In our lives, we all have some pain and challenges. These challenges and pain are mostly a result of our choices.

We are free to make different choices that will change the outcome of our lives. It only requires research and study to make a difference. We can make a difference in others’ lives too.

“The way we show up as individuals at work, has an impact on the entire organization.”

If we are individuals who crave and thrive in collaborative environments, we will want to influence more collaboration. Ultimately, we want to be part of radically collaborative organizations.

“Collaboration is rooted in the desire to co-create and the building blocks of collaboration are fairness and trust.”

How can we evolve radically collaborative organizations? What are the principles to create a fair and trustworthy working environment?

Society 2045 has an ongoing series of interviews with change-makers seeking to improve the way society works.

Society 2045 is a community of people from around the world seeking to co-discover a vision for the year 2045. The goal is to connect with leaders of emerging communities and movements across society and come together to co-create a better future.

In an interview with Matt K. Parker, we discussed his vision of 2045 and ways to enable organizations to work collaboratively and support each other. Matt has written a book called “A Radical Enterprise — Pioneering the Future of High-Performing Organizations”, available for pre-order.

He worked with Pivotal Labs as a software programmer for a decade. In that organization, he experienced a radically collaborative environment. Without bosses, self-managing teams were working with clients to build software.

After working in several organizations, he researched in collaboration with various organizations for answers to many questions he had in his mind.

How collaboratively do organizations really work? Why do they work collaboratively? What is necessary for succeeding at a radically collaborative method?

He concluded his research and figured out four principles for radical collaboration. He called these principles ‘imperatives’ in his book.

The Four Collaboration Imperatives

Matt called them imperatives because he found them imperative for organizations to sustain and build radically collaborative structures and environments.

1) Team Autonomy

According to Matt, team autonomy has several dimensions. These include how people work collectively. What practices they use for various tasks? Work culture and schedules. Roles and duties in an organization.

“Autonomy plays a big role in enabling passionate employees.”

2) Managerial Devolution

The technical meaning of the word ‘managerial devolution’ is the decentralization of power. It makes the organization more agile, responsive, powerful, and nimble. These are organizations that coordinate work collaboratively and keep things leveled. In a radically collaborative organization, we experience a sense of security, fairness, self-esteem, respect, trust, and belonging.

“Employees who have a sense of belonging, fairness, respect, and trust, naturally want to contribute to a collaborative environment.”

3) Deficiency Gratification

This imperative comes from the field of positive psychology. According to Matt, we cannot feel secure or cannot have an autonomous environment without the cooperation of people around us. People need each other to balance their life at work or home. They communicate with each other and collaborate regularly. People recognize each other not only for the work they do, but the harmony and gratification they bring to the world.

“Harmony and gratification co-exist in collaborative environments.”

4) Candid Vulnerability

There are several types of behavior and routines that people exhibit inside organizations. One is defensive reasoning behavior, in which people maintain unilateral control over winning. They suppress negative emotions in themselves and others.

Another one is productive reasoning behavior. Matt Parker gave it the name “candid vulnerability”. It drives from heart to heart. When people collaborate, they say what they think. They make everything open and vulnerable for examination, critique, and validation from others. Groups or teams can innovate collectively rather than fight for an idea. They share their ideas and collectively evolve a result together. Some organizations are already practicing it and even learning from it.

“Collaboration leads to openness and trust enabling powerful organizations to thrive together.”

Possible Outcomes

Radically collaborative organizations have a potential bright future as it gives a way to highly competitive companies, instead of domination based and structured companies with lots of hierarchy, sucking the joy out of workers.

Collaborative organizations are human governing and free agencies. Newer generations will evolve the process even more as they work in such an environment.

Salaries and compensation in radically collaborative organization are peer-based. They collaboratively decide what is better for their success. This creates more fairness and opportunities.

Impact

What truly matters to people nowadays is changing dramatically. More of us are motivated by things like simplicity, beauty, completeness, and cessations.

We all feel more independent having a psychologically healthy environment around us. We desire to create democratic structure and clinically observed characteristics. This will lead to different behaviors and sociality within groups, organizations, and even nations.

Matt has recently started an online community for people who discover his book and want to find other people to talk about it. We can cultivate and nurture the worldwide community that attempts to achieve new ways of being a collaborative group. They can share their stories of success and failure and can support each other through the journey.

“People become immersed in a psychologically healthy environment with radical collaboration and achieve collective innovations through productive reasoning.”

We all need to work collectively to develop a society that works collaboratively and enable healthy environments everyone will feel happy and dedicated towards.

Matt’s vision for a radically collaborative society in 2045 is groundbreaking. It will be amazing if we can achieve his vision in the coming years. Check out the interview here: