A world with no bosses

Aldoux Huxley titled his most renowned novel Brave New World. In it, the author, born in Surrey, England, describes a dystopian world exclusively run by the laws of science. Emotions are controlled artificially, poverty and wealth do not exist, and our social life is as healthy as it is open. It’s a brave new world.

Today, the world is far from this utopia. Challenged by the global impacts created by the war and a sanitary crisis resisting to disappear, we’re living in a world with no direction, where everything is questioned—especially authority and respect for basic rules of coexistence. The recent turmoil in Brazil, Peru’s self-coup, Russia’s Putin, and Donald Trump’s America are all proof of this. Societies have yet to find the solution to their needs for leadership in a world that is constantly redefining itself.

This image resonates increasingly throughout organizations. Leaders are also struggling to find a way to reinvent themselves. This issue affects businesses new and old, as can be seen with Elon Musk’s current struggle over Twitter’s ownership or Sam Bankman-Fried (SFB)’s failure through the collapse of FTX, one of the world’s biggest crypto empires. Considering that even children immersed in the digital age are facing failure, we can clearly conclude that something about our models is failing. This might be why the rise in demands for holacratic businesses—where decision making and roles of leadership are distributed horizontally—comes as no surprise to me. Hierarchical leadership as we knew it no longer exists. Though I agree with the holacratic business model, they require coordinated leadership that is aligned with its business’ vision. 

Until recently, positions of authority were established on the privilege of access to above-average knowledge within the company. A leader was elected due to their broader technical vision and access to or acquisition of knowledge that positioned them above the rest. From that position, leaders imposed power and discipline. This discipline was what supported the system and allowed organizations to function. But this superiority of knowledge and privileged access to information has disappeared. 

Social and technological advances have readjusted the distribution of knowledge. In today’s world, anyone can access the necessary skills to solve a plumbing problem at home or drive a rocket to the moon and back at the click of a button. All of us can reach the same level of knowledge. 

The last three years have taught us that the freedom to decide how and who acquires this knowledge is an individual decision unique to each person, not an organization—leaving organizations today competing for our attention.

From this standpoint, it’s natural that collaborators would question the existence of a “superior” position of authority or boss. Their main role—acquiring the proficiency that gave them the power to impose the discipline that sustained the system—no longer exists. Roles of authority have become an obsolete, unnecessary cost that should be removed altogether, according to many. However, this is where utopia collides with reality. 

As humans, we possess individual characteristics and desires. It’s what makes us special. These characteristics, however, cannot function individually; they must work as a whole. Only then can a shared future be created. If we fail to integrate these different desires into a shared cause as an organization, all our acquired knowledge and talent is at risk of losing itself through individual actions. This liberty would result in incoordination and, in a worst-case scenario, anarchy.  

As leaders, our attention should be focused around unifying and coordinating individuality in order for it to transform into a collective consciousness that guides us towards a common future.

In a world where technology learns from its mistakes and increasingly—and effectively—carries out manual tasks that were once executed by humans, people have been freed from this responsibility and forced to apply knowledge, creativity, and innovation to our work. 

It depends on us to leverage this freedom. If properly managed, it will allow us to maximize each of our expertises and thus create, generate value and think of new ways—or innovate—to satisfy demands and interact with clients. Steve Jobs anticipated this in one of his most famous quotes, “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

In a world full of knowledge, leaders have ceased to be the greater directors, in order to become the greater coordinators. Privileged information is no longer their main tool. Today, they rely on the combination of their vision of the future and their communication skills. This way, they facilitate and serve as the backbone for the coordination of each person’s activity in order for them to aim towards the common goal of said future. 

A leader’s worth now depends on knowing how to generate, cultivate, and nurture the bond between the people belonging to their team and organization. The relationship they establish is the key component that will allow the organization to leverage the collective consciousness in order to face the future. No organization is stronger, more resilient, flexible, and agile than the one based on a net of solid, healthy bonds. This is the type of organization that requires leaders as opposed to bosses, and possesses the skills to adapt to an uncertain environment that is constantly changing, as is our world. And best of all: not in a utopia, in reality.

By Alberto Bethke, CEO and Founding Partner at OLIVIA

Read original articule from Diario sustentable here