Leadership and Legitimacy through Consent and Coherence — with Aaron Dignan

Podcast Notes

Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready, a global organizational transformation and coaching practice, where he helps both large and small companies adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Over the last ten years, Aaron has studied organizations and teams with a new way of working that prioritizes adaptivity and autonomy over efficiency and control.

Aaron is the co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, an active angel investor and helps build partnerships between the startups and end-ups he advises. He’s also a co-founder of Responsive.org, and has sat on advisory boards for GE, American Express, PepsiCo, and Cooper Hewitt. He is the author of Game Frame and Brave New Work.

In this conversation, Simone Cicero and co-host Emanuele Quintarelli are not afraid to go deep, looking into a boundaryless future. Tune in as we explore how The Ready funds new ideas in the business, the role of “micro-socialist” experiments in an organization, and how to balance your personal development and uniqueness alongside the development of an organization.

To find out more about Aaron’s work:

• Website: https://theready.com/
• Website: https://www.bravenewwork.com/
• Aaron’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondignan
• The Ready’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/theready
• Podcast: https://www.bravenewwork.com/podcast

Other references and mentions:

• Aaron Dignan, Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?, 2019: https://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-Work-Reinvent-Organization/dp/0525536205
• “Brave New Work and Capitalism‬”, on the Brave New Work Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/brave-new-work-and-capitalism/id1488554600?i=1000506063704
• Dark Matter Labs’ “Letter to Our Future”, on how they think about organizing their work: https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/amsterdam-2019-2020-letter-to-our-future-dbd67a035ffe
• Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture:,https://www.amazon.com/Unsettling-America-Culture-Agriculture/dp/0871568772
• Participatory City: http://www.participatorycity.org/

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast/

Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on 27 January 2021.

Key Insights

1. To reach coherence in a self-organizing context requires more directional leadership in the early stages of the organization, than later on. Aaron likens it to setting up a community garden, growing its muscles over time until the community knows how to take care of itself and its “shared thing”. The first period is likely to require more deliberate efforts in leadership to shape coherence and enthusiasm, but not necessarily by the same people. People can be leaders in fields that they master more, whether geographically or in terms of expertise.

• Listen to Aarons ideas on leadership and coherence from min 04:40

2. In The Ready, finding the right entrepreneurial fit both with the external and internal market is important. While they don’t typically “name” people entrepreneurs, some people will be more inclined to build products, while others may be more into content creation. The roles and teams are shaped and re-shaped based on reputation and are highly dynamic. Aaron also explains how every four months The Ready are “making eight to 15 entrepreneurs”, by distributing seed funding to ideas proposed directly by team members.

• Listen to how The Ready deals with the question of entrepreneurship around min 19:13.

3. Working with consent is a way to create legitimacy for distributed leadership since — as Aaron explains — “if it’s instantiated through consent, and it’s controlled through the power of consent, and can be edited through the power of consent, then it has a different texture, it has a different patina to it than it would if it was just from me”.

• Listen to Aaron describing how The Ready works with consent around min 22:38.

? Boundaryless Conversations Podcast is about exploring the future of organizing at scale by leveraging on technology, network effects, and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous.