(by Sandro Zilli, Innovation Manager - Responsible for AIDR Innovation and Digital Growth Observatory) When it comes to corporate assets, we are often led to consider only a series of economic values that highlight the health of a company such as the balance sheet, turnover, bank account and various statistical reports related to performance. But the real assets of a company are much more! Organizations are mainly made up of ideas and knowledge, skills and abilities, relationships and sharing, that is, all those factors that together lead to the achievement of results. In other words, corporate assets are actually represented by people.
This statement is true today more than ever, especially in the rapid and changing working scenario, where the reality in which people and organizations operate becomes increasingly elusive and therefore imposes the need to measure up to complexity. The historical period we are experiencing is certainly the one with the highest rate of technological innovation in the history of humanity. This advancement is generating transformations that affect all sectors and incessant exponential, combinatorial and recursive changes. All this forces us to abandon the old operational models and to create a new vision that puts people, their creativity, their intuition and their problem solving skills at the center.
Practically a new human dimension, like that proposed by digital humanism, which promotes the "rebirth" of culture, relationships and morality, recognizing the specificity of the human being and his abilities. The role of digital technologies is therefore to be at the service of these human skills to increase them and not to limit them.
Current organizations, from businesses to institutions, are based on linear growth models, diametrically opposed to the exponential paradigm we are witnessing. They have organizational models based on hierarchical structures, centralized, silos, with top-down flows and are often burdened by the scarcity of talents who are able to give the necessary change of pace to cope with rapid changes. Basically a functional organizational scheme for the last century where economies of scale, stability and predictability were the norm.
An example of this are both the bureaucratic mechanisms that condition the organizations themselves and which, through the application of the rules in an impartial, impersonal and senseless way, penalize productivity and efficiency, and the anachronistic model of leadership accustomed to centralizing all knowledge with the consequent result of isolating oneself by losing contact with customers and collaborators. A new organizational approach is therefore needed, designed for a world that grows and develops exponentially, more open and transparent, no longer based on the centralizing leadership of "a single head", but on "many small heads" that function in a coordinated, like a collective intelligence. In practice, the challenge for companies is no longer performance but relevance, that is the continuous ability to adapt to changes by rethinking the way they operate.
PEOPLE AND NOT HUMAN RESOURCES
A new way of seeing things also and above all passes through a completely new language: we must stop talking about "human resources" and start talking about "people", we must forget the term "labor" and replace it with "mentedopera", only in this way it is possible to restore the right place and the right respect to those who are in fact the “core” of the organizations. The term "resource" in addition to being reductive is also demeaning in some cases because it reduces people to simple parts of a cog.
It follows that when a part of a mechanism does not work effectively it can be replaced immediately. Instead, today the most important thing is to understand how to foster people's development, relying on trust, respect and freedom, making them feel listened to and part of something. To achieve this, it is necessary to promote the updating of skills, the creation of a healthy corporate culture, the empowerment of people in the company, facilitating communication and sharing. The hoped-for results will come as a direct consequence.
To successfully start the transformation process, it is necessary to have people on board who have a strategic vision, who are ready to face risks and who, above all, are able to see the product throughout its lifecycle - from start to finish - Exactly how they have made very successful “startups” such as Facebook, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, they will tend to use the most important asset they have available and which is now underutilized, that is the widespread intelligence of their people. Interfunctional business nuclei will be created, where individuals will be enabled to understand what to do, make decisions, innovate. There will no longer be a process and a rigid hierarchy, but only procedures that eliminate bottlenecks thanks to reference figures enabled to operate independently from the beginning to the end of the process.
This agile organizational model, once implemented in traditional organizations, will solve the age-old problem of the market that moves at great speed in contrast to the very slow internal machine of companies, thus leading to the creation of a highly performing modus operandi that focuses on the customer. .