The Digital Freedom Challenge is a current challenge at MiX (the Management Innovation Exchange), and is intended to find new approaches to transition from a way of business biased toward managerial control to one in which a high degree of individual autonomy is the norm. Proposals have been made, and an M-Prize will be awarded 2/17/2014 for the best suggestion. In the next few weeks, the ten finalists will be refining their proposals based on feedback from the community.

As an input to your possible participation — and as feedback to the finalists — here’s my take on the proposals:

Working in Plain View: Using a Wiki & Social Media to Broadcast as You Work
Story by Aaron Anderson

A relatively modest case study, relating experience and lessons learned from ‘working out loud’ in a University setting, specifically as Director of Strategic Organizational Initiatives at San Francisco State University, College of Business.

Corporate Earthquakes 
Hack by Alberto Blanco, co-authored by Matt Frost, Kandy Woodfield, Stephen Remedios, Conor Moss, Guido Rubio Amestoy

Quoting Gary Hamel — The only thing that can be safely predicted is that sometime soon your organization will be challenged to change in ways for which it has no precedent — this hack takes the idea of corporate ‘earthquakes’ and suggests institutionalizing crisis to make change happen. Interesting grab bag of tools and observations, but this one didn’t really jell for me.

Rewarding Adaptability: Crowdfunding and the Internal Ideas Market
Hack by Ian Davidson, co-authored by Ken Steinman, Perry Timms, David D’Souza

Proposes an internal ideas market where employees vote by pledging hours from a fixed allocation of 10% of their own time. The project(s) that get the most votes move forward, and the individuals that vited then provide the work based on the time they voted. This is a charmingly direct and democratic model, and I give this hack a thumbs up, although it does not seem tremendously original.

Yes, You Can
Hack by Simon Gosney, co-authored by Leonardo Zangrando, Amanda Boonzaaier, Alberto Blanco, Kim Spinder

Encouraging companies to actively tell employees that they can do with signs and posters. Yawn.

Self-Build Job Roles
Hack by Keith Gulliver, co-authored by Claire McCartney, Cassie Lloyd Perrin,Hendrik Dejonckheere, Kubatova Jaroslava & Kukelkova Adela

Draws on the ideas of Lynda Gratton (The Shift: The Future Of Work Is Already Here), and Susan M. Cantrell and David Smith (Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization), advocating self-defined job roles, although in a staged and tentative manner. The authors suggest a core role — as defined by the company — augmented by other activities chosen by the individual, including new job titles. But it’s all swaddled in a great degree of management control, falling far short of the ends I advocate in Sharpen Your Own Shovel, Dig Your Own Hole. But I give this one a thumbs up, although the team would be well served to write a trimmed-down 1000 word version, and throw this one a way.

Embedding Innovation in the Company DNA
Story by Jens Hauglum, co-authored by Bente Mari Kristiansen, Bjørn Henrik Vangstein, Eyvind A. Larre

A case study from FINN.co about its  efforts to become more innovative through five years of activities. They seem to have developed some models and tools, but iy’s not clear that the company has become an innovative hothouse.

Making Office Knowledge Open Source(ish) 
Story by Martin Keijser

I read this twice, but still don’t know exactly what it says. Phrases like ‘process centric collaborative knowledge management strategy’ sound ten steps removed from what people are generally thinking about in the office.

When Business Met Occupy: Innovating for True Collaborative Decision-Making
Story by Alanna Krause

The Enspiral network of companies is a great example of deep business culture transcending shallow corporate cultures. They built Loomio — a cooperative decision-making tool — which they label ‘true collaborative’ decision-making.  A must read, especially regarding what is needed to move away from vertical (top-down) decision-making to horizontal (lateral) decision-making, and the need for both new tools and new practices for this to work. Two thumbs up.

The Digital TOOT (Time Out of Time)
Hack by Stephen Remedios, co-authored by Raynah Remedios

This piece is advocating that organizations get employees to taking time each day to answer a short question that management can use to heck the pulse of the company. It reminds me of the implementation of TINYpulse (see TINYpulse is a small and simple anonymous feedback tool) or 15five (see New release of 15Five ventures into 360º review territory), and the way it is written makes me think the authors are unaware of those tools. So, I like the idea, but the marketplace is already there.

Liquid Organizations: Building the Next Evolutionary Stage of Anti-Fragility
Hack by Stelio Verzera

This is the ambitious and deeply reasoned model for a self-governed democratic organization, somewhat like Holacracy, but rather than being rooted in the building and application of doctrinal agreements based on the core constitution of Holacracy, it is a free market model, based on the meritocratic governance models from open source projects. I wish the write up included some graphics depicting the various dynamics in the system, but I think this is a fascinating effort, and I will definitely reread the final version. Two thumbs up.