Where Are The Street-Smarts?

Alex T. Steffen & Anne M. Schüller | Reading time: 4 minutes

Find the German version of this article here.

Where are the lateral thinkers? Inside companies they have been chased away, silenced, reduced to following. And yet, these are the types of employees our businesses urgently need. That’s because they contribute one of the most important ingredients: changing our business to fit the times we live in. But who is meant by lateral thinker? We’re talking about the “street-smart" person. Their courageous ideas, novel approaches, and fresh thinking make them a company’s secret weapon for the future.

Let’s review the status quo: currently we’re paying the toll for the decade-long practice of “command & control" management. Employees are being rewarded for conformism, for following predefined procedures, and for achieving predefined goals.

The result is that jobs always get done “at target, on budget, and in time". In other words, potential creative thinkers have been turned into disciplined minions who wait opinionlessly for instructions. In the current type of economy we don’t need “on point” results relative to a 2, 5 or 10 year old plan. We need results informed by current market needs that might change daily.

That is to say, our biggest bottleneck that keeps us from building better companies is the practice of superiors to silence creative employees and instil in them a need for management itself. That’s because pre-determined strategies conveniently inhibit their fantasy and destroy the possibility of finding novel, better ways of reaching a goal, in favor of an old plan.

The human brain works by the principal of “use it or lose it". This also applies to fresh, bold, creative ideas. Those who are not training to think outside the box will soon lose the ability to do so for good. This is exactly what makes the failure in transformation very, very likely for many more businesses to come.

Lateral thinkers are able to endure friction

In the new economy the old is constantly made redundant. Lateral thinkers are therefore indispensable. Because they create the new. But in organisations they are also unwanted factors. This is because they question the familiar, think unconventionally, and refuse to adhere to absurd routines considered "normal”.

As with any elite that is threatened and disturbed, the beneficiaries of the old system will defend themselves from the intruders. The same goes for those who are dependent on the goodwill of this elite. In short, anyone who sees their position of power crumble or their comfort zone disturbed will take to the guns. If someone becomes an innovator, he very quickly turns the beneficiaries of the old system into his enemy.

For lateral thinkers cannot be controlled. They leave the familiar terrain. They are in their heart dissenters, questioners, and testers of boundaries. For many people this is difficult to bear. That's why they are often regarded as eccentrics who are ostracized and marginalized. 

Isolation is one of our worst fears as humans. Being left alone in the desert means certain death. In this light, the conventions of a community are the lesser evil. That's why most people prefer to drop any lateral thinking, despite their huge potential.

Without maverick initiatives we won’t transform sufficiently

Although lateral thinking is desperately needed wherever you look, it is actually not desired at all. Employees can feel this intuitively - and prefer to behave quietly. In a conformist system, the “peacocks” have little chance of survival.

For those who regard quarterly results as the holy grail, any pattern-breaker destabilises the system. After all, innovations are far too uncertain. The sad truth: Not being innovative is the preferred choice in most organizations.

The truth is that contemporary times cannot be managed in outdated ways. The environment of yesterday does not birth ideas for tomorrow. Moreover, high dynamics are seldom created from rigid processes. Therefore, in the "jungle" of an increasingly unpredictable future, companies cannot survive without lateral thinkers.

We’re starting to realize we need disruptors, but how do we accommodate them?

“But things are different today,” you say. Leadership has transformed and agile methods blossom. Those are welcome developments. But once you take a closer look, most of it only happens selectively. In addition, in most companies transformation is limited to workplace design and new work tools on the employee level.

At the same time, little has changed when it comes to the core organisational structure. The management itself remains hierarchically structured. In other words, we address the symptoms, not the root cause. The outdated management system still has the upper hand.

Visually, this manifests itself in the form of a top-down organizational chart. The boss is enthroned at the very top. Underneath him - locked into small boxes - we find his following. The employees themselves don't even appear in a common organizational chart.

Summed up, such a chart documents who is in charge of whom and who is subordinate to whom. Above all, managers are paid to ensure that their employees display obedience. Rigid guidelines and disciplined “working off” tasks without creativity are common. 

It is true that control can prevent mistakes. It is also true that it kills life. Control doesn't generate momentum, it doesn't generate creativity, it doesn't generate commitment, and it certainly doesn't create groundbreaking innovations. Rather, control makes people meek and submissive. Thus it breeds a highly dangerous trait: blind obedience.

The true managerial mindset is revealed by their language. Managers like to measure their importance by how many employees are their “subordinates”. Change projects are "rolled out" top-down to across lower levels of hierarchy. Goals and targets are "broken down”. That’s an interesting point to chew on.

Let’s think about it: Language shapes our thinking - and thus also behaviour. Moreover, the tenor of condescending speech multiplies and creates a toxic work atmosphere. That's why being careful with words is critical. Innovative talent is repelled by this behaviour.

Book-smarts: Henchmen for progress and the future

Above all, a successful manager is loyal to the party line - otherwise he would not have made a career. He is rewarded for landing precisely on set goals, plans and budgets. And he refrains from taking bigger risks, because wrong decisions can rapidly damage his career. He isn’t a creator of the future. 

What is more, managers obey methodologies and management tools they learned at university. The corporate world is flooded with those, no matter how outdated. If something doesn't work out, it’s easy to escape the blame. After all, you chose a "proven" methodology. 

Those people are called “book-smarts”. Book-smarts have an excellent theoretical understanding of data points. They rely on knowledge and logic. From behind their desks they paint a hypothetically perfect map of an imperfect world.

They act in a closed space. Bar charts and pie charts are their “reality”. They analyze and scrutinize. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that their work is removed from customer reality. 

With numbers and dashboards in front of their eyes, it is not common for their common sense to intrude. After all, checklists, processes, and plans make you feel like having everything under control. Something we like to call “plan fetish”. 

How the contemporary can beat “business as usual”.

It is true that scholarly knowledge can be very helpful. The true problem lies in transposing this abstract knowledge word by word into a template and commanding a copy-paste action. What does work instead is collectively thinking about how to apply custom approach that take into account all up-to-date paradigms for a particular situation.

Textbook formulas won't get you far today. Because reality changes constantly. And the future is less clear than ever before. Planning periods shorten all the time. Predictability is approaching zero. Disrupting changes come out of nowhere and affect everybody.

For sustainable renewal to begin, a new type of people is needed. A word of warning: As a result of “plan-fetish” and the practice of rewarding employees for adhering to predefined procedures, it is of course no surprise that only few talents with these personality traits remain in any given company.

After all curiosity dies out in a place where creative stunts or uncommon ideas are constantly rejected and criticized. That is why it is necessary to look for and put in place those employees who still carry curiosity within them. 

“Street-smarts” are urgently needed to give companies a competitive edge

By what characters do we spot them? First and foremost, these people possess curiosity. Second, a thirst for knowledge, a pioneering spirit and a willingness to experiment are vital characteristics.

Street-smarts are those who, on their way through the jungle, refuse to rely on a map. Why? They know a map doesn't help them at all. The environment changes too quickly. Instead, they derive solutions by analogy from previous experience. Or they consult their network, sourcing current information “on the street”. That is entrepreneurial. That’s being an active creator of the future.

Everything is becoming provisional by nature. That’s because change is the only constant. Street-smarts are capable of dealing with this reality. They are proactive while unagitated, resourceful, imaginative, and passionate about change. They are lateral thinkers that businesses in our changing economy needs.

Read more about this topic in our Book „Die Orbit-Organisation. In 9 Schritten zum Unternehmensmodell für die digitale Zukunft". It was nominated for the International Book Award at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The English Book will be published in the first quarter of 2020.

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About the authors:

Alex T. Steffen is a strategic innovation expert for SMEs & Fortune 500 corporations and an international speaker at management events and conferences. His unique perspective: Alex is a lateral thinker who held leading roles in traditional firms & upstarts, before launching multiple innovative ventures. He's a recognized expert for organizational transformation and innovation ecosystem design. The bestselling author was also named Management Thought Leader of the year 2019 by change X. He demonstrates how avoiding 4 common innovation mistakes teams can reduce complexity and save capital. More info: www.alextsteffen.com

Anne M. Schüller is a management thinker, keynote speaker, bestselling author, and award-winning business coach. She has a master in business administration and is a recognized expert for customer touchpoint management and customer centric management. She delivers keynotes on these topics at company events and conventions. In 2015 she was nominated for her life's work in the Hall of Fame of the German Speakers Association. Also she was awarded the BestBusinessBook Award in 2019. Her Touchpoint Institute certifies touchpoint managers and "Orbit organisational developers". More info: www.anneschueller.de