Implementing the New Social Contract: Adult-to-Adult

The previous blog entry (Sea Change Calls For a New Social Contract) introduced the notion of a fundamentally new social contract as a primary basis for unlocking and channeling a limitless reservoir of workforce creativity, passion, commitment and engagement – the very fountainhead of self-renewing, continuously innovative companies and organizations. This entry will open up an ongoing discussion about how that idea might be implemented, and how it would work on a practical basis.

Before jumping in to that discussion, first I’d like to call attention to a recurring and very interesting phenomenon that arises with our work at the Center. Bottom line, our focus at the Center for Corporate Renewal is just that: helping business leaders build companies capable of ongoing, systemic innovation, renewal and growth. In other words, we help business leaders build their businesses on a foundation of creativity and innovation, instead of production and execution, which were the primary focuses for most of the 20th century.

This brings up an interesting dilemma we run into quite often: clients ask us to provide them with a well-structured, linear, detailed, and somewhat routinized process for achieving those goals. This includes requests for very specific, routinized methods for implementing the new adult-to-adult social contract. In short, “Please provide us with an approach to building an entirely new foundational capability for continuous innovation and self-renewal using traditional (i.e. scientific / mechanistic / predictable / controllable) methods.” There’s quite a paradox here: we want to create the capability for continuous creativity (a right-brain capability) using only engineering-based (i.e. left-brain) methods. We want to create 21st century organizations using 20th century paradigms and approaches.

To a degree, those requests are both understandable and even necessary to strive toward in a business setting. Running a business successfully requires some degree of certainty, gained through well-defined structures, processes and systems – i.e. operations. But that’s not all there is to it. What I also hear behind those requests / demands are inner needs that cannot be expressed verbally in most currently-existing corporate cultures without it being a career-limiting move: “Don’t make me step out of my comfort zone; allow me to stay in familiar territory, where I have mastery and where I feel comfortable, safe, and secure.” “My career success has been founded on using analytical, linear, scientific, structured, well-defined (i.e. left-brain) capabilities and processes; I do not want to stray from that and risk failure.” Such requests would reveal personal vulnerabilities that most corporate cultures currently interpret as “weakness.” In most currently-existing corporate cultures, the success formula is to be continuously powerful, masterful, competent, and in control.

The fundamental problem, which is ultimately impossible to evade, is that creativity and its ‘grown-up’ form – innovation – are defined by leaving familiar shores behind. Cultivating creativity means letting go of familiar “props” and left-brain mastery, and heading into deeper, uncharted waters: those of the “creative self.”

This brings us full circle to the core of this blog entry’s discussion of “how” to implement the new social contract. While discussing forms of implementation of the new social contract, it is important to bear in mind that “one-size-does-NOT-fit-all.” It is possible to discuss a variety of manifestations of the new social contract, but it is not possible to fully exhaust the array of particular forms and practices associated with its founding principle: an adult-to-adult social foundation for organizations and companies.
In broad terms, the core of the new social contract is building adult-to-adult relationships based on shared purpose and mutual partnering. What does that mean? Well, it means a bunch of things:

Consider the notion of adult-to-adult relationships; i.e. non-parent-child relationships. Hierarchical, parent-child relationships are founded on power differentials: the person in the “top” position has power over the person in the “bottom” position. And, that power differential is rigid: it never changes. It is role-based. In adult-to-adult relationships, the “power” element in the relationship is more fluid and subject to conditions and ongoing discussion/ negotiation. Power is contextual rather than positional. Its “power with” rather than “power over.”

So, one of the most powerful ways to create non-hierarchical relationships is, to the greatest practical extent possible, to eliminate or significantly reduce hierarchy! In other words, flatten the organization to the greatest practical extent, and flatten the differential in power between the most senior executives and the most “front-line” of workers.

In bald terms, senior executives too often get too caught up in micro-managing and keeping their fingers in day-to-day, operational/ technical minutiae; inadvertently they may find that they are neglecting the primary core of their real job: to keep their eyes on the market, the customer base, products, services, resources, etc. – and aid the organization in interpreting changes in information relative to those phenomena, and making critical strategic decisions relative to them. The most critical, strategic core of their task is strategic interpretation and strategic decision-making.

There is another term for describing the notion of flattening power differentials: it’s called “empowerment.” Senior executives often find this notion threatening. This stems from a basic misinterpretation of the meaning of empowerment, or of flattened power differentials, and it stems from a fundamental misinterpretation of the role boundary between manager and worker. A central role of management is to serve as a conduit for information and accountability. The manager or leader is responsible for understanding and sharing the overall strategy and goals of the organization, and then for holding themselves and their people accountable for executing their role relative to the strategy and goals.

The notion of empowerment cannot be fully understood apart from its counterpart: accountability. Empowerment and accountability cannot be separated; they are two sides of a single coin. The issue isn’t one of the manager being “out-of-control.” It has nothing to do with “what” must be accomplished; it has everything to do with “how” it is accomplished.

The next blog entry will focus on some other facets of implementation of the new social contract.