Beyond Engagement…Tapping the Lateral Power of Your Organization

Around 17 years ago my firm was employed by a large manufacturer in our area to assist with a new product development initiative that had fallen waaaay behind schedule…again. In our analysis of the situation, we quickly found among other things a project that was being managed to death, or at least to a stop, frequently!

The folks responsible for the technical (real) development had been given lots of responsibility and virtually no autonomy. The functional management, spread over several areas, was so busy trying to “contribute” and stay informed that they had succeeded in squashing both the enthusiasm and initiative of the technical development team.

We proposed a new project oversight structure that reflected very distinct “contributions” expected from both the functional managers and the technical teams. The technical team would focus strictly on getting the product developed; the functional managers would focus on providing resources and removing barriers…when called upon.

Seven months later, slightly ahead of the revised schedule promised and under the budget allocated, the new product was delivered. Our role along the way, consisted of maintaining the new structure, reminding the functional managers of their new role and keeping them out of the technical team’s hair.

Seventeen years ago we were operating mostly from commitment, intuition and some experience; we didn’t have a good vocabulary to go along with the structures we created and held in place, or a well defined set of distinctions for change management. Based on my recent reading of Chip and Dan Heath’s book ‘Switch…’ I would now say that what we had intuitively done was “shape the Path”, actually we served as a surrogate for the shaping.

More important to us than knowing what we had done to produce this outcome was understanding what we had tapped into that allowed an otherwise completely bogged down initiative to suddenly rise from its own ashes and race forward to successful completion. Since that time I have devoted myself to developing the means to transfer what we had accomplished to a teachable format with what I will call mixed results at best. Using the Heath’s model, I’ve been successful at addressing the rider (rational) and the elephant (emotional) elements of change but never achieved the breakthroughs I was looking for in tweaking the environmental factors (the path).

I wasn’t going to be satisfied until we could develop a systemic approach that rendered our services as change agents unnecessary in the long term. I think you see where this goes…teach the man to fish…it’s a greater contribution.

This past week I began reading ‘The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy and the World.’ As I rolled along through the first chapter I realized that the author, Jeremy Rifkin, has unwittingly provided me a distinction that has been missing for me for 17 years, “lateral power.” His book is written to bring us to the larger realization of an innovative economic development model that ensures the sustainability of our natural resources and ecosystems. In other words he is working on “big ass ideas.”

I am somewhat uncomfortable about whether I’ll be accused of “dumbing down” concepts like those presented in ‘TIR’ but I had a moment if insight as I read. Lateral power, the concept must apply in many contexts. Somehow I believe that every fundamental concept is scalable. After all, it is “turtles all the way down” right?


 “Lateral power is a naturally occurring resource in every organization that is unintentionally constrained and minimized by unfocused,unconscious hierarchy.”

 

 We are encouraged by Peter Block in ‘Community: The Structure of Belonging’ to accept that the traditional hierarchies that we live with in organizations will never go away, so we should probably stop trying to change or eliminate them. I tend to agree with Block and I do not necessarily think the hierarchies should go away, if intentionally focused. However, our hierarchies do often serve to obscure and inhibit the lateral networks that would naturally form in their absence. Lateral power is a naturally occurring resource in every organization that is unintentionally constrained and minimized by unfocused hierarchy. I am sure this is a controversial statement. But hear me out.

  • You go to work each day planning to make the highest contribution possible. Why would you suspect that your co-workers would be any different from you?
  • Answer me this, while the hierarchical priorities of your organization provide for an important flow of information and resources, are they always attuned to the creation and retention of customers as an ultimate primary priority?
  • In your experience, are your cross functional peers inclined to look for ways to be supportive of each other’s objectives unless otherwise directed?
  • Do you believe that continuing to work on employee engagement will be enough to sustain your organization’s performance or get it where it needs to be, or is something more basic needed, like to freedom to convene parties with mutual interests to collaborate feely outside the constraints of hierarchy?
  • Would you welcome regularly participation with working peers in a structured format where the point was the progress of your work and the mutual success of everyone attending? 

Lateral power…it is time to go looking for ways to tap into it. When you reach the end of the road… it’s time to learn to fly. 

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