The Zeitgeist

The Zeitgeist (spirit of the age or spirit of the time) is the intellectual fashion or dominant school of thought that typifies and influences the culture of a particular period in time.

At any conference or professional gathering today, someone will stand up and say that things are not working, and about two-thirds in attendance will nod in agreement. I hear that relationships with customers are broken. Some talk about generational differences in the workplace that disconnect senior management from young workers. Others see a need for better digital competencies. Many are challenging the hierarchical nature of the organization in an emerging networked economy.

I attended several presentations on the future of Human Resources (even the word reflects the hierarchical nature of the workplace) in Paris last week. Every session highlighted the fact that things are not working. Recruiting, talent management, professional development, and every other area of HR is trying to deal with a post-industrial workplace. The zeitgeist is the need for organizational change.

All the executives and managers I speak with today agree there is a need for change. They see that the Internet is changing their business. They understand that automation is a force to be reckoned with. However, many do not have a clue where or how to start. The zeitgeist for change may be obvious, but the old ways of thinking are still firmly entrenched. We cannot deal with the new era in the same way we managed the old one.

I usually suggest that it does not matter what you do, just do something. Let people safely experiment. I suggested to a school board that they give $100 to every teacher to invest in whatever they wanted, without any direction. Teachers could buy something for their classrooms, or perhaps a number of them could pool their money and make a larger impact. The cost would be low. The impact would be wide. The possibilities would be greater than any central committee could plan.

Real experimentation is not about quick wins, which are so appealing to management, as Tim Kastelle clearly shows:

“We need to find some quick wins to get this going, so we’ll look for the low-hanging fruit.”

Here’s the thing: there is no low-hanging fruit.

If there were, we’d have picked it already. I mean, we’re not stupid, right?

Businesses often want to see the ROI of something before committing to it. This is just a defence mechanism to ensure the status quo. If we keep the investment low enough, we don’t need to worry about the return on it. This allows for wide experimentation; not quick wins but quick losses.

We have communication technologies now to know what is happening across any organization. All large companies are also listening attentively to social media. Given all this information, it is easy to let people experiment as long as they share what they are doing. The solution to the problems inherent in organizations are inside the organization itself. But will management be able to give up control? This is the challenge today. The good news is that the nature of the problems are massively evident in the current zeitgeist.