The Rise of the Humans: How to outsmart the digital deluge

by Dave Coplin

My employer did not hire me for my ability to process email or to operate any other particular process. It employed me because it wanted access to the thing between my ears – my brain – not to sign me as a significant addition to a multinational digital ping-pong team.

And the reasons are obvious: too many companies are hierarchical; they rely on command and control; they trap data in silos; fearing the digital deluge, they restrict information flows and trickle information only to the top – as if that were the only place to find knowledge and insight. Given dramatic advances in technology, it’s baffled me for quite some time now why we still organise our workplaces the way the Egyptians built the pyramids.

‘Look Dave, I’m responsible for delivering a transformational customer experience. And I know that in order to do that I need engaged employees who are empowered with the right tools, data and culture in order to be transformational.’

I believe that within every individual inside an organisation lies an “intrapreneur” – a part of them with an innate desire to make things better, either directly for themselves or indirectly by making their organisation better. Our main cultural challenge is how organisations not only create an environment that supports this, but equally how they learn to live with the occasional chaos that can come with it. But what I really want to emphasise is that creating an environment for intrapreneurship is far more than simply defining a process for it. The process itself is worthless if neither the individuals nor the organisation know what to do with it. Without addressing that you simply create the modern-day canteen suggestion box – unloved and ultimately unused by either employee or employer.