With only 23% of employees globally engaged at work, it is staggering to imagine the untapped innovation hidden within the other 77%. Last year, I was hired by a company to conduct a series of 25 interviews alongside a culture survey of the entire organization. My primary task was to gather stories that would provide context for the survey, but my secondary task was to investigate a few concerns that senior leadership had. One concern stood out: as the organization had grown rapidly, leadership worried it had become siloed and lost some of its edge.

When I completed my interviews, it was clear their concerns were well-founded. Many of the people I interviewed talked about feeling lost within the organization, with certain groups feeling dumped on and little connection outside of their teams. But it was one professional’s observation about how the company managed client onboarding that had me come to a startling realization.

This person saw how the siloed nature of the organization was creating unnecessary delays between signing a client contract and fully integrating them. They were using a sequential process: Group A would finish their work, then pass it off to Group B, and so on. Little communication occurred between steps, and problems unnoticed at the start became major issues by the end. This employee was confident that moving to an asynchronous process with more interdepartmental communication could onboard clients faster, build stronger relationships between departments, and resolve problems earlier.

The problem? He had no idea who to share his idea with.

This is not an uncommon story, and it got me thinking about the transformative times we’ve just entered. Do we really have time to let observations like this go unnoticed? And what would be possible if organizations could immediately capitalize on creativity like this? Of course, in larger, modern organizations, you can’t have people taking on initiatives willy-nilly. But when opportunities arise to improve customers’ lives, reduce costs, and cut out unnecessary frustration, shouldn’t we be able to act on them?

The Cost of Disengagement

The problem of disengagement has been accepted as normal and treated as reality. Early in my career, I learned that only about 13% of working people actually love their job. I found this so depressing. And it made sense: all those people standing in front of the subway doors, blocking me from getting on or off—they were part of the 87% who were less than enthused about their profession.

Recently, Gallup released its State of the Global Workplace 2024 report. Global employee engagement has remained stagnant at 23%, the highest rate since Gallup began measuring it. Hooray? The number hasn’t changed since Gallup started conducting the study in 1998. One critical reason for the disengagement is that employees are frustrated in their desire to have meaning and agency in their work.

People want to know that their work is in service of something important to them. They want a say in how their labor is applied. But 77% of employees are checked out, and this is our record-high engagement rate? Employees are suffering. But senior leadership is also suffering: 70% of large-scale digital transformations fail, and 65% of senior leaders in the U.S. report experiencing burnout. Isn’t it obvious we’re doing something wrong?

Barriers to Collective Wisdom

Why are we missing these opportunities? I don’t think there are any actual barriers preventing teams from accessing their collective wisdom. However, we’ve grown up in command-and-control-dominated environments, and our models of leadership come from a command-and-control perspective. Most of us have never worked in a collaborative environment and are therefore unable to conceptualize one. It’s not that we can’t; it’s that we don’t know how. Because we’ve never experienced it, collaborative structures are unimaginable.

In command-and-control, people aren’t viewed as resources; they’re cogs in a wheel, expected only to take action when told, expected to operate in narrow lanes. In this scenario, employees taking initiative can be seen as disruptive. Yet, in a world changing as fast as ours, initiative will be key to success.

The costs of our inability to collaborate are staggering. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report estimates that disengagement costs the global economy $7.8 trillion annually in lost productivity—11% of global GDP. Deloitte found that employees spend 1.8 hours per day seeking information or collaboration they couldn’t easily access, translating to $37 billion lost annually in the U.S. alone.

On the other hand, the benefits of tapping into team potential are immense. The MIT Sloan Management Review found that companies fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing report 2.4 times higher revenue growth. Harvard Business Review reported that teams feeling empowered and valued achieve 21% greater profitability, 41% lower absenteeism, and 17% higher productivity.

Moving Toward Collaboration

I think a critical component of transitioning from command-and-control to collaboration is creating novel experiences that allow leaders to see collaboration in action. Strategic Doing in a corporate environment empowers leaders and teams to collaborate effectively in a non-hierarchical way. The process emphasizes mutual respect and shared leadership, guiding participants to co-create solutions by building on each person’s assets and ideas.

Strategic Doing replaces traditional top-down planning with a structured, iterative approach that fosters trust, alignment, and accountability. Leaders experience the benefits of collaboration firsthand—engaging in transparent conversations, identifying shared goals, and quickly moving to measurable outcomes. This breaks down silos and enables organizations to tap into their teams’ collective intelligence.

A simple way to start? Be curious. Ask your team, “How do you think we should proceed?” A friend of mine, Barrett Ersek, used this approach with his lawncare business. One of his crews struggled to distribute leaflets to neighboring homes due to tight schedules. When Barret asked how to solve the issue, one worker suggested using frisbees to deliver the leaflets. It worked perfectly.

The Transformative Power of Wisdom

What’s the result of unlocking your team’s wisdom? Collaboration doesn’t just solve operational problems—it transforms organizational culture. When leaders engage their teams, they unlock not just potential but also a sense of shared purpose and joy. That employee with the bold idea to fix client onboarding? Imagine if leadership had systems in place to capture and act on it. His insight might have revolutionized their client experience and inspired deeper collaboration across silos. The next great breakthrough for your organization could be just one question or conversation away.

The wisdom your organization needs to thrive is already within your team. Are you ready to listen?