Building great organisations

In today’s world, whatever we do has to have meaning — it’s not just about money anymore. Some of that meaning can come from working together, with a common purpose. But what we build together should also mean something, and resonate in some way, with the wider world — the external audience.

Esko Kilpi talks about communication in terms of a series of gestures and responses. He also suggests that we should take this beyond our teams and organisation — to consider our product as a gesture, and that they generate a response from our customers. It’s more like a conversation with the world, with a constant back and forth, and it requires a new kind of organisation. A more socially-oriented organisation.

Jim Collins puts it like this:

“The next wave of enduring great companies will be built not by technical or product visionaries, but by social visionaries — those who see their company and how it operates as their ultimate creation, and who invent entirely new ways of organizing human effort and creativity.”

There is a new paradigm in town – one where value is created by tapping into our most human needs – to be social, have fun, and create together. We create value through our ingenuity: the quality of being clever, original and inventive. Even the word “ingenuity” is about what is inside us: it comes from the Latin ingenuus, which means ‘inborn’. It is in us – we just have to bring it out – and it is the role of the organisations that we build to create the atmosphere and environment that nutures our innate human potential.