How does an organization leader get a project started where no organization exists?

How does an organization leader get members to follow him or her if no organization exists? In his mind, the leader starts with seeing problems or underserved markets as opportunities. Then, mentally he forms solution theories to address them. After that, he explores in his imagination solution scenarios in various situations and environments. From there, he starts collaborating with others who share the same concerns to envision how initial proposals might actually be realized. From that interaction, a project and its project leader are born. Let's look at the problems behind globalization and picture where the opportunities are.

Globalization has brought great benefits, but it has caused serious problems too, in security, supply line flexibility, as well as personal wealth inequality and regional inequality. This has shattered many local economies because of what is called "hyper-globalization."

As another example: I recently learned of new term, a "monotown." That is a city or town whose economy is dominated by a single industry or company. When that industry declines or the company closes, the community dies. So, how could a leader turn those concerns into opportunities and develop followers to take advantage of them?

Local community development

According to the book Homecoming, The Path To Prosperity in a Post-Global World by Rana Foroohar, due to long, global supply chain rigidity, leaders will likely guide companies away from the US coast toward mid-sized communities. One major reason is because of a greater need for adaptability in these rapidly changing times. The reason why is that a totally globalized, unchecked world is not working as well as it should. It doesn’t protect the environment. It creates inequality in populations and regions. It is not improving global security or reducing risks.

For those reasons, governments - in particular, local governments - should promote closer supply-consumer relationships, and the best way to do that is through the promotion of local startups. A leader should notice which communities want to solve the challenges and are attracted to new opportunities.

Startups aren’t generated by themselves, it takes leadership and a gathering of followers. In this case, that leader has to explore how to shorten supply chains (from supplier to user) and broaden supply chains (more alternate choices available along the supply chain).

According to Foroohar, the global supply chain system has to shorten and come closer to the end user. This is not only for economic stability reasons but global security. In her book, she uses the terms "friend shoring" and "near shoring" as business strategies. It is important to do business with people you know and trust, people that share the same values and care about each other. Not knowing who you are buying from or selling to can be extremely risky.

Also, it can be extremely inhumane. Markets don’t necessarily operate for the overall public good. There must be a "framework" that guides business flows. The invisible hand of market competition must be guided by the visible hand of the laws and values of society. Foroohar thinks we must try to create a new regional alliance around technology and trade that supports liberal democracy, human rights, and common standards. They should not depend on supplies (either physical or digital) from countries that don’t share the same values.

Foroohar believes that through new technology and changing demographics, the global investment share of all investments will decline and the share of distributed local investments will grow. Supply chains will shorten in the years ahead in food supply, energy supply and services like remote design and medical services. We are leaving the era of "economic, rational investors'' to the new era of a more human-centered, place-based economy. Ideas and information will still flow across borders, as well as capital, but local supply will become more favorable in the years ahead to distant suppliers. If this is the case, local organization leaders should explore how these local investments will impact their communities.

What’s needed is a greater focus not on global economic development, but more on development within countries and communities, location-centered economics. And that's where leaders can make a difference.

"B Corporations," which balance purpose and profit that I talked about in my article, "The corporation board of stakeholders," are investing based not merely on share price, but on "ESG," environments, social and governance factors through decentralized technologies. I think the top responsibility of an organization leader is to promote purpose first and profitability second, not the other way around.

Furthermore, the leader must bring the Open Organization Principle of adaptability into local communities. He must help the community work on a backup system to any just-in-time, global supply chain system. Not just economics is involved here. He should encourage communities to bring humanity back into economics, not just statistics and spreadsheets. That is a benefit that must be amplified and made more transparent. 

Risk

Imagine a city with just one power plant, one airport, one fire department, one electricity delivery grid, one internet service provider and one supermarket that are all linked together into a single communications and supply network for maximum efficiency. This community is almost totally dependent on those suppliers. There must be independence or at least secondary alternative suppliers available to be fully adaptable or resilient. Leaders should expose this community vulnerability and build a team to make the community more stable through various startup opportunities.

Because adaptability is inherently inefficient when not used, it has been ignored under the concern for maximum efficiency. It is like having no security guards because they are not needed when the threat is not obvious and hard to forecast. For any opinion leader, convincing the community may be a real challenge, because adaptability involves redundancy, which some managers evaluate as waste, but it reduces shocks.

Tweaking for the ideal

An organization leader has to look at the cost of getting supplies and the reliability of sources. Considering cost and supply reliability, how can a supply chain be ideally diversified?

Notice the below four supply chains by supplier-user distance, which could be for services and skills (knowledge) as well, not just physical goods.

Transnational	National	Regional	Local
Raw materials Finished goods Transportation methods Services Number of sources	Raw materials Finished goods Transportation methods Services Number of sources	Raw materials Finished goods Transportation methods Services Number of sources	Raw materials Finished goods Transportation methods Services Number of sources

How would your company’s products and services be shared between these four groupings? Let’s look at an example. Notice the below regarding building supplies.

	Raw materials	Finished products	Transportation methods	Services	Number of sources
Transnational	50%	30%	2	20%	3
National	20%	40%	2	20%	5
Regional	10%	20%	2	30%	5
Local	5%	10%	2	30%	10

I just guessed in the above example, but what percentages would be appropriate for a given item for your company in your area? How could you improve adaptability if need be? As Foroohar recommends, for transnationally received items, we must consider "nearshoring" and "friend shoring" and avoid "long-distance shoring" and "adversary item dependence." Furthermore, single-source items and services are less adaptable than one main source and several backup sources. There must be supply chains that are as short as possible (distance) and as broad as possible (many choices), while maintaining profitability. This provides the needed adaptability when unexpected shocks occur which the leader must shoot for.

No matter what, adaptability will cost more than the most efficient global supply system. The problem is that the least costly methods are not able to adapt to disruption and sudden changes and shortages occur. 

How can a leader promote diverse startups by sector in the community?

Foroohar thinks that technology, agriculture, banking, and pharmaceutical business sectors will move from global massive corporations to more local small startups. Organization leaders should start exploring how their company’s supply chains will change in the years ahead.

Let's take an example of a company that supplies food from the farm, directly to the consumer. In that industry there is a great deal of waste, starting from where it is grown to where it is actually consumed. Also, food mass-produced is not as nutritious as more locally, organically grown food, leading to food having too many calories but not enough vitamins and minerals that the body needs. This has led to more overweight people in the world than there are hungry people. In some regions, people are both overweight and malnourished. So, just more calories is not what is needed. A leader could consider this a huge opportunity that a startup could address in the community.

Looking at the local food outlets a company supplies, there are supermarkets, restaurants, schools, and hospitals. Which could and should be supplied by local growers? To localize, Foroohar recommends starting with schools and high-end restaurants/groceries. The leader could do this by forming or approaching local cooperatives and staying away from outside suppliers. A cooperative is a form of community and the feeling at the local community level is different from global suppliers. Locally, human needs and benefits are very visible and appreciated by local suppliers. The leader could facilitate this connection.

To be more secure in food supply reliability, the leader could develop more direct information systems. Then, what food and nutrition that are lacking in the community can be better understood. Also, pricing could be better supervised. More information sharing across food supply chain silos can improve collaboration, transparency, inclusivity, community and adaptability, all five Open Organization principles.

The leader’s goal is to make food healthier, less energy intensive, more local, and ultimately resilient to unexpected supply disruptions. He should build a team of people that think this goal is important.

For the leader to promote this idea, he can mention that by producing locally, almost all transportation costs are eliminated. Also, the need for preservatives, fertilizers, chemicals, packaging, and all the carbon release that they will result in is reduced to a fraction of the current methods. Furthermore, the water and land required will be greatly slashed. 

This might not eliminate traditional farming, but with the projections of global population growth being mainly in megacities, city food growing should be seriously studied by leaders in the food industry. For example, Plenty in South San Francisco is doing just that. Also, Argicool has figured out a way to grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs inside abandoned shipping containers.

"Local-for-local" supply chains, in which production and consumption are becoming more connected, save time, reduce logistics problems, bring down energy costs and improve supply chain stability and flexibility. On top of that, they are compatible with each other, creating a spinoff ecosystem of innovation because industrious, inspired leaders tend to cluster around each other. They know that one idea can spark completely different ideas, leading to cooperatives that spend more of their time collaborating with each other on customer issues, best practices, suppliers, distributors and consumers for the greater community good. 

Innovations mostly happen near where there is production, and leaders should take advantage of that. If salespeople are a stone’s throw away from line workers and management, ideas come out. With their observing of each other, these people naturally start collaborating.