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Innovation = adhocracy, says Tom Peters in The Little Big Things: 163 ways to pursue excellence. An effective culture of innovation is largely ad hoc, and can drive many traditional senior managers crazy, he acknowledges. “To them, ‘adhocracy' is little better than ‘mobocracy.' But if they can't ‘get it,' they don't belong.”
A simple hint the author offers is that if your organisation chart ‘makes perfect sense,' then you probably do not have a particularly innovative enterprise. For, as he explains, adhocracy requires letting go of assumptions of linearity, and substituting curves and spirals for straight lines and 90-degree turns. “In my experience, most truly innovative projects effectively invent themselves, as opposed to being the product of a formal planning process; and their growth, too, is mostly organic, and constantly punctuated by odd twists and turns and plateaus of frightening duration.”
How to go about fostering innovation? Organise as much work as possible, virtually all, in project teams, advises Peters. “A project team structure, even at places like my old employer, McKinsey, tends to be more fluid, with boundaries more porous, work areas less constrained. Moreover, you have the opportunity to create – and then destroy – project teams of all shapes and sizes.”
Another counsel in the book is to put ‘outsiders' by the bucket-load on all teams, because mixed, diverse, impermanent membership leads to a more flexible organisation format. Also, create rich internal social-networking rituals and routines to encourage anyone to play in any game, the author urges. “Cisco Systems calls this ‘emergent leadership,' and has bet the future on it — leaders, based on energy and expertise, ‘emerge' from anywhere, lead for a while when it makes sense, and then the reins change hands more or less automatically.”
Formula for success
The book reveals a ‘formula for success,' thus: C(I) > C(E). That is, C(I) or the internal customers are more important than C(E) or the external customers. To win with external customers, the system's salespeople typically want an ‘unfair share' of a host of insiders' time — engineers, the logistics team, lawyers, and the all-important risk-assessment staff, observes Peters. To implement the formula, his list of suggestions starts with the instruction to keep the internal customers ‘over' informed. “Tweet them or email or IM them about the trivial and the not-so-trivial in your work with your external customers. Go out of your way to put them on your team as ‘in-the-loop' insiders…”
A mega-turn-on, in the author's view, is to give the internal customers ‘face time' with the external customers. “If you're the Big Boss, plan a ‘sales' convention gala for top internal staff performers — for example, those in logistics and engineering and finance who greased the way for giant sales and performed follow-up service miracles for key clients.”
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