In my previous post, I discussed how self-organization (or emergent order) is the foundation for organizational success.  In this post, I’d like to propose some ideas for working with emergent orders (rather than against them) to enhance the workplace.

First and foremost, the concept of emergence can be difficult to grasp.

Emergence is an impersonal process that involves the interplay between our actions and those of others. Individually, I can only influence a small portion of the whole, but collectively our actions have a profound impact on everyone involved. We often aren’t able to see the connections among our actions, the system as a whole, and how that system impacts other people.

In studying emergence, we often become fixated the parts that are closest to us, but neglect the bigger picture of how the parts are interrelated.  Through emergence, we realize that everything is connected and the world becomes much larger than we previously thought.

Understanding the magnitude of the connections and how they are related is the most challenging (but also most rewarding) aspect of emergence.

Understanding Self-Organization

The policies and procedures put in place by leaders in any organization do not fully define the underlying culture. They help guide the organization but don’t have as much impact on the day-to-day business of getting work done; that is the job of self-organization. Whether you recognize it or not, there are always undercurrents of communication and camaraderie running throughout any business environment. While it may not be visible on the surface, the behaviors of your colleagues are often the biggest drivers of your culture.

The relationship among emergence, culture, and policy is like a garden.  If you provide the right type of nourishment and conditions, things naturally flourish.  Sometimes you neglect to provide key nourishment and the plants wilt.  Other times you may add too much and the plants suffer as well. The trick is finding the right balance to allow the garden to grow.

Similarly, policies can enable or inhibit our ability to self-organize. By clearly defining the conditions that enable self-organization to thrive, we can determine the right type of policies and procedures to channel our relationships in ways that strengthen our organizational culture. This will look different for each organization, but it becomes a powerful way for leadership to focus the existing underlying self-organization that is propelling the organization forward.

When trying to channel emergent orders, there are a couple ground rules to remember:

1. People respond to incentives: Rules and incentives guide our behavior.  We use incentives to help make decisions and plan for the future.

2. Institutions matter: Values, structures, and processes that have stood the test of time probably serve some purpose.  Although institutions may need to change, their impact on the workplace cannot be ignored.  We also cannot expect institutions to change overnight.

3. Work is social: At the end of the day, most change efforts aim to improve the way we work together.  It’s important to focus on how work is actually being accomplished: How do departments communicate? Where are the breakdowns? And who are the influencers? We cannot neglect the social aspects of work.

How Self-Organization Can Be Used to Your Advantage

The ground rules above provide a context for understanding workplace dynamics. Many change efforts fail because we neglect to appreciate the role incentives, institutions, and social networks play in our everyday lives.

For example, focusing solely on incentives (greater productivity) at the expense of collaboration can make people feel isolated and hurt the organization overall. In addition, trying to force two groups to work together without understanding their underlying (and often different) values can cause headaches and animosity.

If we have a firm grasp on the ground rules, leveraging self-organization becomes substantially easier.  People naturally organize to get work done, this may look different in different parts of the organization or when focusing on different challenges.

There isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits all strategy, but there are some general guidelines that we can employ to use self-organization to our advantage:

1. Establish clear expectations: Establish clear expectations which people can use to guide their actions and steer their interactions.  Expectations should be applied consistently across the organization.

2. Keep communication open: Since work is social, it is critical to ensure people continue to communicate. When bottlenecks happen, don’t hesitate to roll up your sleeves and help forge new partnerships. 

3. Leverage focal points: Who/where are the hubs were people/information congregate? What is happening in the hubs?  Who are the influencers? These can serve as great opportunities to spread information and implement change efforts.

4. Reward problem solving: People like to be recognized for their accomplishments. Solving complex problems involves many people cooperating across different parts of the organization. It’s important to recognize their contributions both individually and collectively as a team. It’s also critical to encourage these individuals to share best practices with others and cross-pollinate ideas (culture is contagious).

5. Think through unintended consequences: Every action has the potential to create outcomes we couldn’t have anticipated.  Before beginning a change effort, it’s important to be cautious and weigh the costs and benefits of different options. Think back to the ground rules.  There needs to be an “exit strategy” when unintended consequences happen.

6. Be open to new directions: Emergent orders can take on a new shapes as the organization changes. Policies and guidelines should be general enough to accommodate these changes. When unintended consequences happen, we should be flexible and modify our guidance as needed. We should never pigeonhole ourselves to move in a single direction.

Although we often don’t notice it, emergence plays a vital role in our organizations every day.  Emergence is the natural outcome of many people working together to achieve common goals. It is an important (and under-appreciated) contributor to the success of every organization, but leveraging it presents challenges in that we can’t fully understand how all the moving pieces fit together.

Sometimes we aren’t aware of how our policies and processes impact our ability to self-organize; when we act, we could be hurting our organization in the long run. By being cognizant of how incentives, institutions, and social networks shape our culture, we can take proactive steps to ensure policies enable (rather than inhibit) self-organization

The world is a fascinating place.

Ever wonder how we are able to accomplish so much without one person directing all the moving pieces? iPhones, Wikipedia, cars, the shoes you wear, last night’s dinner; all these things were made possible through the efforts of thousands of people each pursuing their own ends, and in doing so they cooperated to make our lives better.

Economists call this emergent order, more commonly known as self-organization.

Although difficult to wrap our heads around, emergent orders are actually very common. Markets, law, and language are all examples of unplanned systems that evolve naturally through our interactions. The beauty of emergent orders is that they are able to thrive because they constantly change and adapt to new circumstances.

Organizations, on the other hand, are commonly thought of as “islands of planning in a sea of emergence.”  That thought is more or less correct; organizations involve layers of managers directing employees to address different challenges. But underlying that structure are rich environments of employees and teams connecting and cooperating to achieve great feats.

Self-organization is the life force that enables “work” to happen.

Because it’s difficult to pinpoint, it often goes unrecognized. Therein lies a significant organizational culture opportunity.

Below are several examples to help illustrate the relevance of and importance self-organization:

Organizational Culture and Values

Why do different departments use drastically different terminologies for the same thing? Why are some organizations more cohesive than others?

The answer is simple, although the mechanics behind it are pretty complex: Coworkers have a lot more influence on each other than we give them credit. Our attitudes and actions are as much a product of ourselves as they are the people around us. As we intermingle, our values cross-pollinate and shape the organization’s overall culture. And in doing so, the culture can take on a life of its own.

When one person has difficulty shaking habits that have emerged over the years, changing the culture becomes challenging. But within this challenge lies a hidden blessing: with enough positive enforcement, new habits can form and shape the culture over time.

Social Networks

Here’s a bold claim: the majority of work gets done outside the traditional chain of command.

In other words, people, driven by their desire to do their jobs successfully, self-organize to achieve their mutual goals. If you look at social networks within organizations, you’ll find that it may look very different from the org chart. The hubs are not necessarily managers, but rather employees with the broadest social connections who are able to bridge the gap between departments.

Given the ability and motivation, employees will diligently seek out solutions to their problems by building partnerships and sharing ideas. This is really a textbook case for emergence.

Rules, Policies, and Regulations

Sure, a lot of rules and regulations are cumbersome. Most people grudgingly accept them, and in a lot of cases they can be somewhat arbitrary.  But, behind each rule there’s a history, an event, or chain of events that brought it into being.

For example, recently gothamCulture has engaged in a long-term effort to create a culture of safety for one of our clients. Most organizations have safety policies, resulting from years of trial and error, and a process of learning from their successes and failures.

This particular organization simply didn’t sit down and lay out an ideal set of safety policies. In many cases they had had to figure things out the hard way; piece by piece.  In all cases, accidents, as unfortunate as they are, force organizations to reevaluate the way they protect employees from harm.  Rules are constantly evolving, and policies change, bit by bit, to ensure certain standards are maintained.

Sometimes policies are well-intentioned missteps, but the process behind it involves the nuanced interplay among people’s values, attitudes, and actions over time.

Why It Matters

So why does self-organization matter? How is emergence relevant to you or your organization?

Work is inherently social. It is a rich ecosystem that is constantly moving toward some end.  We cannot effectively understand organizations, let alone start to change them, without appreciating the role emergence and self-organization played in how getting the organization to its present state. By doing so, we reveal the many different avenues to implement change effectively.

Below are some great resources on emergent orders:

I, Pencil – Leonard Read

Valve Corporation and Spontaneous Orders – Yanis Varoufakis

Emergence – Jane Adams

The Use of Knowledge in Society – Friedrich Hayek

Where Good Ideas Come From – Steven Johnson

Leadership and the New Science – Margaret Wheatley

Think back to the last company change initiative you spearheaded. If your company is like most, you sent a survey to employees via email. Some employees might have grumbled about it and eventually filled it out; the senior leadership team then sat down and attempted to make sense of the feedback.

Unfortunately, this approach can only take leaders so far. Organizational surveys aren’t always effective because they’re limited to what leaders think is important to ask. They fail to engage the organization’s stakeholders in an active dialogue, and they only address culture at one point in the process, leaving leaders to make decisions throughout the year based on stale information.

Most importantly, this top-down approach to culture creates a cycle in which leaders do all the work — setting unrealistic expectations that doom an organization from the start.

I’m a culture guy, so the lion’s share of organizational assessments I’ve seen and led deal specifically with culture. These lessons can be generalized across most organization-wide data collection efforts, however.

Though most companies approach culture assessment and change as described above, creating a strong culture is the ultimate opportunity to take advantage of the wisdom of the crowd. When employees, leaders, and other stakeholders have a say in a company’s culture, the insights that arise are often the most innovative and effective solutions. After all, your employees are closest to the everyday issues in the workplace.

By tapping into and including the input of people at every level of your organization, you start at the beating heart of your company. And by engaging them on a regular basis (rather than once a year), you can leverage that collective intelligence to drive the business forward.

This is the way we at gothamCulture have long approached our work, but the recent trend in social media circles of calling everything “crowdsourcing” made me reconsider why. After all, inviting the crowd into the process can be messy, and tackling any cultural problem is much more than an item on a checklist — but that’s the point.

Looking back on our nine years of work in this space, there are several long-standing beliefs and assumptions worth challenging regarding how organizations do, and should, develop highly functioning cultures.

These myths include (but are not limited to):

1. The experts have all the answers. The days of a small group of “experts” sitting in a war room and coming up with the ultimate solution for the masses are gone. People expect more from their work experience. They want to exercise some level of control in their environment.

When senior leadership teams make decisions in isolation, they do so based on a limited amount of information. It’s one particular version of reality fed to them by others who may have their own agendas. Leaders may think they have an in-depth understanding of issues’ nuances when, in fact, they may be too far removed from what’s really going on to make the most effective decisions.

2.  The people within the organization don’t know what’s best. This is the misguided assumption that drives leaders to rely on “experts” rather than employees in the trenches. Over time, leaders may conclude that people in the organization’s ranks are unable to comprehend the complexities of their everyday tasks, but that’s seldom the truth.

In our work, we’ve found that those closest to the issues oftentimes have the most profound perspectives on them. In many cases, they’ve already figured out solutions and workarounds for some of the organization’s biggest problems. The only reason they haven’t voiced their opinions is because nobody thought to ask — or asked the wrong questions.

3.  Annual surveys and focus groups give us the right information at the right time. How could we ever assume that an organization’s lifeblood — its people — only have something valuable to contribute once a year? The traditional annual survey limits the amount and type of information you can get from stakeholders and reinforces a skewed perception of reality.

Leaders take that information, sort it, and make sweeping changes that affect the entire organization based on a few data points. The collected stories and feelings of various team members, in conjunction with quantitative assessments, result in better conclusions than those arrived at through paper surveys or digital tallies alone.

Successful businesses of the future will leverage technology to drive constant input and feedback from all stakeholders. These continuous feedback loops will increase inclusivity of people and ideas, freeing leaders from relying on annual surveys to drive their decisions. This collective approach will also reveal opportunities and red flags earlier so they can be addressed in a timely manner.

We’re starting to question organizational norms that have existed for decades, and it’s just the beginning. As more Millennials enter the workforce, companies are realizing that today’s stakeholders expect continual involvement, and they’re being forced to adapt quickly to the changing tide.

To successfully evolve and deliver on your stakeholders’ high expectations, you can’t hold on to antiquated practices and continue making decisions based on outdated beliefs and assumptions. Organizations that adapt to leverage new values and the input of their stakeholders will come out on top. They’ll mine the crowd to form a truly accurate sense of their environment, they’ll be better equipped to make more accurate and timely decisions, and they’ll be much more adept at engaging their stakeholders through a collective and crowdsourced organizational culture.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

In rapidly growing companies, hiring and retaining the right employees is one of the hardest things for effective leaders to get right.

On one hand, your company needs the right process in place to hire and keep the right people. There has to be an appealing lure to attract them, and the benefits have to be worthwhile enough to keep them.

On the other hand, the company branding and benefits you offer can only tell them so much of the story. The everyday behaviors that shape your organizational culture will have an ongoing effect on each one of your employees.

It’s important to realize that your people are your company’s most valuable asset, and finding the right “fit” between company and that most valuable asset is paramount to success.

There are bigger things to consider than benefits and bonuses when bringing on new people. Your workforce, particularly the millennial generation, wants to know what your company stands for.  They want to be part of something bigger than themselves.

The way you communicate your benefits and purpose to them from the beginning may be the most important part in setting them up for success.

So, how do you give your new employees an accurate picture of your company’s brand, its values, and their place in the overall picture of the organization?

Here are 3 points to consider when building a sustainable onboarding process for your growing company:

1. Does It Scale?

When you’re small, as in a startup, it’s much easier to find the right people and orient them quickly with the rest of your team.

It’s likely that small companies thoroughly vet their candidates for cultural fit when they hire. But, as an organization grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the same processes. A strategy that works for a group of 20 people may not scale to a company of 200 people.

Make sure your onboarding processes are built to last. Rapidly growing companies who plan ahead of these changes will see more success, particularly as they delegate these onboarding processes to other hiring managers as they grow.

2. What Information Do You Include?

Onboarding and orienting employees is challenging.  Organizations face a balancing act between conveying large quantities of information and keeping new employees engaged and interested.

Considering most employees will only really understand the organization’s culture once they are officially on the job, picking and choosing what information to share during the onboarding process adds to the challenge.

Most people today like to digest snackable information, not an entire meal at once. Consider keeping the information segments of your process short, so employees can take away the bite-size nuggets and figure out where they might want to ask questions to get further insights.

One recent example is Samsung’s orientation rap video that went viral to mixed reviews. While Samsung’s effort to communicate a lot of information in an engaging, short format should be applauded, the execution left something to be desired.

Their video is a perfect example of why it’s so important to keep the context in mind. Your employees are there to be professionals; to further their careers. If your presentation is too slapstick or silly, you risk losing people to it as something that is nonsensical, or not a fit for the organization and its people.

On the other hand, a completely dry delivery of rules, stats, and facts about your company can put your new hires to sleep, causing them to disengage before they start their first shift.

Your challenge is keeping them interested and engaged in a way that both reflects your culture and doesn’t turn people off.

3. What Is The Employee Experience?

Are you sitting your new employees in front of a computer to go through self-directed orientation? Are you personally illustrating your values and guidelines on a whiteboard? Do you partner them with a senior member of your team to learn the ropes?

These first steps of the onboarding process are not just a way to convey information. They also give your brand new employee a taste of what your culture is like on a daily basis.

They can walk away feeling motivated, supported, and comfortable in their new environment, or they can leave feeling overloaded and confused.

Empowering Your People

There’s no doubt that your organizational culture is based largely on the everyday behaviors of your people. Finding the right people who fit into your overall strategy and vision is a challenge in itself. Once you find them, however, your challenge becomes empowering them to carry out your vision to every customer they meet.

It takes more effort than simply putting warm bodies on the sales floor or in the call center. You have to equip them with the right tools to do their job well, carry your vision for success, and feel a purpose behind what they are doing for your company on a daily basis.

“If you take care of your people, your people will take care of your customers and your business will take care of itself.” –JW Marriott

[starbox id=”Cary Paul,Stuart Farrand”]

When you think of a cult, do shuttle buses come to mind? Probably not, but Silicon Valley tech companies have used this method of transportation to keep their workers isolated from the rest of the world. And as they bind their employees closer together, workers are significantly less likely to leave.

While the term “cult” often conjures up mental images of drab clothes, remote farms, and blue Kool-Aid, cults can also refer to the culture within certain companies. A cult, after all, is simply a group connected by appreciation for the same thing, person, or ideal.

There’s no doubt that articulating a clear and compelling vision for the future of your organization can drive member excitement, but things get murky when control enters the equation. If your company culture governs the thinking and behavior of its members, then you might be entering cult territory.

Your Company Might Be a Cult If…

There are multiple signs that indicate that your company is exhibiting cult-like behavior — for example, encouraging your employees to blindly follow a charismatic leader. By taking the leader’s opinions as fact, your company may grow so rigid that innovation becomes impossible.

Additionally, organizations that minimize two-way dialogue stifle growth and encourage employees to accept the status quo and silence their opinions. However, creating an environment where people don’t push back and aren’t engaged in healthy debate can lead to serious problems.

Lastly, in cult-like organizations, values are taken to such an extreme that anyone who questions the way things are done is quickly ostracized or ejected.

Create a Collaborative Environment

All of these practices can seriously endanger the health of your organization. If you’re noticing any of them creeping up, put these four fixes in place to safeguard your company from becoming more of a cult than a culture:

1. Take Responsibility

Once you’ve diagnosed the situation, take responsibility rather than avoid the issues at hand. Author Ronald Heifetz suggests reducing avoidance mechanisms such as denying, scapegoating, or pretending that the problem is technical. Companies that attack individuals rather than issues risk further cult-like behavior.Owning the behavior is difficult. You should allow people to take responsibility for problems, but they should do so at a rate they can handle.

2. Introduce New Talent

Strive to introduce new, talented employees who live on the fringes of a culture fit. If you onboard people who challenge the culture, your company will be able to grow and mature.You may need to rely on new members of the organization to raise the issue of cult-like behavior because they’re experiencing your company for the first time. Encourage acceptance of these new employees — particularly when your goal is to change the company’s trajectory.

3. Create Dialogue Mechanisms

Develop mechanisms for leaders and employees to engage in honest, two-way dialogue in a safe environment. Talking with new hires, consultants, and advisors will force your organization to think about problems from multiple angles.You must protect people who raise hard questions. At first, raising these potential problems will generate distress, but the questions will challenge your employees to rethink the issues at stake.

4. Reward Responsible Risk-Taking

Establish a new team, business, or investment with clear authority to take risks and create beyond the organization’s previous boundaries. Businesses can only grow through introducing new ideas and taking appropriate risks.Share the charter of the new team with your company to ensure that individuals threatened by the venture know that the team is working on behalf of the whole.

Some companies would disagree with the notion that creating a cult-like culture is a bad thing — they believe that culture drives people’s thinking and behaviors to increase performance and productivity. It’s a fine line to walk, but leaders shouldn’t be compelled to manipulate their employees or do things that benefit the company at the expense of employee livelihood.

Instead, create a system in which people are informed, engaged, and aligned around a compelling path forward. If you promote an open environment that values new talent, you may even save a few dollars on bus fare.

This article originally appeared on Forbes