Values, Not Disengagement: Eight Ways to Create New Value in Today's Organizations

“The perception that one’s work has value, significance, or a higher purpose has always been directly linked to employee engagement.” Mimi Brooks

As this Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds, the unprecedented rise of automation in the workplace, particularly in the realm of decision-making, has implications for the experience of meaningful human work. For example, according to a recent research report published by the American Psychological Association, technology or robot-related job insecurity is positively associated with worker burnout, disengagement, and workplace incivility. Other studies suggest an escalation of ‘rust-out’ in the workplace, characterized by boredom and disengagement.

To combat these unintended consequences, a leadership mindset focused on value creation as a motivating activity can help drive results in change and transformation within the workplace and give employees new avenues for career advancement.

The organizational components of profit-making, such as revenues, cash, gross margin, cost structure, and funding, are the same as ever. However, the emphasis, the patterns, the timing, and the relationships among them are different. Using these differences to create value for the employee, consumer, and shareholder at the same time is a new kind of business savvy and a source of competitive advantage.

Here are eight ways to create new value in today's organization:

1. Shift Innovation To The Edges

Competitive advantage today goes to those who build an ecosystem, or network, on the edges of the organization that leverages digital technology for the benefit of the consumer and paves the way to multiple streams of revenue.

What’s different among digital giants is that their ecosystems are not just linear—that is, aligned with a company’s vertical supply chain—they are exponential and multi-dimensional. These new-generation ecosystems might encompass a vast range of partners across multiple sectors. Innovation must develop around personal networks of experts and autonomous teams at the edges of the organization and be supported by capabilities that scale the benefits across the business. Edges are powerful sources of business innovation because they are places of potential and friction, where traditional products and practices are no longer adequate to address unmet needs or unexploited potential.

A fundamental prerequisite of a strategic shift to the edges is indicative of a much more horizontal focus on deeply understanding customer behaviors and expectations, and rapidly adapting to those expectations as they change. Offering the customer something innovative, faster, or more efficient is key. This means using advanced technologies to retrieve insights from customer data, and the ability to transcend silos and sectors.

2. Create A Culture Of Continuous Learning

Where technical skills once were most in demand, human skills, such as flexibility, adaptability, time management, and prioritization, are moving to the top of the value-added chain. Those who thrive in the future will be those with the ability to learn, unlearn, and adapt. As the futurist Heather McGowan says, employers will no longer hire for skills, which will constantly be evolving, but instead, they will hire people for their ability to learn.

This will create huge opportunities for those companies that develop true 4IR-oriented intelligence through a continuous learning culture.

3. Build Value-Creating Ecosystems

In the digital age, competitive advantage goes to those who build an ecosystem, or network, that leverages digital technology for the benefit of the consumer and paves the way to multiple streams of revenue.

What’s different among digital giants like Microsoft and Alibaba is that their ecosystems are not just linear—that is, aligned with a company’s supply chain—they are exponential and multi-dimensional. These new-generation ecosystems encompass a vast range of partners across multiple sectors.

A fundamental prerequisite of a strategic shift from what we will call a ‘vertical mindset’ to that of an ‘ecosystem mindset’ is indicative of a much more horizontal focus on deeply understanding customer behaviors and expectations, and rapidly adapting to those expectations as they change. Offering the customer something better, faster, or more efficient is key. This means using advanced technologies to retrieve insights from customer data, and the ability to transcend silos and sectors because customers are now utterly agnostic about brands.

4. Expand Trust Boundaries

The expanding digital landscape means that a steady undercurrent of privacy and trust concerns around ever-more-sophisticated conveniences is raising the stakes on the broad topic of trust.

For example, users are becoming more aware of their identity rights, making decisions based on values, and demanding the ethical use of data and responsible use of AI.

We need to consider putting trust management at the core of both our employee experience, as well as business processes. Workers are hungry for social cohesion and purpose. They want to feel that their contributions are recognized and that their team is truly collaborative. They desire clear responsibilities and opportunities to learn and grow. They expect their sense of purpose to align with that of their organization. And they want an appropriate physical and digital environment that gives them the flexibility to achieve that elusive work–life balance.

5. Drive Towards The Common Good

To rethink the role that business should play in society, companies and governments need to radically reconsider how value is created in our capitalist economies: who creates it, who extracts it, and what happens when extraction is rewarded over creation. A true commitment to stakeholder value requires more than words, gestures, or speeches of goodwill. It requires purpose to be put at the center of how value is defined in firms and governments.

In the context of the current challenges we face, such as the climate and the cost-of-living crises, challenges are more complex — they require not just technological change but also social, regulatory, and behavioral shifts. These problems are socio-economic, raising questions about social justice, economic security, and political stability. To successfully cooperate across regions and industries, decentralized governance structures within the projects themselves can incentivize bottom-up innovation.

6. Redesign For Speed

Leaders today are redesigning their organizations for speed, accelerating productivity improvements, reshaping their portfolios, innovating new business models, and reallocating constrained resources. Organizational silos, unclear strategies, and slow processes frequently interfere with attempts to make decisions and get work done more quickly.

Our starting points must include identifying the bottlenecks, enhancing the operating model, and actively monitoring potential risks.

7. Diversification

Although disruptors may have speed, incumbents have their natural advantages. These include existing relationships and the trust of clients and members, the ability to quickly scale up what works across markets, time-honed operational discipline at scale, and, in some cases, opportunities for diversified growth to strengthen the core business as well.

Across sectors, business building by adopting a diversified mindset is a top priority for value creation.

8. Reallocate Resources

In challenging times, the reallocation of resources is more important than ever. Many organizations struggle to reallocate at the necessary pace. Successful reallocators follow a tested portfolio of processes that aim to seed high-growth areas with the resources necessary to succeed while avoiding retrenchment in the core business.