This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
The Power of Onlyness: Give Your People Permission to Co-Create the Future (Lessons Learned from Ushahidi), with Nilofer Merchant, Marketing Expert and Author, “The Power of Onlyness”
Anyone can be a disruptor.
There’s a wonderful organization that started out of Kenya. It was figuring out how to get crowdsourced data to actually be able to map data and be able to do something for it. So what’s a good example? Clearing the streets of Washington D.C of snow and prioritizing resources, was using Ushahidi’s platform. At some point, this team that had built Ushahidi had a really clear idea of what they felt the product could and should be. And then one of their lead engineers came along and said, actually, I have another way I want to do it.
And the founder and, at the time, COO, really had to sit there and questioning himself. Like, why am I allowed to be the disruptor? Can I also allow other people on the team to be that role? To first, own, at even at the most core level, the future of this organization? Am I willing and able to do that? And he said, we ought to be. And so he turned to the engineer– and this was actually so important– he said, I don’t know if it’ll work, but why don’t you try? And whatever happens, if it doesn’t work, or if it does, we’ll figure it out together, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll fix it.
And I thought, what an interesting message to say as a leader, to say, run, run as hard as you want, and I will back you. And if that means even that we fail, that’s OK, too. And I see so many leaders trying to protect themselves, the organization, that person. And to say, we’re not allowed to make mistakes. And yet the opposite of it all is true. What if we find a better way? We’re doing risk mitigation when we’re saying, focus, keep in this little box. And so Erik had a real opportunity to sit there and go, why am I not challenging the fundamental assumptions?
So Ushahidi’s leadership team basically said, go. They gave the green light, and, but they just said, you’re going to have to build your own community. You’re going to have to– basically, we’re running a parallel process. And so this guy had a chance to build his own team to really– I get a bunch of buy-in from the user community, and went ahead and deployed. And it turns out it wasn’t as popular as the original.
And yet he even says, but I learned so much. And mostly, I learned that I could contribute everything I had to this organization because they could let me. They gave me permission to be fully myself, give me permission to basically chase the bigger idea and essentially co-own that bigger problem of the organization together.
Trust before freedom.
Erik really saw in his engineering lead this person that already said, I believe in the mission. This person had already showed that their interests were the same, their passions and interests were the same. And actually, the negotiation on trust is all about whose interest will you serve? Mine or ours? First person singular, first person plural.
And he had already seen in Brian, his lead engineer, this desire to work in first person plural. And so with that, he was willing to say well, if you’re willing to do– apply your creative energy towards our shared problem, of course, I’m going to give you as much room as possible to explore that because I believe in you because I believe you have the same goals.
So we, us, ours, let’s– it’s a different way of us thinking about how we lead because, quite often, we celebrate the singular and not enough about the best process of how we’re going down that field together.