Beyond Hierarchies: Building a Business Model that Thrives on Partnership, Not Power

What if the future of business wasn’t about power at all, but rather about partnership? Moving beyond patriarchal systems, which often emphasize hierarchy and dominance, businesses can take a cue from matrilineal and egalitarian principles to create a model that truly values people, collaboration, and long-term well-being. Here’s how to build a more balanced, inclusive business model by fusing these ideas.

1. People-Centered Decision-Making: A matrilineal approach emphasizes the centrality of relationships and prioritizes the long-term well-being of all individuals involved. In business, this translates into fostering strong interpersonal connections and community building. By focusing on people rather than roles, companies can cultivate a culture of respect, empathy, and loyalty that naturally enhances productivity.

2. Shared Leadership: Egalitarian systems encourage power-sharing and eliminate rigid hierarchies, allowing for a more flexible, collaborative environment. Rotating leadership or creating co-lead structures enables employees to experience responsibility at various levels, breaking down the “top-down” structure and replacing it with a model of collective accountability. This approach ensures a more resilient organization, capable of adapting quickly in changing environments.

3. Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer: Matrilineal societies place value on heritage and wisdom passed through generations. In a business setting, mentorship programs can serve as a conduit for passing knowledge, encouraging the development of both seasoned and newer employees. This exchange of insights enriches decision-making and strengthens company culture.

4. Holistic Success Metrics: A true measure of success goes beyond profit and growth. Incorporating metrics that assess employee well-being, community impact, and sustainability aligns with matrilineal principles of nurture and continuity. It’s a balanced, inclusive definition of success that resonates with employees and customers alike.

5. Inclusive Policies and Structures: Egalitarianism advocates for inclusivity in decision-making and feedback. A workplace where everyone feels heard fosters innovation and commitment, creating a shared purpose where employees are genuinely invested in the organization’s future.

6. A Nurturing, Resilient Culture: Matrilineal values highlight resilience and continuity. Companies can embed this by supporting mental health, encouraging work-life balance, and investing in employee growth. Such practices ensure the business is resilient and sustainable, focused on people over pure profit.

By blending matrilineal and egalitarian values, businesses can embrace a people-centered, cooperative, and inclusive approach. This new model redefines success and creates a legacy built on partnership rather than power—a change that benefits employees, leaders, and society.

Leaders of the new light: How the feminine transforms leadership

The new model of leadership is founded on personal empowerment. At its core is heightened self-awareness and awakened consciousness. It isn’t so much about self-mastery as it is about the self-acceptance. The Taoists believed that all living things, including people, had an essential nature, an innate nature.

Once consciousness is invoked it permeates everything including the business enterprises we lead and serve. This emergent feminine energy will not announce its arrival. It will sweep forth like a tsunami underfoot. It’s power irresistible and unrelenting.

Unlike masculine power won from hard fought battle this tsunami effect is quite a natural phenomenon. In leadership parlance it does feed on power, control and authority structures and this is why it is more prevalent outside the traditional organisational structures that we know of in large corporations and government. It is also one reason why there is such perpetual struggle in these corridors of power.

In practical terms we work in a business, economic and technological environment unlike anything we have experienced before. This change is of our own doing. As Einstein so poignantly put it, “You cannot solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them”.

We need another way of approaching complex problems. A more feminine approach would be sit with the problem and its unresolved tension, expand our thinking, or better still let the tension bring forth am emergent solution of its own accord. These leaders of the new light are artisans at sitting with unresolved conflict, unsolved problems.

Heart guides will. Invite your intuition to guide you. Relax your highly tuned problem solving skills, which are the domain of the left hemisphere of your brain, and allow yourself to be guided by a felt sense of direction, purpose and resolution. Brian Tracy once coined the phrase, “As you take one step towards your goals, your goals take two steps towards you.” It is a bit like that. Trust in your intuition and that creative resolution will be invoked by your heart.

This feminine energy is omnipresent in business. It always has been; just like our intuition has always been available to us but we have stifled it through one dimensional learning methods like rote learning and homogenised success formulas in business and problem solving.

Ask any small business operator if they use a business plan and most will say they either don’t or they prepare one and shelve it. Now, I am an advocate of strategic planning. I am also an advocate of scenario planning, brainstorming and thinking outside the square.
The first question to ask is not, “How do I create success?” but rather, “Why am I in business?” in sequence the order of questioning is, Why, What and How?

There are three keys principles of the emergent feminine energy in leadership and business. They epitomise the invocation of the new light, a new light of consciousness awareness. They are:

Potential:  The epitome of the feminine is potential – unrealised potential. The expressions maximise your potential and reach your full potential are misleading. Unrealised potential knows no boundary, no ceiling. The feminine is a metaphor for universality or infinite possibility. The leaders of the new light accept and embrace the divinity that is inherent in all things. Genius springs forth in such an environment.

Space:  This notion of creating and holding space is at the core of all coaching engagements. It has its origins in ancient shamanistic practice and it is significant that it does. These leaders of the new light are leading us on a return voyage. A return to heartfelt leadership, values infused culture and a deeper exploration of what is purposeful and meaningful to us as individuals and collectively as humans. The adage, “If you want your outside world to change, you must be the change” holds true.

Flow:  When our hearts and souls are aligned with our purpose, mission and values then we are in flow with our innate nature. This is our innate state. This is how life works until you limit your beliefs, doubt yourself, place blocks and limitations in front of your feet. Beliefs like “You have to work hard to succeed” belong to a bygone era. Many of the inspirational quotes and elements of the success formulas were also penned in eras of war, lack or male domination. They served their time but the leaders of the new light will shine the way for you into the future.

The leaders of the new light, a new light of consciousness, start from a paradigm that you have potential (unlimited potential) and that when you aligned with your own heart you will evoke a creativity that is innovation at its core. And it is the most innate natural state you can live and love from.

Tips for improving your performance

Many business owners, small and large, provide performance incentives for their staff, eg annual bonuses, gift vouchers, time in lieu, equity schemes and the like.

But what exactly are you rewarding?

Incentive programs don’t typically reward performance, rather they reward results. Business success demands results. Fair enough, too. But, let’s go back a step.

“Most incentive programs don’t reward performance, they reward results.”

Results are outcomes, eg sales targets, profit, market share, growth, customer satisfaction. They are all business outcomes. In a cause and effect relationship, they are the effect. What then drives results? Performance drives results and is the cause in the relationship. So, what then constitutes performance and how do you measure it?

End Goals v Performance Goals

There are two types of goals. End Goals and Performance Goals.

End Goals are the outcomes or results you achieve from having done something, eg sales, turnover, profit, customer satisfaction. They are measured ex post facto (after the fact) or what are commonly referred to by management consultants as lag indicators.

Performance Goals are the drivers that get you the results, eg sales calls, customer visits, prospects, outbound calls, customer response times. These can be measured in real time and are referred to as lead indicators.

There can be considerable and costly time delays between when a lag indicator is first brought to the attention of a business owner for corrective action. Time means money. Do your performance measures include lead indicators?

Lead indicators are predictive measures of future success. And success is the cumulative effect of doing the little things day-by-day.

“Lead indicators are predictive measures of future success.”

Lead and Lag indicators form an integral part of what Harvard academics, Kaplan and Norton, call a Balanced Scorecard. Many large corporations use Balanced Scorecard measures and increasingly franchisers are too. They are equally applicable to small firms and truly are essential to driving performance to higher levels.

What drives Performance?

If performance drives results then what drives performance? Well, there are two things that drive performance:

1. skills

2. behaviour

What is the difference? A skill is learned knowledge of how to do a task whereas behaviour is a conscious/subconscious response or choice.

Ask yourself; does this person know how to complete the task? Have they ever completed the task beforehand? Have they received skills training? Have they demonstrated competency in the skill? If not, then you may have a skill deficiency that needs addressing through skills training.

On the other hand, if your employee is competent or has the necessary skills but for some reason doesn’t apply them, then you may have a behavioural issue. In which case as the manager/employer it is incumbent upon you to call them on it. Behaviours tend to run in patterns so it is likely that the employee will repeat the behaviour (at work and at home). So, you are really doing them an enormous favour long term.

In essence you bring to their conscious awareness the subconscious (or conscious) choice they have made. It now becomes their conscious choice whether to amend the behaviour or not. Either way hold them responsible for their choice and the resulting consequences.

Try these exercises:

1. Create a Performance based incentive program. Offer staff gift vouchers or lifestyle rewards based on their performance not results. Reward behaviours such as proactivity, attention to detail, customer focus, team work.

2. Ask your staff to benchmark themselves. Empower them to take responsibility for

their own performance. Nurture the talent you have within your reach. If you are self-employed benchmark your sub-contractors/ suppliers.

3. Include a lead indicator in each functional area – Sales & Marketing (customer visits, qualified prospects, customer complaints); Finance (reminder notices, daily cash position); Operations (capacity, occupancy rates); Service Delivery (response times, compliance with packing slips); People (absenteeism, timeliness, overtime).

4. Call an employee/ sub-contractor on a behavioural issue, eg coming late to work, failure to meet a deadline, failure to keep a promise. Give regular and informal praise for good behaviours.

5. Practice asking open questions. What? When? How? Engage your employee’s creative genius. Encourage them to come with solutions and not problems. You’ve got enough on your plate.

What are the primary benefits of a 360 diagnostic questionnaire?

A 360-degree diagnostic questionnaire, commonly used in leadership development and performance management, offers several benefits for individuals and organizations:

Comprehensive Feedback: It gathers input from multiple perspectives, including supervisors, peers, subordinates, and sometimes external stakeholders, providing a well-rounded view of an individual’s strengths and areas for improvement.

Increased Self-Awareness: By comparing self-assessment with others’ feedback, individuals can identify blind spots and better understand how their behavior and skills are perceived.

Personal Development: The results highlight specific areas where individuals can improve, making it easier to tailor development plans to their actual needs.

Enhanced Communication: Engaging in a 360-degree review process fosters open dialogue and trust between team members, improving overall workplace communication.

Improved Leadership and Team Dynamics: Leaders can become more effective when they understand how their actions impact others. Team dynamics improve when individuals work on feedback that promotes collaboration.

Objective Performance Review: Since feedback is sourced from various levels, it provides a more objective and balanced assessment compared to traditional top-down reviews.

Motivation and Engagement: Constructive feedback helps employees feel valued and understood, often leading to higher motivation and engagement when they know their input is considered.

Overall, a 360-degree diagnostic questionnaire can promote a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging personal growth and enhancing organizational performance.

About the author
Dennis Roberts is a personal coach, small business mentor and founder of CoachPRO – The Coaching Professionals. His work has won critical acclaim in both the academic and business communities.

Visit www.coachpro.com.au

What are the key features of 360 diagnostic tool

The 360 Diagnostic (often referred to as a 360-degree diagnostic or assessment) is a feedback tool used in professional development and organizational settings to provide a holistic evaluation of an individual or organization. It gathers insights from a range of sources, including supervisors, peers, direct reports, and sometimes customers. The goal is to help individuals gain a well-rounded perspective of their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.

Key Features of a 360 Diagnostic:

  1. Multi-Rater Feedback:
    • Feedback is collected from multiple sources or raters, including managers, peers, direct reports, and sometimes external stakeholders.
    • This diverse feedback provides a more balanced and comprehensive view compared to traditional top-down evaluations.
  2. Self-Assessment:
    • Along with receiving feedback from others, the individual also completes a self-assessment.
    • This allows for comparisons between how they perceive themselves and how others perceive their performance or behavior.
  3. Comprehensive Feedback Categories:
    • Feedback typically covers various aspects such as leadership, communication, collaboration, emotional intelligence, decision-making, and other key competencies relevant to the role or organization.
  4. Anonymity of Responses:
    • To encourage honest and candid feedback, responses from peers and subordinates are usually kept anonymous.
    • This helps reduce bias and fear of repercussion.
  5. Developmental Focus:
    • The primary aim is not to judge but to identify areas for growth and improvement.
    • Results are often used to create personal development plans or performance enhancement strategies.
  6. Quantitative and Qualitative Data:
    • 360 diagnostics combine numeric ratings (e.g., rating scales for specific competencies) and qualitative comments (open-ended feedback).
    • This blend provides both measurable insights and richer, descriptive feedback.
  7. Customized to Role and Organization:
    • Assessments are often tailored to the specific competencies required for the role or the organizational culture and values.
    • This makes the feedback more relevant and actionable.
  8. Visual Reports:
    • The feedback is often presented in a user-friendly format with visual aids like graphs, charts, and summaries, making it easier to digest the data.
  9. Actionable Insights:
    • The feedback is designed to be constructive, providing clear direction for professional development.
    • This often includes recommendations for training, coaching, or targeted development programs.
  10. Follow-up and Continuous Improvement:
    • After the assessment, some organizations schedule follow-up assessments to track progress and measure improvements over time.

The 360 diagnostic is commonly used for leadership development, performance appraisals, and enhancing team dynamics.

About the author

Dennis Roberts is a personal coach, small business mentor and founder of CoachPRO – The Coaching Professionals. His work has won critical acclaim in both the academic and business communities. Visit www.coachpro.com.au