Tear down these fences! - Jef Staes

Today's lecture turned out to be a very confrontational story.
Today we are living in a world that has changed tremendously in the last five years.
The reason for that change is the enormous increase in information.
And organizations are looking for a way to increase innovation, because information is a resource.
Organizations that succeed in using information as a resource, will become very innovative.
But the problem is that in order to mine information you need passionate people.
People with passion who know their talents and know how to find information.
So in order to become an innovative organization you need a different style of management.
A style that can gather passionate people around a common vision.
And that opens up all sources of information including social media.
If you can't trust people in this regard, you simply can't be a manager today.
Now today's problem is that organizations were built in an era with less information.
And all companies were built without the necessary response mechanisms, they've even built fences.
Unconsciously, without knowing it and unintended, they've built fences around people.
And if you build fences around people, you get sheep!
And that's today's theme. People are sheep.
My story is really a search to find out why this is the case. And I see three issues.
Firstly, we've all been to school to obtain that degree.
But this degree in itself is a fence.
The only way to remove this fence and stop the education from breeding lambs, is to create a diploma-free education system.
I know this is controversial, but we really need to start thinking about how to organize education without degrees.
Secondly, when these people leave school and start working.
How can you create a working environment where people can further use their passions and talents?
For me this is function-free working. Getting rid of the sheepherding mentality that uses functions as a fence around people.
No, we need organizations that operate without functions.
Creating a working place where people can work in those roles that match with their passion and talents.
The last fence is the removal of the retirement age. We need to be able to live retirement free.
Passionate people have the right to keep on working. To them it's not working, it's learning!
People need to get shun this sheep behavior. Through diploma-free education, function-free working and retirement-free living.
If you remove those three fences we will become one of the most innovative regions.