When Data, Talent, and Capital Stop Sitting Still.
Organizations experience friction in their operations which is not usually apparent but still very present. A request to move from a strategy team to a finance team to an operations team can sometimes take weeks and not get processed as planned.
Superfluid leadership seeks to eliminate the friction caused by this type of system. It allows for data, self-organization, & money to be fluid between the various departments within an enterprise without having to go through an approval process (i.e., waiting for permission) every time they want to do something.
The idea is simple – allow data and resources to flow to and through organizations freely (i.e. without any obstacles).
For example, in a traditional organization, a product team may request customer insights from their Analytics Department. However, if the team was set up in a superfluid way, they would have a data person embedded with them and would be able to use that data to make quicker, more informed decisions about the product they are developing.
With that said, you still need to ensure there is some level of control in the process (i.e., financial leaders will want to know that they are not spending their capital too freely) and that distributed authority creates issues for HR – e.g., will talent mobility lead to instability or growth.
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Therefore, the movement toward superfluid leadership requires a cultural change as well as a structural change. Leaders must be ready to distribute their authority and establish clear boundaries around how their employees can utilize their authority and resources. That’s where the difficulty lies.
In superfluid organizations, employees are incentivized by curiosity, not hierarchy. Employees will move between projects vs. just having a series of jobs over time. Consequently, employee careers will become much more like networks vs. ladders.
In short, the question is really not whether superfluidity is a good thing. The real question is – is your organization ready for all the gray areas that will be created when everything starts flowing? Typically, once things begin to flow in an organization, they don’t revert back to their original positions.
