Hack:
Don't be a fiscal hog: Give every one a healthy slice of the budgetary pie
Instead of hording control of your budget, allow every employee to have discretionary control (and thereby responsibility) for a slice of the pie. The one area that is the scourge or bane of creativity is that every time you have a crazy idea, you have to run it by the head of the operation for approval. Unless you have some individual discretion over the budget, you have all the responsibility and none of the authority. Responsibility and authority go hand-in-hand. With out one and the other, you effectively run amok in a couple of directions. Tying together responsibility and authority gives people the latitude and trust that they deserve (and will earn) as they accomplish the aims of the organization. Of course, there has to be accountability, but if you subscribe to the "fail fast, fail often mindset," you have to be able to tolerate some risk for the massive gains innovation can bring. And, I might add, that very time an employee hears the work "no," in opposition to a request for a budget allocation, you risk losing your best and brightest to the competition (or another organization) that doles out healthy scoops of both responsibility and authority (manifest in the size of one's discretionary budget).
The problem rests with inequitable distribution of power. Often, the upper echelon bequeaths heaping sums of responsibility upon different players of an organization (usually beneath them in the organizational chart), but then fail to issue corresponding authority, largely in the form of zero budget control. Can you remember a time when your boss came in and told you what he or she was going to hold you accountable for doing something and then said go do it? And, then there's this huge but....
...But, if you need any sort of resources, be sure to ask him or her for them. This whittles down any kind of power attributable to your position that places all of the responsibility and none of authority in your possession. Effectively, instead of amplifying power exponentially, they (intentionally or unintentionally) de-power your capacity to get things done.
The solution is relatively simple. As a matter of good practice, managers in the 2.0 era should never parcel out responsibility without considering what corresponding fiscal allocation should be attributed to the effort. 2.0 managers will always be at the ready to negotiate with whomever is running a project(s) as you may not have the better understanding of how much the project(s) will really cost to make it happen as you aren't close enough to the project(s) to know the full scale and scope of the effort.
Bear in mind that allocating budget doesn't mean acquiescing any accountability and oversight of the project. You should think of this as a way of budgeting the way a venture capitalist would invest in new entrepreneurs. Allocating of funds would be akin to making an investment in any given project, and there would be an expectation that there be some kind of return on that investment.
The expected effect would be the simultaneous pushing out of responsibility AND authority to make creative solutions a reality such that power is amplified rather than quashed in any given operation. Any one who has worked in the mid-tier of an organization knows how asphyxiating getting all or the responsibility with zero budget discretion is: to have to ask for every dime needed to build powerful solution can cripple even your best people.
In a command and control operation, it's very difficult for senior level people to open up the purse strings for a number of reasons. First, there is a deep seated perception that power is best hoarded and ultimately controlled vis-a-vis the budget. The downside of this perception is that retaining rather than sharing the power is a leading indicator of a mistrust of employees.
Second, reward structures often work to promote those who are fiscally astute and the vision for successful budget acumen is maintenance of big reservoirs of funds (at least until it comes time to dole out the bonuses). In actuality, we might like to change these reward structures to reward not on how much budget one has left, but how little budget you have left and measure the ROI on the investments made over a fiscal year.
Let go of your ego. Open up the budget for all to see. Allocate funds to every one, size varies based on tasks needed to be accomplished. See what happens. You may find people binding together in ways you never thought to aggregate pools of funds to create bigger reservoirs of funds to try bigger experiments.
The sort of budget allocation to everyone which you suggest would inevitably lead to some not getting what they reckon they need and others seeking and getting too much so there would be a need for re-allocations from time to time so as not to discourage innovation or performance.
Adopting a federated structure of small units with separate functions would overcome the problem you raise by making it much easier to re-allocate funds within the unit - all members of which would be working to achieve the same clearly defined and agreed goal.
Thanks for the comment Graham. I've added some more detail to the hack. See if you think it harmonizes (or not) with your sentiment. I think you may be onto something with the federated structure, which could be a hack unto itself.
Thanks Aaron.
The added detail to your hack does clarify what you propose but it seems to be based on there being a top down organisation with someone handing out budgets. With a bottom up federated structure of small units I would envisage the allocation of budgets being done collaboratively by all in the unit.
Regarding the possibility of a separate hack on federated structures, the relating of a federated structure model (such as the Integrative Governance model I have put forward) to particular circumstances would be best attempted after all involved understood the model thoroughly.
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