Workplace culture is a crucial component of any organization. Defining your culture determines the kind of people who are likely to thrive in your organization and establishes the set of values and goals by which you work.
There are four primary types of organizational culture, each with its own benefits and quirks. Understanding the right culture for your organization will help improve the way your employees work, get rewarded, and grow within your organization. In this overview, we cover what adhocracy culture is, key elements of this methodology, and ways employers can set this up within an organization.
What is adhocracy culture?
In short, adhocracy culture is a corporate culture that emphasizes the ability to adapt to change. Flexibility, innovation, and empowering individuals to make their own choices are all central to making this a part of an organization’s workplace. This type of culture is increasingly common in the tech world — one of the most notable being Apple — where leaders want to empower a culture of creativity and encourage everyone to think outside of the box to solve organizational challenges.
The term “adhocracy” was coined by Warren Bennis in his 1968 book, “The Temporary Society.” It comes from the Latin phrase ad hoc, which means “for this purpose.” Alvin Toffler popularized the concept of adhocracy in his 1970 book, “Future Shock.”
Characteristics of adhocracy culture
The adhocracy culture definition is fairly broad-reaching, so it’s easier to define it by identifying the focus of adhocracy culture.
- Emphasis on innovation and creativity: Employees are encouraged to challenge the status quo and come up with unique solutions to problems, regardless of where they are in the organizational structure.
- Decentralized decision-making: Every employee is empowered to make decisions and take initiative, not just designated leaders.
- Flexible and agile work environment: From flex working hours to unlimited paid time-off (PTO), adhocracy culture entrusts employees to get their work done in a way that works best for them.
- Focus on collaboration and teamwork: In an adhocracy culture, everyone is better when working together towards common goals.
Benefits of adhocracy culture
Adhocracy culture is a relatively new phenomenon. Let’s just say you wouldn’t see it on “Mad Men.” Although it’s still somewhat radical in more traditional industries, there are a number of compelling benefits of adhocracy culture, including:
- Enhanced employee engagement: By empowering all employees to answer questions and solve problems, everyone feels more engaged in their work and like a valued member of the team.
- Faster decision-making processes: With less of a traditional hierarchy, every employee is empowered to make fast decisions to resolve problems without needing multiple forms of approval.
- Increased adaptability to change: Flexibility is a core tenet of adhocracy culture, which is inherently valuable in rapidly scaling or pivoting industries, especially tech.
- Competitive advantages in the market: Fast-paced innovation, learning, and growth gives a company an edge when taking advantage of market trends or opportunities.
Challenges of adhocracy culture
Although there are many benefits of adhocracy culture, it’s not without potential risks and challenges. Like all organizational cultures, there are bound to be bumps along the road. Some of the chief challenges you may have to navigate include:
- Potential for chaos and disorganization: When everybody’s a leader, nobody’s a leader. That’s not literally true, of course, but empowered workforces do risk different employees implementing different solutions to address the same problem, which may cause some confusion rather than resolution.
- Communication barriers: Likewise, when people are empowered to make their own decisions, it can lead to single-mindedness and overlooking the importance of communicating decisions and reasons with other team members.
- Recruitment and retention difficulties: Adhocracy culture can be a lot for employees who have never worked in such a culture to get used to, and, as such, it can lead to recruitment and retention difficulties.
Steps to implement adhocracy culture in your organization
What does the adhocracy culture focus on? Well, creating strong company culture should be a priority for every organization. That said, it’s often easier said than done. One of the key HR basics for SMBs is maintaining consistency and transparency with employees. So, if you’re taking steps to implement an adhocracy culture, it’s important to be 100 percent sure that’s what you want. Selling your team on a type of culture only to rapidly change course may alienate and confuse employees and risk a talent drain.
All that said, if you’re ready to pursue adhocracy culture, consider the following steps.
- Define your company values and goals: You’ll need to communicate values and goals to all employees so they understand what’s expected of them.
- Decide which characteristics are most important: Want strong team leads but an adhocracy culture for team members? You can do that. As your company grows, adhocracy can create more chaos, so it’s important to tailor your culture early to fit your business model.
- Encourage cross-departmental collaboration: From mandatory all-team meetings to encouraging team leads to collaborate and synergize on projects, emphasizing collaboration is an ongoing challenge of adhocracy culture.
- Incentivize the culture: Reward out-of-the-box ideas with perks or bonuses, recognize employee achievements, and encourage healthy competition among teammates to come up with creative solutions to problems.
- Be transparent: People can only solve problems if they know what’s going on, which is why transparency is so important in an adhocracy culture. Even when things aren’t going so well, trust the rank-and-file to offer solutions.
- Reflect and adjust: Every organizational culture requires nurturing and patience. Adjust policies and practices where needed before abandoning a culture all together.
Adapt to change by cultivating an adhocracy culture
Adhocracy culture can be particularly valuable in industries that experience a lot of upheaval and change. Whether your company is regularly expanding into new markets or verticals, or expects to pivot in a new direction soon, adhocracy culture can build a flexible, innovative environment that ensures employees are always ready to take on new challenges and come up with innovative solutions.
Regardless of your company’s goals and values, determining the right type of organizational culture can align all employees to work towards common goals.
