The Next Next Common Sense
through multiple channels—from corporate websites to social media to employee experience platforms—in an effort to attract candidates who will naturally align with their identity. Companies like Patagonia explic- itly articulate a purpose (“We’re in business to save our home planet”) that attracts employees who share this identity and repels those who don’t. Similarly, organizations are becoming more deliberate about decom- posing their identity into building blocks that can adapt as the company evolves. Netflix’s famous culture document separates their identity into distinct components—freedom and responsibility, context over control, highly aligned but loosely coupled—that provide coherence while allow- ing for constant evolution of specific practices. Again, what you see is a product of where you stand. And in a world where talent has more options than ever before, organizations must be- come masterful at seeing, articulating, and aligning the building blocks of their coherence. Guidelines for Combining and Recombining In the complicated world to which the old common sense was attuned, it seemed self evident to deal with apparent complexity by trying to break things apart and then deal with the pieces separately. This was a sound strategy when entities mattered more than interactions. But the interactive world of relationships and processes is very different. The beauty of pieces, of building blocks, is that they can be combined and recombined to create new things, new ideas, and new ways of relating and interacting. In a world where wholes are not simply the sum of their parts, it is critical to train ourselves to think about deconstructing and recombining. The philosophers may call this postmodernism—we call it the next common sense. 1. Treat ideas as if they were LEGO bricks. Recognizing parts that can be used as building blocks is the first step to creating a context for new actions. Combining the parts is the second step.
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