Zepotha, the 1980s cult classic horror movie has made a huge resurgence on the Internet as of late. Fans are going absolutely crazy doing things like writing fan fiction, creating new movie posters, cosplay, and reaching out to their favorite celebrities and comparing them with the characters in Zepotha.
Have you heard of the movie Zepotha or remember seeing it in theaters? Definitely not. Zepotha is a complete fabrication. A news story on NPR reports that an 18 year old musician named Emily Jeffri challenged her fans to create the movie and convince the world that it actually existed. And they did… Millions of people took up the challenges as if it were their own creating a significant amount of hubbub that had several people frantically looking for the movie and being completely perplexed as to why they could not find it.
So what allowed the concept of Zepotha to be so successful? Well, Ana Diaz the culture writer for Polygon says it’s how Emily Jeffri invited her fans to create community around the fake movie Zepotha “Co-creation is a deeply fulfilling experience. People want to contribute to something that’s larger than themselves. And there’s something really exhilarating about seeing others interact with it and build on it.”
I think that this co-creative model offers an important lesson for business leaders on igniting innovation within their organizations.
It is abundantly clear that this current age requires an unprecedented level of creativity and innovation to address the growing complexity and disruption facing the business landscape. In 2019 IBM did a study where CEOs of fortune 100 firms reported that they did not feel that they were capable of managing the complexity of their own industries. This was before COVID, a much simpler time. And if CEOs were having difficulty managing the complexity then, what are they doing now? In the past 3 years the world has changed, dramatically. And we’re starting to see the beginning of an era of innovation where disruptive technologies like generative AI start to emerge with increasing frequency. As those disruptive technologies mature and start to combine, we will see opportunities and challenges that are currently unimaginable.
If CEOs felt that things were too complex in 2019, buckle your seat belts, because it’s only going to get much more confusing and moving a lot faster.
In my work as a consultant, I see significant amounts of redundancies and frustrations within organizations. These are challenges that are caused by a rigid top-down hierarchical structure. Hierarchy is built on the concept that people are not honest enough or smart enough to act independently. Now I don’t mean to insult those structures, it’s all we’ve had to go on for the last 2000 years. Where it was far from perfect and caused all sorts of problems, for the most part it got the job done. No longer. If we as a business community and a society at large are going to evolve and overcome the existential challenges that face our species and the technological disruptions that are coming to bear, we will need to take a vastly different approach.
It is incumbent on companies at this particular time to increase creativity and innovation. And I think that’s where business leaders can take a page out of Emily Jeffri’s creation of Zepotha: She put the idea out there, and then let it go. Jeffri had no desire to control the output and invited her fans to co-create it with her. It was this creative freedom that inspired her fans to do so much with it and to turn the concept into a viral phenomenon. I think it is a great example of how companies can use their sense of purpose to point to a greater possibility for the company and the world and invite the creativity of employees.
So how do we transition to a new system if the one we are in inherently causes distrust, dissatisfaction, and dependence?
Fortunately there are new and innovative methodologies that are emerging to help organizations meet this challenge. The method that I find most exciting is Strategic Doing, developed by Ed Morrison. Strategic Doing is an agile leadership framework that emphasizes collaboration over hierarchy. It starts by bringing together a diverse network of participants and establishing a safe space for open dialogue. Unlike traditional strategic planning models led by a single expert, Strategic Doing relies on shared leadership where anyone can propose ideas. The framework follows a structured process that includes identifying assets that can be combined in innovative ways, framing opportunities instead of problems, starting small with quick pilots, gathering frequent feedback, and adjusting based on learnings. This approach allows networks to rapidly test and iterate solutions. Strategic Doing ultimately aims to foster a culture where innovation organically emerges through cooperation among empowered teams.
The fact of the matter is is there is a significant history of organizations using nonhierarchical processes to create a culture of innovation. Many of which are listed in the book Humanocracy by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini. My favorite example is Nucor Steel: Nucor utilizes self-managed teams of 10 – 30 people who autonomously make decisions about processes, equipment, and schedules. Nucor also has an incentive-based pay system that puts a significant percentage of compensation on team production outputs. So employees are given autonomy and rewarded for success. Nucor pays a base salary about 25% below that of their competitors but actual pay is 25-30% over those same competitors. Like what Emily Jeffri did with the creation of Zepotha, Nucor gives employees the opportunity to contribute, be creative, and take ownership of their work. The benefits to this approach are huge: Despite not having a research and development group, Nucor leads the steel industry in innovation. It is their employees who are spearheading the innovations.
So how can companies begin the process of transitioning to collaboration and co-creation? It is important to recognize that we can’t just turn a switch and go from a hierarchy to inclusiveness and distrust to trust. We need to start small, experiment, and build on successes that emerge from those experiments. I recommend starting with projects that impact the entire company and inviting a group of people that represent a cross section of the enterprise to take on that challenge.
This is one of the primary motivations of creating my company, True Bearing. Recruiting is a critical function that is not serving most organizations: 78% of hiring managers report that finding good people to join their teams is their greatest challenge. On top of that, the current attrition rate is at 24%. So hiring managers are stressed out about finding good people and a quarter of the people they hire don’t even make it past a year. There’s a big opportunity here to bring people together and create new methods of attracting talent that we’ll drive collaboration and innovation.
If our organizations are going to be able to ignite the passions of our employees and utilize the contributions that naturally emerge from collaboration, it’s imperative that leaders give people meaning, agency, and ownership over their work. This trust and autonomy will motivate people to fully contribute their skills and ideas. This may seem like a daunting task, but that concern is the result of an outmoded hierarchal form of thinking. The truth is our employees want to contribute and be a part of an organization that is doing big things. The world has changed and if we are to survive, we must go from control to collaboration.
What are things that would make your organization more successful and collaborative? For those of you who have focus and influence within your organization, share about how trusting your employees has created lasting innovations. I am eager to read your comments.
About the author – Peter Laughter – after a 25-year entrepreneurial career in the recruiting and staffing industry I walked away. Recruiting is screwed. I founded True Bearing to transform it by telling stories about purpose and culture, allowing companies to connect with the incredible talent that doesn’t know they exist, yet.
