schöne wände gestalten
half of the human workforceis expected to be replaced by software and robotsin the next 20 years. and many corporate leaders welcomethat as a chance to increase profits. machines are more efficient; humans are complicatedand difficult to manage. well, i want our organizationsto remain human. in fact, i want them to become beautiful. because as machines take our jobsand do them more efficiently, soon the only work left for us humanswill be the kind of work
that must be done beautifullyrather than efficiently. to maintain our humanityin the this second machine age, we may have no other choicethan to create beauty. beauty is an elusive concept. for the writer stendhalit was the promise of happiness. for me it's a goal by lionel messi. (laughter) so bear with me as i am proposing four admittedlyvery subjective principles
that you can use to builda beautiful organization. first: do the unnecessary. [do the unnecessary] a few months ago, hamdi ulukaya, the ceo and founderof the yogurt company chobani, made headlines when he decided to grantstock to all of his 2,000 employees. some called it a pr stunt, others -- a genuine act of giving back. but there is something elsethat was remarkable about it.
it came completely out of the blue. there had been no marketor stakeholder pressure, and employees were so surprised that they burst into tearswhen they heard the news. actions like ulukaya's are beautifulbecause they catch us off guard. they create something out of nothing because they're completely unnecessary. i once worked at a company that was the result of a merger
of a large it outsourcing firmand a small design firm. we were merging 9,000 software engineers with 1,000 creative types. and to unify theseimmensely different cultures, we were going to launcha third, new brand. and the new brand colorwas going to be orange. and as we were goingthrough the budget for the rollouts, we decided last minute to cut the purchaseof 10,000 orange balloons,
which we had meantto distribute to all staff worldwide. they just seemedunnecessary and cute in the end. i didn't know back then that our decisionmarked the beginning of the end -- that these two organizationswould never become one. and sure enough,the merger eventually failed. now, was it becausethere weren't any orange balloons? no, of course not. but the kill-the-orange-balloonsmentality permeated everything else.
you might not always realize it,but when you cut the unnecessary, you cut everything. leading with beauty meansrising above what is merely necessary. so do not kill your orange balloons. the second principle: create intimacy. [create intimacy] studies show thathow we feel about our workplace very much depends on the relationshipswith our coworkers.
and what are relationshipsother than a string of microinteractions? there are hundreds of theseevery day in our organizations that have the potential to distinguisha good life from a beautiful one. the marriage researcher john gottman says that the secret of a healthy relationship is not the great gestureor the lofty promise, it's small moments of attachment. in other words, intimacy. in our networked organizations,
we tout the strength of weak ties but we underestimatethe strength of strong ones. we forget the words of the writerrichard bach who once said, "intimacy -- not connectedness -- intimacy is the opposite of loneliness." so how do we designfor organizational intimacy? the humanitarian organization care wanted to launcha campaign on gender equality
in villages in northern india. but it realized quickly that it had to have this conversationfirst with its own staff. so it invited all 36 team membersand their partners to one of the khajuraho temples, known for their famous erotic sculptures. and there they openly discussedtheir personal relationships -- their own experiences of gender equality with the coworkers and the partners.
it was eye-opening for the participants. not only did it allow themto relate to the communities they serve, it also broke down invisible barriers and created a lasting bondamongst themselves. not a single team memberquit in the next four years. so this is how you create intimacy. no masks ... or lots of masks. when danone, the food company,
wanted to translate its new companymanifesto into product initiatives, it gathered the management team and 100 employeesfrom across different departments, seniority levels and regions for a three-day strategy retreat. and it asked everybodyto wear costumes for the entire meeting: wigs, crazy hats, feather boas, huge glasses and so on. and they left with concrete outcomes
and full of enthusiasm. and when i asked the womanwho had designed this experience why it worked, she simply said, "never underestimatethe power of a ridiculous wig." (applause) because wigs erase hierarchy, and hierarchy kills intimacy -- both ways, for the ceo and the intern.
wigs allow us to usethe disguise of the false to show something true about ourselves. and that's not easyin our everyday work lives, because the relationshipwith our organizations is often like that of a married couplethat has grown apart, suffered betrayals and disappointments, and is now desperate to be beautifulfor one another once again. and for either of us the first steptowards beauty involves a huge risk. the risk to be ugly.
[be ugly] so many organizations these daysare keen on designing beautiful workplaces that look like anything but work: vacation resorts, coffee shops,playgrounds or college campuses -- based on the promisesof positive psychology, we speak of play and gamification, and one start-up even saysthat when someone gets fired, they have graduated. that kind of beautiful languageonly goes "skin deep,
but ugly cuts clean to the bone," as the writer dorothy parker once put it. to be authentic is to be ugly. it doesn't mean that you can't have funor must give in to the vulgar or cynical, but it does mean that you speakthe actual ugly truth. like this manufacturer that wanted to transformone of its struggling business units. it identified, named and pinnedon large boards all the issues -- and there were hundreds of them --
that had become obstaclesto better performance. they put them on boards,moved them all into one room, which they called "the ugly room." the ugly became visiblefor everyone to see -- it was celebrated. and the ugly room served as a mixof mirror exhibition and operating room -- a biopsy on the living fleshto cut out all the bureaucracy. the ugliest part of our body is our brain. literally and neurologically.
our brain renders uglywhat is unfamiliar ... modern art, atonal music, jazz, maybe -- vr goggles for that matter -- strange objects, sounds and people. but we've all been ugly once. we were a weird-looking baby, a new kid on the block, a foreigner. and we will be ugly againwhen we don't belong.
the center for political beauty, an activist collective in berlin, recently staged an extremeartistic intervention. with the permission of relatives, it exhumed the corpses of refugeeswho had drowned at europe's borders, transported them all the way to berlin, and then reburied themat the heart of the german capital. the idea was to allow themto reach their desired destination, if only after their death.
such acts of beautificationmay not be pretty, but they are much needed. because things tend to get uglywhen there's only one meaning, one truth, only answers and no questions. beautiful organizationskeep asking questions. they remain incomplete, which is the fourthand the last of the principles. [remain incomplete] recently i was in paris,
and a friend of minetook me to nuit debout, which stands for "up all night," the self-organized protest movement that had formed in responseto the proposed labor laws in france. every night, hundreds gatheredat the place de la rã©publique. every night they set upa small, temporary village to deliberate their own visionof the french republic. and at the core of this adhocracy was a general assemblywhere anybody could speak
using a specially designed sign language. like occupy wall streetand other protest movements, nuit debout was bornin the face of crisis. it was messy -- full of controversies and contradictions. but whether you agreedwith the movement's goals or not, every gathering wasa beautiful lesson in raw humanity. and how fitting that paris -- the city of ideals, the city of beauty --
was it's stage. it reminds us that like great cities, the most beautiful organizationsare ideas worth fighting for -- even and especiallywhen their outcome is uncertain. they are movements; they are always imperfect,never fully organized, so they avoid ever becoming banal. they have somethingbut we don't know what it is. they remain mysterious;we can't take our eyes off them.
we find them beautiful. so to do the unnecessary, to create intimacy, to be ugly, to remain incomplete -- these are not only the qualitiesof beautiful organizations, these are inherentlyhuman characteristics. and these are also the qualitiesof what we call home. and as we disrupt, and are disrupted,
the least we can do is to ensure that we still feel at homein our organizations, and that we use our organizationsto create that feeling for others. beauty can save the worldwhen we embrace these principles and design for them. in the face of artificial intelligenceand machine learning, we need a new radical humanism. we must acquire and promotea new aesthetic and sentimental education. because if we don't,
we might end up feeling like aliens in organizations and societiesthat are full of smart machines that have no appreciation whatsoever for the unnecessary, the intimate, the incomplete and definitely not for the ugly. thank you.