A confederate structure is potentially the solution to the competitive challenges that most organisations are facing today, where escalating levels of transformation are required for corporate survival; creating numerous additional costs and generating more stress.
A confederation is a collection of diverse individuals or political units who govern themselves but unite and work together to achieve common goals. Unlike federations, the political units of confederations appoint relatively weak central authorities with little power. Instead, multiple leaders work to the rules provided in a common treaty.
The advantage of working with confederations are many. Confederations encourage diversity, thereby reducing the risk of ‘groupthink’ and increasing innovation and problem solving capability. Higher levels of diversity also dissuade political ‘in-groups’ from forming, with disproportional power, who can tie up progress and create unnecessary costs.
Also, the relatively weak central authority of a confederation acts as key facilitator rather than decision maker, permitting the political units to instead make important decisions. The confederate leader must thus be supportive, fair and genuinely caring of members. There is no place for bullying and corruption that can create costly people and performance issues.
Further, confederations are more agile and flexible. Authoritative political units can be moved around according to what decision needs making. Translated to organisations, for example, decisions about investment can include those units that are most closely aligned to strategy and finance, while decisions about people can include those more closely aligned with people process, such as HR. In this respect, many matrix layered organisations already operate a degree of ‘confederateness’ today. In fact, companies such as IDEO and Netflix are already executing successful strategies that employ self-governed, confederate behaviours, such as mutual collaboration and self-motivation to achieve common goals.
In order for confederations to truly work, however, people must be persuaded to burn their desire for competition, individualism, power and other typically western preferences that govern corporate behaviours today. Also, strong relationships, based on mutual trust and understanding, must be forged. Indeed, without strong relationships, confederations will fail- as was discovered all too quickly by the US founding fathers first attempts at governance under the Articles of Confederation.
So, if you like the sound of creating a confederation in your organisation, corporate culture and internal communications must be developed and matured as a critical priority, with the utmost of caution.
Leave A Response