoy it.
• It makes me feel an integral part of the success of the company.
• Empowered, challenged, free
• Free. capable. excited about possibilities. Energised.
• Keeps me motivated and keeps the fun in work. If you have the space and freedom to be creative it gets the mind going and makes you feel passionate.

As the modern workplace becomes increasingly complex, it can be harder for employees to feel a sense of purpose. The combination of multiple projects, distributed teams, online communications and shifting deadlines can often obscure the meaning of our work. It is easy to become disengaged as we become overwhelmed by the noise. And disengagement leads to lack of motivation, unhappiness, lower productivity, and ultimately lower profits.
 
So how do we help ourselves and our employees rediscover the meaning in work? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Take a moment to think about why you go to work. What makes you get out of bed? How do you feel as you walk out the front door each morning?
2. Make sure you’re absolutely clear about why you are doing the job that you do. Do you love the work? Does it provide you with a good work/life balance? Why do you keep showing up day after day? What are you looking forward to?
3. Take a step back and picture your role in the wider context of your organisation. Why does your job exist? And your department? Look at your organisation’s vision and mission statements – how does the work that you do help your organisation deliver its vision and mission?

Now, if you’re a leader or a manager, take a moment to think about how much input your employees have had in shaping the organisation’s vision and mission. Or their departmental strategy. Or even just the work that they do every day. How much autonomy do they have – and do you have – over your work? When was the last time they had the opportunity to be involved in a creative project that they cared about?
 
Here’s the thing: people are amazing. Full of creative potential. Even the most disengaged member of your organisation could be s potential leader – if you can encourage them to use their natural creativity and find meaning in their work.
 
We are all inherently creative, we just need a little time and autonomy to find our purpose. To find our ‘why’. So think twice before you send that employee on another training course to improve their performance, you may need to just allow them a little breathing space to be creative, and help them find out why their work matters to the organisation.
 
With the right questions and encouragement, we can find meaning in our work. And if we can’t, we should be doing a different job.