The rise and rise of the Human Potential Organisation.
“In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.” Albert Einstein
To understand how business and society will change over the next few years (say, 2021-24), we need to understand what happened after 1353 (often cited as the end-date of the black plague) and 1920 (the end of the Spanish influenza epidemic).
In the first case, the Renaissance began, perhaps the greatest leap forward ever in western culture, with major evolutions in science, art, literature, philosophy and society and the replacement of the Dark Ages with a new era of humanism. And the second was the beginning of the Jazz Age, when the automobile transformed society while at the same time there was massive social progress, including voting and societal rights for women. In both cases, the irresistible response to the darkness of disease and death was to embrace light, life and learning. It is a natural expression of a human condition to savour joys from which we have been deprived.
However, in neither case, did this come from nothing. The renaissance drew on the re-discovered works of ancient Greeks such as Euclid and Ptolemy, and authors such as Dante were setting the scene for humanism before the Black Plague. In the case of the 1920s, Henry Ford had already put the assembly line in place as early as 1913. The seeds of the future had been sown, but cataclysmic events accelerated the change process.
The same conditions apply today. The crisis of 2020 will (and has already started to) create opportunities for a great decade – one that may be termed the age of the Human Potential Organisation (HPO). HPOs have not just blinked into existence: their traits have been evinced in a number of pioneering, and highly successful, organisations in recent years. But the impact of the pandemic has been call their evolutionary benefits into a more public spotlight and initiate their proliferation across business and society.
How do we recognise an HPO?
When we speak of an HPO, we describe five characteristics (or to be more precise, five consistent and pervasive organisational habits) as being most important. We have identified these by searching across countries and industries for organisations which have stood out from peer entities in terms of:
- Performing strongly and consistently across five domains of success: commercial, customer, employee, innovation and societal.
- Being frequently cited as pioneering or ‘future fit’ by credible external sources (e.g. published studies, major awards, academic citation, etc).
The five characteristics were those which were found to satisfy three criteria:
- Most frequently found.
- Most differentiating from organisations at large.
- Most attributed as causal to success in the five domains.
Firstly, an HPO is strategically adaptive.
It is an organised system for understanding changing customer needs and mirroring these real-time changes internally. HPOs have early response systems to the changing environment around them. Leaders make time to look up and out, get curious and listen to what’s changing at the fringe of the organisation, find ways to experiment and learn their way into the future, and evolve the organisation in a way where people want to be part of that future state.
Think how quickly and smoothly you want your video-conference camera to pivot when the person speaking changes. How quickly a butterfly senses and adjusts to changes in wind direction, while still heading to its destination. That’s what an HPO does.
Secondly, an HPO is not designed as an organisation, at least not how we have conventionally understood it.
First and foremost, an HPO is designed as a learning system, and more specifically designed for unlocking individual and collective human potential. HPOs have moved beyond ‘talent management’ whereby we looked to individuals to show themselves to be high potential or not, to a recognition that it is a company’s preeminent priority is to have a compelling way of unlocking the potential of their people. HPOs do this in two ways:
- they help people at an individual level to feel safe, curious and supported enough to articulate their potential and pursue transformational change;
- and HPOs are intentionally and systemically developmental at an enterprise level.
In the same way that a beehive is organised to maximise the storage of honey, or an AI is programmed to self-improve as rapidly as possible, an HPO hardwires in the optimal environment for the factors that nurture and accelerate potential realisation: safety, autonomy, mastery, stretch, connection and collaboration.
Thirdly, picking up on the point that HPOs are not organisations as we’ve traditionally thought of them, HPOs are boundaryless.
Rather than be stultified by hierarchical structures and siloed divisions, they consist of empowered, connected networks. HPOs do not limit themselves to structures that stay static over time. They curate diverse and talented project teams and encourage frequent movement within and across boundaries. They develop strong accountability and support mechanisms that maximise flexibility and freedom without compromising contribution and commitment. Think of the human brain, where any neuron can connect with any other neuron or the internet, where any user can connect with any site. In an HPO, teams form and re-form, often stretching well beyond the employed members of the HPO into myriad global teams, alliances, ventures and quests.
Fourthly, HPOs are truly purpose-led.
This is not about PR, statements or slogans. HPOs are organisational ecosystems built on shared purpose and principles, focused on impact over grind. HPOs are not isolated structures but connected ecosystems built on shared purpose and principles. They are driven by a compelling reason for being, drawing out the highest motives and efforts of their people, they are built on trust, empowerment, and the power of the tribe to keep the collective aligned and strong over time.
Fifth and finally, HPOs are intentionally collaborative.
They create and live the first four elements with discipline and artistry. HPOs are highly skilled at creating collaborative conversations and spaces. They recognise that one of the most valuable and conversely expensive things to do is to bring people together. They don’t waste time on meandering meetings. Instead, they curate spaces, are clear on purpose, intentional on process, and provide the thinking tools to unlock the mind.
The leaders of HPOs deliberately construct their system to be filled with constant gardeners, who never let their plot turn to weeds. By doing so, everyone is a leader in some way and, collectively, they continually find better ways to be strategically adaptive, realise potential, transcend boundaries and live with purpose.
How to make your organisation an HPO
The purpose of this article is not to provide a step-by-step guide for transitioning to an HPO. However, there is one principle that is hugely valuable in making this journey:
HPO Principle 1:
Become an HPO by being an HPO
What this means is that any journey to being an HPO must strive to emulate the characteristics of the desired future state. This has many benefits:
- It shows commitment to the journey.
- Everyone in the organisation gets a glimpse of what the future may look like, building both understanding and desire.
- It aids learning.
- By successive approximations, the organisation becomes gradually more and more like its vision for itself, ultimately becoming wholly true. The organisation then is what it habitually does.
What does this look like in practice? Imagine any aspect of the change journey, from the grandest elements to the smallest. In each case, those engaged in the journey must seek and find ways, however unpolished, to do the following:
- Be strategically adaptive. Ensure that more time and effort goes into studying the future and the external environment than into the past and the internal environment. Take a curious stance about changes in the world and build in early response systems. Practice the art of pivoting until it becomes instinctive and graceful.
- Act as a learning organisation. The qualities of a learning organisation are well-understood, so it’s more a matter of displaying them. Foster an environment of safety, embed reflection, celebrate and learn from failure, and experiment continually, so that every quarter it is possible to look at the organisation and say ‘we can see how we have evolved from three months ago, and we can feel confident that we will evolve further’.
- Be boundaryless. At every step, look to extend the participation, contribution or ownership beyond traditional boundaries. Can you go beyond the obvious team or division, or well beyond the organisation itself to other countries or sectors, thereby redefining and expanding the boundaries every time.
- Be purpose-led. This is sometimes the easiest element, although it first requires a sense of what the organisation’s purpose is. Once that is known, the opportunity is then to ensure that every significant choice, action and conversation is intentionally and explicitly linked to that purpose – every day, week, month and year of the journey.
- Be intentionally collaborative. While this is listed last, it often comes first on the change journey. Before going far, create some collaborative conversations and spaces and build a discipline of designing for this at every step. By doing so, the four previous habits will become easier, richer and more powerful, creating a virtuous cycle.
Start the journey.
We’ve had the pleasure of working with organisations that embody many of the qualities of an HPO. However, we have never found one that was perfect and there will never be an organisation that does not need to keep sharpening its saw.
What we have seen is organisations become more like HPOs, as a result of initiative, thoughtfulness and commitment. (We’ve also seen organisations go backwards as a result of weakening these practices.)
The conditions for being an HPO are now more propitious than before the pandemic but the need to evolve is also more pressing. The best time to do so is now.
