THE BENEFITS OF BEING A POWERHOUSE PARTNER

The kind of organization culture that made the developed world an industrial powerhouse after World War II—considered the starting point for mass industrialization—will not sustain businesses in the next economic age. The Dual Age of Information and Connections operates on fundamentally different principles from those of the Industrial Age. The industrial economy was based on the concept of scarcity and the conservation of material goods… resources of both the material and human varieties. Information becomes more valuable as it becomes abundant and, as it spreads, it can morph into something new, whereas a material product cannot. A car is a car, but an idea, a thought, a creative spark of genius can grow into unimaginable value. Imagine harnessing the brilliance of the workforce. Imagine learning from each other. Imagine networking intellectual capital and transforming it into satisfying customers' needs. Imagine having the agility of a gazelle and the ability to leap from consumer trend to consumer trend without a lag, leading the marketplace. Imagine being an innovation factory turning out new and exciting ideas and concepts on a regular basis. Imagine having a workforce that is not just loyal, but feels a sense of duty to the success of the organization.

These aspirations are not simply the compilations of an executive wish list. They are the requirements of a Powerhouse Partner in the Dual Age of Information and Connections. Once the leaders of an organization have established a grounded, compelling strategic frame-work, they must determine the degree to which the enterprise is structured in a manner that supports the company's partnering strategy going forward. Further, they must assess the degree to which the people in the organization currently demonstrate smart partnering behaviors.

Creating a grounded, compelling strategic framework and implementing a systematic partnering process are fundamental steps in building a partnering infrastructure, but they are not enough. Organization structure plays a key role in how effectively the human energy of a company is focused and directed. Traditional hierarchical organization designs institutionalize roadblocks to the flow of information and to the formation of connections. This limitation comes as no surprise in that hierarchy functions principally as an instrument of centralized control and risk avoidance. When resources are scarce, when assets depreciate, centralized control makes sense. But in a world in which our most vital resources—information and relationships—are appreciating assets, available in abundance, organization designs rooted in hierarchy are doomed to limp along, even fail. Partnering is a fusion reaction, not a fission reaction—that is, a coming together rather an exploding apart. Given that the highest purpose of organization structure is to connect people and resources to produce an end result, leaders who want their organization to become a Powerhouse Partner in the twenty-first century need to consider how their enterprise can be structurally reconfigured to that end.