Star Organisation as a Competitive Differentiation

Now that we have reflected that the leadership model of today needs an alternate thinking, what possibly could be this alternate thinking?

I would say that the command and control structure - the pyramid structure with one at the top, some in the middle and many at the bottom - is a good structure from a control point of view, from a compliance or governance point of view.

There is nothing we should do to disturb it. However we should form what I call a Star Organisation, by adding an inverted pyramid on top of the erect pyramid - therefore it forms a star.

What is this inverted pyramid? We need ask a few questions before we come to an inverted pyramid. The first question is: What is the core business of a corporation? We just concluded that the core business of the corporation is to create value and maximize value in the interface of the customers and company. So who are the people in that interface from the organisation side? Obviously it is the employees. Therefore the conclusion is that it is the employees in the interface of the customers and the company which are creating the value.

Once that is understood then we need to ask ourselves: Hence what business should be the management of the company be in? It is quite apparent that it should be in the business of enabling, enthusing, encouraging the creation of the ‘wow’, the creation of value in the value zone and that should define what the management should do. The value that is being created at the bottom of the pyramid is actually at the top of what I call the wow zone or the value zone. So, the management is actually at the bottom of the pyramid, enabling, enthusing and creating that value zone. That is what I call an inverted pyramid or the value pyramid.

So if you imagine a leadership style of an organization, which has an existing command and control structure from a governance perspective. Then, at the same time, you create a new inverted pyramid, which is more focused on value. With the management accountable for enabling value to the employees in the value zone and the employees accountable to the management for control and governance - you create what I call a collaborative enterprise.

Let’s talk about where we have seen this organisation structure work very well and why am I saying that this will be very successful. If you track the history of family units across the world, what started as an command and control structure - especially in my house where my dad told me to do something and I would do it - that doesn't exist with my kids today. They have a mind of their own. So the command and control structure gave way to what I call a collaborative family unit. Only because of collaborative family units where diverging views converge in actions, have we been able to retain the sanctity of the family unit, which is still the micro organism of a wonderful organisation. So if that organizational structure of a family has transitioned from command and control into a more collaborative structure - where command and control still exists, but there is more collaboration and more value created for kids, with parents enabling the value creation - why can’t that structure work in an organisation? That is the question. In my mind, this alternate organization structure of a star, which is a collaborative enterprise, is something we should consider seriously and think: Can that be the competitive differentiation we can build?