Companies are well structured, designed and rule driven. Compliance everywhere. They go for total transparency. Big Data, smart Data and the new technologies are great opportunities and at the same time a big threat. A workforce driven to conformity is helpful, if there is a clear, well-structured and predictable world – if not it is the way to blindness, to the pattern of more of the same and in the end to failure. If we follow this way we will educate a conforming, obedient and submissive workforce.
In cultural reflections one of the important polarity is: the tamed and the wild – the village and the wood. We expect from the tamed an obedient behaviour, we know, they will follow the rules as given in this village. We can easily trust them, because we observe them. The people who go out into the woods are suspicious – they are difficult to control because they may come back with new ideas, different judgements.
If we want to foster innovative, different behaviour within a company we have to learn to accept the wild, the untamed in our company and we should learn to protect the woods within our structures. And as villagers be open and respectful to listen, what the ones who go into the wild woods have to tell us. #Durchwegung