At toll booths, boom barriers reflect the behavior of most organizations out there.
Employees approach with ideas, advancements, experiments, wild bets at the toll booth.
Someone, supposedly capable but mostly simply a checker, is siting. Accepts some form of exchange – money in real world, ideas, presentations, data in organizations.
And the boom barrier is raised. Allowing for the employee to go past.
Before lowering itself again for the next employee.
Day in and day out – the same “process”. Multiple booths, multiple checkers, multiple employees. But all allowed one a time.
And then someone decided to introduce tags.
Something you do (upfront payment in the real world) fetches you a badge. Where you don’t seek permission anymore. The boom barrier is never lowered on you. Till you keep paying that payment.
Unfortunately, just as real world, less than 5% of the universe eve gets this tag. 95% still go through this painful sequential process.
It’s ironical – the toll road was built for a speedy, unrestricted passage. And then someone, to establish importance and authority, choked the system at the toll booth.
As a founder/CEO/manager – while you constantly aim to build toll roads, ask yourself how many toll booths are you also adding.
And why?
What will it take to give everyone a tag?
What will you give up? And what will you gain?
Does your organization really need a boom barrier?
The reason is quite simple.
The world is full of subjectivity everywhere. No two people have the exact same thought process.
An organisation is built by an individual or two, who have shared a small piece of thought process. Now, imagine an employee coming up and adding something to that thought process/mental picture. What would you do. First, would you trust him? Second will you believe in him? Third, would you allow him to leverage what you have built(the organisation) to try his/her ideas?
What will it take to give everyone a tag?
According to me, for you to be able to make a barrier free organisation, you will need a lot of trust on people, belief in their ideas and love towards failure.
Why do you create toll booths?
Most Founder/CEO/manager want to keep themselves safe from the failure that would come along with employees freely executing their ideas.
What will you give up?
You will give up the peace of mind by allowing people to fail and let you bear a part of their loss.
What will you gain?
You would gain immense support and trust of your employees.
Your organisation would become an actual entrepreneurial organisation.