Today's business world is highly focussed big data. In many organisations I have worked with information gets pulled up to the top of the organisation, is analysed and translated into standardised solutions which are then sent down the hierarchy for implementation. While at times of stability top-down leadership provided a safe and stable organisational environment with clear direction, in today's climate of uncertainty and continuous change this activity has become very time-consuming (and costly) and is playing with an organisation's ability to be adaptable and responsive to today's economic challenges and opportunities and even it's ability to survive.
'Companies achieve increased responsiveness by reducing the friction of information flow, increasing their iteration rate, decreasing their cost of failure, and optimizing their structures for adaptability.' - Simon Terry
Larger organisations are starting to fail in their delivery of quality as well as cost-effective services to their customer group as they find it hard to respond timely to any opportunities or challenges due to layers and layers of management and highly regulated corporate centres demanding compliance. This can be compared to a large tanker trying to manoeuvre its way through a high volume of icebergs. Organisations need to therefore find different ways to become more agile and adaptable in how they communicate, and need time to think and reflect on what adds value and what doesn't.
It could be the difference between:
PS - Buying frontline staff a megaphone is not enough!
As well as adaptability and responsiveness, organisations need to reframe a culture of competitiveness to a culture of collaboration. Competion is a capitalist notion where organisations compete for parts of the market place. The world around us and new legislation however demands from organisations a need to look at creating more Social Value. While many organisations continue to focus on and even fight over money, what is missed is the need to build social renewal of communities and environmental sustainability.
So today's leadership requires to change its approach from focussing on internal safety and stability, to finding an agility, adaptability and sustainability both within and beyond the organisational boundaries.
Organisational adaptability comes from playing to existing strengths, continuously learning together (co-learn), continuous improvement (co-think), open flow of data and knowledge (transparency and collaboration), encouraging and reflecting on experimentations (co-creation and innovation) etc, making the workplace feel more like a community or network, where every person has ownership, multi-functional teams are driven by purpose and silo working is a thing of the past. It is not sufficient for this to be facilitated within organisational boundaries. All these need to extend outside of the boundaries of the organisation, or more importantly organisations need to learn lessons from external communities and work with them. This means seeking out a network of employees, customers, partners and funders motivated by better outcomes for all.
Having this 'outside and in' approach, requires many existing organisational support functions to significantly shift their offer. In the case of HR - to give but one example - HR needs to not reflect so much on how to recruit and retain permenant staff, but rather how to attract the right people with the right mindset, strengths and knowledge at the right time. This may mean increasingly working with freelance staff and shorter-term contracts. But equally HR needs to help unlock the fullest potential of all who work for the organisation. This is not always about doing more, in fact more often it is about letting go and turning things off.
'HR needs to organise a bonfire of policies.' - Peter Cheese, CEO of CIPD
'Traditional HR is all about retention, while the new world of work requires HR to set people and knowledge free, both within and beyond the boundaries of the organisation!' - Heidi De Wolf, Founding Director of Future Catalyst
The same applies to many other support functions such as Communication, Project Management, IT, Asset Management etc. Times of uncertainty require organisation-wide adaptability, and adaptable organisations come to life when a culture of adaptability is embraced and embedded in each person, each service, and at a Governance level equally. We often think of alignment as the alignment of processes. In truth, alignment of values and principles is more important in culture change activities and removes tensions when working with others.
A useful exercise to assess your culture in your organisation or team is to have an open discussion around the following continuums:
The Cultural Principles on the left set out a Steady State Culture while the principles on the right set out the Adaptable Culture to aim for, but only if you want your organisation to survive the continuous economic uncertainty.
