Co-Creative employees as a way out in times of crises

As the title implies Anna writes about how and why she believes Danish companies increasingly should use their own staff to find a way out of the current crisis rather than the pattern of behavior adopted by most companies.
Please read the entire column just below here:

Today a woman I know told me that she and her husband were both fired from their jobs within a week of each other due to the financial crisis. This is not the first couple I have met in this situation. I am angry at the shortsightedness and conservativeness of Danish companies when trying to find solutions to their challenges that my blood is near boiling.  The story behind the woman is that the company (“he who shall not be named”) who hired her used over one year to find her through a headhunting company. Then the consulting company that came in to solve the crisis (e.g. reorganize and cut resources) collaborated with her to build the actual strategy for implementing the reorg.  Her thanks?  Firing! Not even with an option to move to another division, another silo within this large company because the divisions do not speak to each other!

What did you, as a leader, get out of this cost cutting action?  You got relief from the pressures of your board and from your stakeholders.  In addition, you just killed trust, motivation, creativity, accountability and loyalty amongst your employees, the people who know your business better than anyone else.  In fact you killed all of this the minute you hired a consulting company in as ‘the experts’ at a huge cost to your company: a cost which could have been invested in to your employees to become agents of change; a cost which could have been invested in empowering your employees to come up with the solutions to your challenges which would have been a win-win for your employees, your customers and your company’s value proposition; a cost which could have been invested in creating trust, motivation, creativity, accountability and loyalty amongst your employees. 

Why do you trust the answers of a consulting company more than your people? Because you are blinded by your culture, your education, your models that make sense to you, you are blinded by what made you successful as a leader and by the politics within your organization. Most of all, you are blinded by fear.  These same blinders affect your ability as a leader to innovate because innovation is impacted by how you chose to lead.  

When a crisis happens, you want to control the damage and you want to find immediate relief. You do what feels safest, you converse with your boys club (do not even get me started now on the lack of women leaders here in Denmark), you converse with your VL groups and you hire in your friends or friends of friends from business school or wherever, and you pat each other on the back.  Congratulations, you have your own fan club, but beware:  like barn leker best men de lærer jo ingenting. 

The story illustrates problems facing Denmark today when we talk of innovation. For the sake of clarity, I see innovation as the ability to come up with and implement new ideas that create value not only for the companies but for the people these companies serve.  These ideas can be products, services and/or organisational change. 

I want to contribute to stopping the hemorraging happening in companies now.   So today, it is my focus.  I believe it can be done with a mindset change that is sorely needed and by viewing organisational change as innovation. How can you, as a leader, dive in and really make a difference? The democratisation of innovation is all about the people being involved in the process.  It starts with how you problem-solve within your company. 

Cocreating Solutions with your employees
I urge you to consider empowering your employees to cocreate the solutions you need to today’s business challenges.  Imagine telling your employees that you want them to become the agents of change within your company, imagine giving everyone this challenge including the janitor. 
 
Turn your thinking upside down: Imagine if you were making considerable profit right now and you did not need to cut resources and costs.  Have you thought to give your employees the challenge of turning your company around and making more profit instead of focusing on reducing costs and resources?

If you have to focus on reducing costs and resources, let your employees help you figure out the best way to do this and at the same time keeping the integrity of your relationships with your employees, your customers and potential customers intact.  They know the situation best and the impact choices will have throughout your value chain.

You will be surprised by the solutions that are created, and you will be surprised by who comes up with the solutions. The process of co-creating your present and your future has additional benefits to you as a leader: Not only do you get the solutions you need, you are also motivating your employees and holding them accountable for their actions.  Even more important, through the lenses of empowerment, you find out who actually makes a difference, who can work in a crisis and who can not before you start pulling the trigger. 

While you are cocreating the present and future, there are some other things you might think of doing:

Start having conversations with people beyond your usual suspects and get challenged and inspired to take action by diverse ways of thinking in terms of education, gender and culture.

Instead of hiring people just like yourself, hire someone who challenges your current way of thinking.  Be willing to be humble and be willing to  learn new and powerful ways of making changes.

This people centered approach to innovation starts within your company with a mindset change in leadership. To ‘he who shall not be named’, not only did you lose a powerful employee when you fired this woman in order to cut costs, she may very well have been the woman with the golden answer to your challenge.