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The Corporate Lattice
- 1/29/11
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Scaling the corporate ladder was once the definition of professional success. But organizational hierarchy isn’t what it used to be — and neither is today’s workforce. Social and demographic forces have changed the composition of today’s workforce across gender, generation, family structure, cultural background and other diversity lines. A corporate lattice model represents a more flexible approach to the way work is now performed and is a fitting metaphor for how careers are built and talent is developed. Further, lattice thinking is in use today, and lattice organizations are not simply reacting to forces but rather are redesigning the rules of work itself.The corporate ladder emerged at the start of the Industrial Age as a model for maximizing efficiencies and economies of scale. It proffers a worldview in which power, rewards and access to information are tied to which rung each employee occupies. It defines career success as a linear climb to the top and assumes that employees are more alike than different and that they all want and need the same things to deliver results. The changes prompting the collapse of this century-old ladder are striking. Globalization and technology are creating more virtual and dispersed teams, and management practices haven’t kept pace. The shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy also means that 21st-century work is less routinized and repetitive. Project work has increased fortyfold over the past two decades. In the same time frame, organizations have flattened, with University of Chicago Professor Raghuram Rajan and Harvard Business School Professor Julie Wulf finding 25 percent fewer rungs for upward advancement in a 2003 study of 300 large U.S. firms. Those numbers likely have not changed significantly.Further, family structures have changed markedly. According to Catalyst, only 1 in 6 U.S. families mirror the traditional structure upon which the ladder model was built, where the father works and the mother stays at home. According to 2009’s “The Shriver Report,” women now comprise half the U.S. workforce and are the primary breadwinners in 40 percent of U.S. households. A 2008 Families and Work Institute study stated that men in dual-career couples report one-third more work-life conflict than women. To add even more complexity, younger generations are bringing different attitudes about what it takes to motivate them at the same time older workers are looking for flexible options to stay in the labor market. In just about every way, employees are more diverse than ever, including their definitions of success. Lattice Living
In mathematics, a lattice is a three-dimensional structure that extends infinitely in any direction. In the real world, lattices can be found everywhere from a garden’s wooden trellis to the metalwork on the Eiffel Tower. A lattice is an adaptive construct chock full of options. These options can be organized in three ways (Figure 2).• Ways careers are built: Rather than employ a series of linear career paths, lattice organizations offer more flexible options to grow and a multitude of opportunities to develop. The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning is using this strategy to address the nursing shortage. It has created alternate career paths intended to draw more individuals into certified nurse assistant roles, gateway positions that open up a variety of future opportunities.• Ways work gets done: Lattice organizations don’t subscribe to the expectation that all employees need to sit at their desks clocking face time from 9 to 5. Instead, they offer options for when, where and how people do their work. Capital One’s efforts to equip its associates with the technology to work from anywhere — while reconfiguring office space to accommodate a range of needs — is indicative of this.• Ways participation is fostered: Instead of static, top-down communications, lattice organizations nurture transparent cultures, providing multiple ways for people to offer thoughts, ideas and feedback. This can be seen in Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, an internal social networking site that encourages employees to share and discuss their unfiltered customer service experiences and ideas for improvements. These examples of the changing world of work can benefit both companies and workers alike.Lattice in Action
Many companies have made some progress in at least one lattice way, but lattice approaches are often constrained by staid ladder cultural norms and practices that reduce employee engagement and productivity by inhibiting the flow of necessary information, assuming all employees share the same career goals and discouraging even limited choices regarding where and when work is done. By taking action on all three lattice ways and connecting them to each other, companies achieve the overall benefit of a coordinated, strategic response. Cisco’s reinvention after the dot-com bust exemplifies a “lattice in action” organization. The company adopted a system of councils and boards along with social media and other technologies to increase collaboration across organizational silos. It had to work hard to make this new model successful. “We discovered collaboration was different enough from how we used to operate that it wasn’t enough to just put good leaders on the councils,” said Randy Pond, executive vice president of operations, systems and processes for Cisco. “We needed to shift our cultural mindset and provide more structure to support this change.” A new model for developing careers at Cisco also has emerged to support the shift — one that emphasizes lateral as well as vertical moves to grow high-potential, next-generation leaders with a broad understanding of different business areas. Further, options for integrating career and life have expanded as flexible work becomes the norm. The full power of the three lattice ways is unleashed when they connect to one another, mutually reinforcing a new formula for high performance.At Deloitte LLP, for example, the benefits of combining lattice ways reveal that nearly 90 percent of those who perceive the three lattice ways in action are highly engaged and committed to going the extra mile to deliver results. Capitalizing on the Lattice
Beginning an organization’s own ladder-to-lattice journey is a lot easier than one might think; it already may be under way. The evolution is happening, albeit informally and in a haphazard and uncoordinated way. For example, when the National Science Foundation surveyed 1,200 of its employees in 2007, it found that almost one-third teleworked regularly, and the number swelled to more than half when occasional teleworkers were counted. Two-thirds of managers who supervised home-based workers also worked from home themselves. This happened without a formal telework policy.Examining the organization’s real estate footprint provides another “lattice way at work” touch point that may reap significant cost savings. For example, a 2005 Real Estate Executive Board study noted how a unit of a large pharmaceutical firm reviewed seven locations in expensive real estate markets, only to learn that their average space utilization was 41 percent. Many people were working out of the office at customer sites, other offices or remote locations of their own choosing. Employees’ desire for flexibility — and the technology to achieve it — ran ahead of the management mindset to take advantage of it. By waking up to what is already going on, organizations can take strides to reduce expenses, increase flexibility and improve workspace effectiveness. Lattice participation is under way in many ways besides flexible work options and organizational development opportunities. For example, British telecommunications giant BT implemented an experimental wiki dubbed BTpedia at a grass-roots level in 2007 to facilitate informal information sharing across the company. On the heels of its successful adoption, BT launched a second more formal experiment that introduced blogging, along with a third that created a small-scale social network. These ad hoc efforts ultimately evolved into a robust internal social network called My BT. My BT provides a one-stop destination to access all the content employees have posted on BTpedia, in blogs and elsewhere, and it also shows what other colleagues in someone’s network are up to. Examples of lattice careers in action are also prevalent. The story of Ana Corrales, vice president of global business operations at Cisco, provides such a real-life example. She joined Cisco in 1996 as a manufacturing planner. She made a series of horizontal moves that gave her a broad portfolio of experiences. Her move to manufacturing plant operations netted her people leadership skills to add to her already formidable analytical strengths. Additional moves took her to materials acquisition at the front end of the supply chain, to finance, to customer service and to work with sales taking customer orders and processing them. Today, Corrales is a vice president in charge of business models, a role that requires a cross-functional perspective. It wasn’t a predictable, vertical career pathway that guided her career journey, but rather a series of upward, diagonal and lateral moves, a quintessential example of the lattice ways careers are built. Seeing the lattice in action, however ad hoc it may be, indicates that external technology and demographic trends have prompted changes that have gotten ahead of corporate policies. For instance, social media has proliferated within organizations, yet many do not have guidelines for its use. As another example, employees are taking it upon themselves to decide when they want to work from home or other locations with or without collaboration with their managers. It is imperative that talent leaders provide guidance on the changing world of work — from informal rules of the road to formal policies and procedures — so they can corral one-off though well-intentioned workarounds and point solutions. This will benefit both the organization and its employees by providing greater flexibility, increased communication, a sense of community and opportunities for cost savings, all while better managing risk.The shift from ladder to lattice isn’t just a metaphorical one; it’s already going on. Using a corporate lattice model provides an opportunity to transform the multitude of incremental and disconnected activities and investments likely going on in an organization into a comprehensive and strategic response to the technology, demographic and economic trends that have changed the workplace.
In mathematics, a lattice is a three-dimensional structure that extends infinitely in any direction. In the real world, lattices can be found everywhere from a garden’s wooden trellis to the metalwork on the Eiffel Tower. A lattice is an adaptive construct chock full of options. These options can be organized in three ways (Figure 2).• Ways careers are built: Rather than employ a series of linear career paths, lattice organizations offer more flexible options to grow and a multitude of opportunities to develop. The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning is using this strategy to address the nursing shortage. It has created alternate career paths intended to draw more individuals into certified nurse assistant roles, gateway positions that open up a variety of future opportunities.• Ways work gets done: Lattice organizations don’t subscribe to the expectation that all employees need to sit at their desks clocking face time from 9 to 5. Instead, they offer options for when, where and how people do their work. Capital One’s efforts to equip its associates with the technology to work from anywhere — while reconfiguring office space to accommodate a range of needs — is indicative of this.• Ways participation is fostered: Instead of static, top-down communications, lattice organizations nurture transparent cultures, providing multiple ways for people to offer thoughts, ideas and feedback. This can be seen in Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, an internal social networking site that encourages employees to share and discuss their unfiltered customer service experiences and ideas for improvements. These examples of the changing world of work can benefit both companies and workers alike.Lattice in Action
Many companies have made some progress in at least one lattice way, but lattice approaches are often constrained by staid ladder cultural norms and practices that reduce employee engagement and productivity by inhibiting the flow of necessary information, assuming all employees share the same career goals and discouraging even limited choices regarding where and when work is done. By taking action on all three lattice ways and connecting them to each other, companies achieve the overall benefit of a coordinated, strategic response. Cisco’s reinvention after the dot-com bust exemplifies a “lattice in action” organization. The company adopted a system of councils and boards along with social media and other technologies to increase collaboration across organizational silos. It had to work hard to make this new model successful. “We discovered collaboration was different enough from how we used to operate that it wasn’t enough to just put good leaders on the councils,” said Randy Pond, executive vice president of operations, systems and processes for Cisco. “We needed to shift our cultural mindset and provide more structure to support this change.” A new model for developing careers at Cisco also has emerged to support the shift — one that emphasizes lateral as well as vertical moves to grow high-potential, next-generation leaders with a broad understanding of different business areas. Further, options for integrating career and life have expanded as flexible work becomes the norm. The full power of the three lattice ways is unleashed when they connect to one another, mutually reinforcing a new formula for high performance.At Deloitte LLP, for example, the benefits of combining lattice ways reveal that nearly 90 percent of those who perceive the three lattice ways in action are highly engaged and committed to going the extra mile to deliver results. Capitalizing on the Lattice
Beginning an organization’s own ladder-to-lattice journey is a lot easier than one might think; it already may be under way. The evolution is happening, albeit informally and in a haphazard and uncoordinated way. For example, when the National Science Foundation surveyed 1,200 of its employees in 2007, it found that almost one-third teleworked regularly, and the number swelled to more than half when occasional teleworkers were counted. Two-thirds of managers who supervised home-based workers also worked from home themselves. This happened without a formal telework policy.Examining the organization’s real estate footprint provides another “lattice way at work” touch point that may reap significant cost savings. For example, a 2005 Real Estate Executive Board study noted how a unit of a large pharmaceutical firm reviewed seven locations in expensive real estate markets, only to learn that their average space utilization was 41 percent. Many people were working out of the office at customer sites, other offices or remote locations of their own choosing. Employees’ desire for flexibility — and the technology to achieve it — ran ahead of the management mindset to take advantage of it. By waking up to what is already going on, organizations can take strides to reduce expenses, increase flexibility and improve workspace effectiveness. Lattice participation is under way in many ways besides flexible work options and organizational development opportunities. For example, British telecommunications giant BT implemented an experimental wiki dubbed BTpedia at a grass-roots level in 2007 to facilitate informal information sharing across the company. On the heels of its successful adoption, BT launched a second more formal experiment that introduced blogging, along with a third that created a small-scale social network. These ad hoc efforts ultimately evolved into a robust internal social network called My BT. My BT provides a one-stop destination to access all the content employees have posted on BTpedia, in blogs and elsewhere, and it also shows what other colleagues in someone’s network are up to. Examples of lattice careers in action are also prevalent. The story of Ana Corrales, vice president of global business operations at Cisco, provides such a real-life example. She joined Cisco in 1996 as a manufacturing planner. She made a series of horizontal moves that gave her a broad portfolio of experiences. Her move to manufacturing plant operations netted her people leadership skills to add to her already formidable analytical strengths. Additional moves took her to materials acquisition at the front end of the supply chain, to finance, to customer service and to work with sales taking customer orders and processing them. Today, Corrales is a vice president in charge of business models, a role that requires a cross-functional perspective. It wasn’t a predictable, vertical career pathway that guided her career journey, but rather a series of upward, diagonal and lateral moves, a quintessential example of the lattice ways careers are built. Seeing the lattice in action, however ad hoc it may be, indicates that external technology and demographic trends have prompted changes that have gotten ahead of corporate policies. For instance, social media has proliferated within organizations, yet many do not have guidelines for its use. As another example, employees are taking it upon themselves to decide when they want to work from home or other locations with or without collaboration with their managers. It is imperative that talent leaders provide guidance on the changing world of work — from informal rules of the road to formal policies and procedures — so they can corral one-off though well-intentioned workarounds and point solutions. This will benefit both the organization and its employees by providing greater flexibility, increased communication, a sense of community and opportunities for cost savings, all while better managing risk.The shift from ladder to lattice isn’t just a metaphorical one; it’s already going on. Using a corporate lattice model provides an opportunity to transform the multitude of incremental and disconnected activities and investments likely going on in an organization into a comprehensive and strategic response to the technology, demographic and economic trends that have changed the workplace.
