Moving from Top-Down to All-In, by Suzanne Vickburg, HBR

Moving from Top-Down to All-In

Do you remember the first time your boss asked for your opinion? Do you remember how it made you feel? This happened to me just the other day. Well, it wasn't the first time she had asked — at this point we've been around the block a time or two together — but it still had a big impact, and I think it always will. It made me feel like I really mattered. It made me walk a bit taller for the day. And it even made me work a bit harder, knowing my opinion was valued.

Let's face it, most of us don't want to be spectators at work. We want to be involved. We want to contribute. We want to participate. And those organizations that figure how to harness that desire are the ones that will get the most out of us.

Earlier this month the boss I refer to, Cathy Benko who leads talent at Deloitte, posted her conviction about the evolution from the corporate ladder to the corporate lattice. Part of this shift is an expansion of what she calls "lattice ways to participate." You might remember how orderly things were in the corporate ladder world — who knows, you might even work in an organization still clinging to this old way of life. Does top-down communication and information shared on a need-to-know basis sound familiar? Or a sense that only those at the top have worthwhile opinions? I don't know about you, but that world just doesn't work for me, and that kind of organization is not likely to get my best efforts.

What does work for me is how corporate lattice organizations invite, and even expect, participation from all of their people regardless of position on the organizational chart. In these organizations information flows every which way and people are encouraged to offer ideas and communicate across levels and other invisible boundaries. People form relationships with others who are down the hall as well as around the world. As a result, lattice organizations have an entire workforce of people who are engaged, sharing their best ideas, and working together to help the company succeed. Doesn't that sound like it makes a lot more sense? I know it's the kind of atmosphere I thrive in and you probably do too.

If you work in an organization that hasn't figured out how to do this, there are some great models — maybe you could start a discussion about them in your own company. Or maybe you're in a role where you could start the transformation yourself. Take for example, British telecommunications giant BT. They started to encourage participation with an experimental wiki called BTpedia, designed to facilitate information sharing across the company. On its heels they launched a second experiment that introduced blogging, and a third that created a small-scale social network.These ad hoc efforts then evolved into a robust internal social network, called My BT, that lets individuals customize their own pages.

My BT provides one-stop shopping to access all the content employees have posted on BTpedia, in blogs, and elsewhere, and also shows what other colleagues in someone's network are up to. Involving people through new mediums has been a big hit with BT's people for sure, but the company is seeing an even bigger payoff from their investment. Richard Dennison, principal business partner at BT, described it to us like this, 'I don't think that you can have an innovative company unless every single employee thinks they can make a difference to the organization. These tools are a key enabler for people to think they can make a difference.'

I want to point out that while new technologies enable more interactive communication and collaboration, it's the change in mindset that really matters. Lattice organizations have expanded their views of whose voices can make a difference and where good ideas can come from. While wikis, blogs, and social networks can help, these tools aren't sufficient without making a commitment to transparency and rethinking how to foster inclusion and innovation, cultivate communities, and harness collective wisdom. Lattice organizations have moved from top-down to all-in and are out-innovating the competition as a result.

So how do you see it? Has your organization adopted an authentic 'everybody in the pool' attitude?

uzanne Vickberg, Ph.D, is Senior Manager, Talent Strategy and Innovation for Deloitte Services, LP (US). This is the second in a series of posts related to Cathleen Benko and Molly Anderson's book The Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2010).

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