These companies were built, or in some cases rebuilt, with one goal in mind—to maximize human contribution. This aspiration is the animating spirit of humanocracy, and stands in stark contrast to the bureaucratic obsession with control. Both goals are important, but in most organizations, the effort spent on ensuring conformance is a vast multiple of the energy devoted to enlarging the capacity for human impact. This gross imbalance is dangerous for organizations, a drag on the economy, and ethically troubling.

In a bureaucracy, human beings are instruments, employed by an organization to create products and services. In a humanocracy, the organization is the instrument—it’s the vehicle human beings use to better their lives and the lives of those they serve. (See figure 1-2.) The question at the core of bureaucracy is, “How do we get human beings to better serve the organization?” The question at the heart of humanocracy is, “What sort of organization elicits and merits the best that human beings can give?” As we’ll see, the implications of this shift in perspective are profound.

If your worldview places a premium on human freedom and growth, you’ll regard the inhumanity of bureaucracy as intolerable and feel compelled to act. If, on the other hand, you regard human beings as factors of production, you’ll make excuses for bureaucracy and be content with minor reforms.

Perversely, the desire to avoid risk often magnifies it. Dumping money into big me-too projects with modest upside is a lot more perilous than seeding lots of early-stage ideas that are further out on the fringe. In the age of upheaval, incrementalism is the riskiest bet of all. What’s needed is a radical shift in how we think about experimentation. The goal isn’t simply to reduce the uncertainty around new products or get them to market faster, but to build an organization where everyone is working to extend the boundaries of what’s possible. That’s how an organization buys insurance against irrelevance.

In every respect, Ballarin’s approach to responsibilization met the critical tests that face any attempt to upend the bureaucratic status quo:

1. It was anchored in timeless human values

1. It provided ample space for improvisation

1. It routed around points of resistance

1. It invited, rather than demanded, leaders to reimagine their roles

1. It minimized risk and disruption

For all these reasons, responsibilization gained enough runway to reach takeoff speed.

Like Michelin, every company must chart its own path to humanocracy. Nonetheless, it’s reassuring to know that you don’t need a legion of consultants, or a massive corporate change program, to get started. In fact, as we’ll see, those may be the last things you need.