The Creative Hive

The premise...

    Every person within an organizational ecosystem possesses potentially valuable intelligence, creativity, insights and problem-solving abilities. However, many organizations are designed only to hear and apply the thoughts and expressions of a limited group of elite "esteemed influencers."  

    There can be enormous benefit and critical importance for an organization to embrace an improved operating architecture with wide, open gateways for expression combined with improved efficacies in "signal" discernment and "noise" filtering.  Advocated herein is a design enabling an organization to pursue and consider the the "full spectrum" of intelligence, experiences, knowledge, observations and creativity, insights and concerns of every worker, customer, supplier, candidate, investor, other applicable minds across and beyond its ecosystem.  A Creative Hive is an organizational construct of "inclusive and open intelligence" as opposed to  "exclusive, limited intelligence."  

    For an organization to accomplish such a reality, there are at least five primary considerations:

1. Reducing or eliminating factors that suppress or restrict expression or imagination throughout an organization's ecosystem.  The suppression factors are generally present throughout an organization and be both blatant and hidden.  Certainly, all empowered leadership must shift from being obstacles to becoming active proponents and participants in forming and sustaining a Creative Hive.

2.  Emergent expression and stochastic resonance must be systemically enabled throughout the organization's ecosystem.  This organic activity is balanced by distributed and central mechanisms of vetting and decision-making so as to accurately resonate with prospective tactical and strategic value.

3.  Precipitating attention and creative expression of select groups to specific topics, challenges and problems by design, so as to resonate accurately with the articulated needs and priorities of the organization. 

4.  Amplify and sustain fruitful worker innovation by explicit functional performance requirements within all its work role relationships. These are dependably realized by agreement with each worker and being responsible to each worker to equip, steward and facilitate their creative expression. 

5.  A foundation of continuous improvement and knowledge management incorporating measurements, analytics and compliance as optimal for meeting objectives and responding to challenges.

An ancient guiding model thrives in nature from which we can learn:  the bee hive.   

A bee hive enjoys benefits of extraordinary shared expression by its members.  Instead of this leading to anarchy or wasteful, distracting noise, through a variety of known and mysterious mechanisms it achieves emergent, distributed decision-making in a very dependable manner.  The bee hive accomplishes amazing efficacies in information exchange within local work role functions (such as for gaining optimal foraging yields throughout each day by applying localized waggle dance forums).  

Equally, the bee hive has powerful design and mechanisms in place to create and address disruptive change for strategic aspects of expansion and survival (such as the need to pursue entirely new domains in a "swarm"). The bee hive offers to us a blueprint of a formidable social architecture that has been proven to be not only perpetually viable; but more importantly, to produce a superorganism having a responsive collective intelligence far beyond the sum of its citizens.  This ensures the bee hive's long term continuity and daily productivity.  It is also noteworthy that bee hive achieves its impressive results without dependence upon a flow of orders from a "C-Suite."  

Is is possible for an organization populated with humans to leverage the bee hive's social architecture to realize greater strength, balance and responsiveness to its markets and environments? We believe it is.  We call such a pursuit, design and practice the Creative Hive.

In conclusion, there are also examples of thriving "top down/bottom up" models that are somewhat analogous within human society:  

• Modestly-regulated, free enterprise economic systems

• Democratic-republic political systems, such as that of the U.S.

There are also a few organizations and thought leaders beginning to pursue core competencies, operating behaviors and creative conditions that are very similar to those proposed by the Creative Hive:  

• An exemplar may be Whirlpool Corporation's "Everyone, Everywhere" transformations that have recently been accomplished throughout its organizational ecosystem.  In many ways, Google may also proving to be a noteworthy exemplar.

Danny

All Rights Reserved, TalentSphere LLC 2008

A genesis moment ...

innovate |ˈinəˌvāt|

verb [ intrans. ]

make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products                                                                                                                                     …American Heritage Dictionary

innovate

verb

a potential within all living organisms for responding to environmental or intrinsic conditions, including change, often executed by exploratory expression or experimentation for (ultimately) achieving beneficial new individual or collective circumstances.                                                          …a personal observation

As a logical extension of the observation above, I believe innovation is a vital capability residing within every human, granted by nature.  Conversely, I believe most conventional organizations oppose and defend themselves against innovation purposely, to varying degrees, through the operating designs they have in place.  One does not have to be an expert to quickly assess a wide variety of ways that organizations firmly hold in place effective methods for ignoring, suppressing or extinguishing people's innovation and valuable comments.  Interestingly, organizations often accomplish this risk-laden condition in an invisible, oblivious and entirely blameless manner.  It is ironic that while preventing innovation, many organizations simultaneously invest significant sums to gain or add "an innovative edge" within their operations.  Other organizations simply suffer while wasting time and money, and sometimes totally fail, because they refuse to allow innovation to percolate from their midst.  

Everyday I witness the phenomena of energized people attempting to offer better processes or technologies, new cost-saving methods and creative ways to solve old problems to organizations. It never ceases to amaze me at the extreme difficulty they face when trying to do so. Sadly, many simply give up from exhaustion and despair. And these frustrated folks may be found working within any role throughout the organization: CEO, housekeeping, doctor, pilot, engineer, production line, nurse, teacher, CFO, supervisor, driver, COO, programmer, salesperson, etc.  

I suppose this reality is the reason for a mantra that's universally repeated in organizations: "Its better to seek forgiveness than to seek permission."

Innovation is not, in a general sense, needing to be “introduced to,” “added to” or “developed in" people within or outside the organization, at least at the most fundamental levels.  Rather, innovation may be first and best advanced in organizations by placing attention to ceasing, taking away or reducing everything that’s visibly resisting, subversively disabling and successfully inhibiting people’s ideas, experiments, imagination, sounding of alarms, suggestions, inspiration, opposing viewpoints and conclusions, creative discussions and vocalized alternatives to the status quo.

If you are a leader, supervisor or board member, I believe valuable innovation already is all around you, though perhaps remaining largely dormant or suppressed by your present organizational design, practices and behaviors. I am confident your workplace and marketplace is a fertile landscape.  This landscape's rich soil is waiting to be seeded, cultivated and harvested by you at this very moment.  There is no barren ground.  The power of far better products and profits or reduced expenses, risks and liabilities for your organization is ever present, though presently languishing latent within workers', suppliers' or customers' minds.  Unlimited creativity and astute, vital comments are simply waiting to be unleashed, revealed, refined and realized from the many powerful brains in your workplace and marketplace.  There may be no greater waste and neglect in most organizations than failing to mine the golden ore of its untapped, massive brainpower; and ironically, few riches are so easy and inexpensive to reach, extract and translate to benefit.

Consider: everything living in nature, plant or animal, finds itself, at times, suboptimal in relation to changes in purpose or conditions within its environment.  All living things respond, experiment, mutate, create, evolve and adapt. Innovation is so often positioned as illusive, mysterious and confounding in business magazines, countless books and seminars, but it happens to be a primary quality found throughout nature for the pursuit of the optimal or the response to change.  Humans, in ways strikingly similar to wily bacteria and viruses, or a seemingly static douglas fir, are encoded and enabled to be constantly innovating, and to be doing so in a fine manner.  That is, until these humans become dominated or restrained by organizational or social structures that repel a new idea, kill an opposing viewpoint, dismiss a comment, punish a failed experiment, ignore a contradicting observation, roadblock creativity, "table" a report of conflicting evidence, are deaf to expressions of reasonable concerns or even to the loud ringing of alarms.

We shouldn't forget: organizations are not innovative; rather, people are!  

By this I mean the fountainhead of any innovative result to be found in any organization flows from the human mind. Organizations can only harvest, leverage and propel human innovation, if they so desire.  Unfortunately, even in 2008, few so desire.  Most organizations have been developed and maintained to be narrowly focused, such as to a charter or mission.  They apply severe attention to structure, controls, influences, policies, procedures, management, leadership and constant attention to the reduction or elimination of variables.  Yes, this is one reason why “change management gurus” are in many cases financially secure (…and yes, why change initiatives so often fail in fighting the forces at play).  Indeed, the very word “organize” implicitly conveys a controlled social structure, or division of labor arrangement, for a distinct purpose.  Organization, order and structure in this instance can be practically synonyms. 

It follows that most organizations may be configured for battling against "supposed entropy," or against any form of "assumed degradation" by that which brings about disorder, chaos, contradiction, collapse, or even worse, the new.  This may be why so many organizations can become fixed, hardened and hobbled by rigid conventions, "holy momentum," "policy cement" and the stasis of legacy.  On the other hand, innovation in any form within an organization can be seen by some as, or in part, “a threatening emergence of disorder.”  For indeed, by innovation’s nature it challenges the established, the conventional, the momentum, the policies, the legacy and the status quo.  

                        Ah, there’s the rub! 

This is not to diminish the value of present day organizations, nor the many important constructive and productive mechanisms within them.  Rather this content proposes an evolution (metamorphosis?) of the today's typical organizational architecture, beginning with the widespread acknowledgement, acceptance and thoughtful response to this reality: 

                    ...people and organizations are (very) different! 

This "difference" is directly relevant to bettering organizational innovation, since it can be anticipated that while it is in people’s innate nature to innovate.  Conversely, most organizations prevailing today have an architecture in place to prevent their wealth-building and very survival from people’s innovation.  

The design of the affiliation between organizations and people should now evolve into a new form of "relationship."  Such a new form of relations would enable the organizational sum to be greater than the parts, as opposed to today's parts often being far greater that the sum (suboptimal organizational outcomes).

Here’s an analogy that may help—Immune systems are a defensive means our bodies apply to identify and protect us from things that “seem alien” and threaten our well-being.  Such immune systems may be either properly “programmed” or improperly programmed.  When the latter is the case, harmless, or even beneficial and important things that we need can trigger negative, violent immune system responses (such as some people’s allergic reactions to peanuts or woodland sumac).  In fact, often it is our own mal-programmed immune system that can create life-threatening health problems, such as Type 1 Diabetes or transplanted organ tissue rejection. 

Using this analogy, here is my premise—most organizations today have “malformed immune mechanisms” in place when it comes to innovation.  Innovation, whether in the form of worker comments, viewpoints, concerns, modest cost-saving suggestions or radical ideas.  The rejected source can equally beyond the organization's walls such as a customer, a supplier, a salesperson standing in the lobby or just a concerned third party.  Even paradigm-shifting ideas are too often identified as “the enemy,” nuisances and distractions, or at best, annoyances of little relevance, value and priority.  Such organizational immune mechanisms are operating each day in a wide variety of passive and active, subtle and overt ways.  Some are incredibly simple and others are amazingly complex and systemic.  I argue that the immune systems of the typical organization is presently “out of touch” or “out of balance” with the realities that surround the organization, thus it often is rejecting what it needs the most…innovation.

Perhaps the industrial revolution ushered in this “imbalance” and thus the present state of organizational programming and rules may have been more correct for “another time” in history.   For example, during the industrial period organizations perfected the “labor model” as a construct to form dominant affiliation with a person.  This was a “We think. You do!” theory to consistently achieve minimum, yet uniform, human performance within standardized functions that were collectively assigned to a person (aka a “job”).  People were "plugged into" the production process for more the need of their body and muscle than from any contributions from their mind.  Charles Taylor's work in management science in the early 1900's finished nailing this construct firmly into the workplace.  

This "industrial period model," though severely outdated, prevails until this day across many workplaces, even though the workplace and related marketplace challenges, opportunities and risks have fundamentally changed.  Now we sorely need every mind in our workplace, supply chains and marketplaces solving our problems, but this need arrives with many implications.

Organizations' (analogous) immune systems, do serve real and valuable purposes, for many dangers exist which merit strong and constant defenses.  Nevertheless, I argue and support the need for remodeling, redesigning and reprogramming the typical organization’s immune system in order for the organization to have a far better appetite and digestion for the nourishing and beneficial ideas, comments and concerns of its entire workforce, its suppliers and its customers. 

The name we use for an organization that welcomes, nurtures and sustains constructive worker, supplier and customer expression is a Creative Hive™. Such an organization may be remarkably similar to "superorganisms" that thrive in nature.  By achieving this state, they tend enjoy extraordinarily positive prospects. As the name of this blog implies, bee hives are an example of a superorganism.  The "distributed information management architecture" of a bee hive offers inspiration for achieving collective benefit through optimized individual expression. 

A bee hive's elegant design dependably directs and supplies the requirements of their community with precision.  This "interactive and inclusive architecture" attends to and regulates all life span needs, responds quickly to a wide range of environmental changes, reaches reliable decisions, directs procreation, applies specialized, succession-based work roles and even expands via "new ventures" (the swarm).  By applying a tested "superorganism" blueprint developed across the ages that is based upon individual expression, bees dramatically raise the probability of both individual and community success.

Across time the authors of this blog will be sharing thoughts herein about imagining, enabling and supporting Creative Hives.  We invite your comments, ideas, observations, anecdotes and expressive critical thoughts as we blaze new trails together.

Danny

All Rights Reserved, TalentSphere LLC

Characteristics of a Creative Hive

What is perhaps significant or different about an organization designed to be a Creative Hive?  Certainly such an environment is a fertile petri dish for creative expression, multi-vantage observation and unrelenting problem-solving.  Two of the primary nutrients are: 

1) explicit respect and value for every person's thinking

2) multi-directional information directing thinking, submissions, reviews and acceptance or rejection

Since Creative Hive percolates abundant thoughts from all possible sources, it also inherently understands that all ideas, expressions and concerns do not merit action. Thus it  has a design to enjoy a high degree of stochastic resonance.  That is, the Creative Hive has ways and means to effectively and efficiently "separate the signal from the noise."   Or you might say, "separate the valued wheat from the less useful chaff" from its percolating supply of creative expression (as does a bee hive).

There are many components in a Creative Hive which are unified into a productive synthesis.  Some are idiosyncratic for the organization's unique circumstances, while other elements appear to be rather universal.  Below are what I now believe to be a few of the key defining universal components of a sustainable Creative Hive:

1.  Leadership offering appropriate attention to innovation; expecting innovation from throughout the workforce, at all levels and in all quarters; and is an active sponsor of innovative culture.  It is rare that sustainable innovation will be ultimately any greater than leadership's vision, operating philosophy and their related establishment of applicable accountabilities, processes and systems that are congruous with enabling optimal innovation.  Accepting innovation for many organizations is often unnatural, running counter to short-term forces and the momentum acting upon the organization. Leadership must acknowledge and offer compelling advocacy for widely distributed worker, supplier, customer and user expression and ensure responsiveness to those expressions.  

Such leaders appreciate that innovation by its nature is usually bottom-up, organic and emergent in nature, as it arises within the mind of every person.  Therefore, they architect an environment optimal for respecting, outfitting, tapping and leveraging each of those minds, without waste or neglect.  These leaders place their organization on a relentless pursuit of improvement, learning and leverage of growing knowledge.  They will seldom be found to be complacent within any related domain of their organization's core competencies.  They possess intellectual curiosity and mental stamina to always propel them in seeking advantages to survival, as well as realizing financial and marketplace victories.  They foster authentic expression and communications throughout their organizational, supplier and customer communities (which can be quite difficult to achieve in many situations, particular in the presence of authority or contextual conflicts).  

2.  A “talent model” displaces the "labor model” in that people are sought for maximum or optimal performance, as opposed to accepted or institutionalized minimum performance.  (How else can innovation be harvested unless we seek greater yields from our talent investments, such as by moving away from minimum thresholds of job-based forms of work performance expectations?)

3.  To realize peak performance, the organization attends to optimally forming, sustaining and stewarding relationships with each qualified worker, and does so by design. Up-to-date, substantive information exchange offers "relationship guidance" to all parties.  In such a relationship, based on reciprocal performance, everyone is accountable for “thinking, speaking and doing.”  Work roles are collaborative, based upon a design of reciprocal performance.  Work is a we thing! 

4.  Innovation is a functional requirement within every work role's design.  This design is inclusive of continuous improvement and knowledge management, is well-articulated, and based upon explicit agreement between the parties. There is shared acknowledgement that the performance of this (and any function) can only be accomplished by both parties' contributing and being accountable for personal functional performance in these areas.  

Both personal and organizational performance related to applicable innovation functions are measured, often by key indicators.  Results are further assured by strict compliance measures, as in any other function.  Accordingly, within a Creative Hive, innovation is not an optional, sporadic, random, hoped for "peripheral" gain; but rather, personal work role innovation is seen as an essential cause or factor for attaining each work role's targeted yields.  

This is best accomplished by work role design through the application of accurate, complete theory, organizing principles and methods (with distributed competencies and a common language for same) for seeking, forming and sustaining such work role relationships.  Such work role design addresses the needs and requirements of both parties (displacing limited job descriptions, “one size fits all” HR models, “toss ‘em over the fence" recruiting programs or dictatorial, suffocating management practices. Leadership factors tend to rise in relative importance against management factors.  Continuous improvement and related knowledge management are beneficial.

5.  Accordingly, wherever work role innovation is seen as a work role function, the organization's responsibilities for innovation are accomplished by diligent attention (as opposed to intention). Attention is directed to these vital areas:

a.  Permitting a fertile, nurturing environmental “ambience” for functional innovation to flourish from every person. This includes vigilance to discover, remedy or purge any toxic attitudes, practices, policies and behaviors that may be harmful to innovation.  Creative Hives welcome innovation of any type or context from any person and all situations.  Creative Hives are sensitized and alert, for they know that all too often some of the ultimately most valuable innovative expressions are found in the "fringes," or may be only whispered once by the "meek." 

b.  Properly seeding and specifically offering to all targeted minds "precipitating information" so as to provoke creativity in a manner resonating with the organization's desirable tactical and strategic objectives, problems, opportunities or threats.  Well-crafted information sparks useful imagination!

c.  Putting in place mechanisms to ensure the incoming content of submitted ideas, comments, concerns and alarms are constructed so as to be optimally vetted, understood and considered by the organization.  Submissions must be guided so as to accurately resonate with the organizational parameters of need.

d.  Localizing and distributing the submission, review and decision processes in an optimal manner for the organization's situations and circumstances. Preferably, front line or contextual talent stewards will be assigned much or all of this responsibility within their roles (through the practice of Relationship Performance™ or Work role Yields Management™ WRYM).

e.  Having in place a submissions stratification, vetting, review, collaboration, comment, administration/rights management, knowledge management/archival system.  Within Creative Hives such a system is known as innovation content management™ (ICM).  Effective processes combined with ICM mechanisms should advance the efficacy of submission review, feedback, collaboration and acceptance.  Note: TalentSphere's Innovation Harvester™ is an ICM example.

f.  Diversity of thought, experiences and interests within a gender-, age- and culturally-balanced community are not only respected, but purposely sought and celebrated, even when inherently frustrating (due to inherent contention, debate, decision-making and management challenges).

g.  Key indicator metrics and compliance means for each of the above are in place, monitored and attended with timely action.

h.  Before making decisions or taking actions, contextual understanding is sought with ample humility.  A quest for root causes and/or evidence trumps any comfort to be found in assumptions, prejudices or dogma.  Few things are better for attaining stochastic resonance, regulating attention and establishing innovation submission vetting priorities than seeking a reliable understanding of the underlying realities, forces and influences that are acting on the organization.

Danny

All Rights Reserved, TalentSphere LLC