“Our actions may be impeded… but there can be no impeding our
intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The
mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our
acting.” – Marcus Aurelius
The Case for Being Adaptive: Responding to Our Ever Changing World
Marwan Rateb
Consulting Director
015
I believe that the denizens of the Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, or Great Depression felt that the rate of change in their lives was unprecedented. In my lifetime I feel that we are currently undergoing change at an unprecedented rate. The fundamental ways businesses operate, communicate internally and externally and even monetize products and services seems subject to constant redefinition. Where once Microsoft and its predecessors were the corporate standard, the new standards are still being defined, and that uncertainty is throwing much of the norms of the corporate world into disarray.
Take email, until fairly recently, the standard means of corporate written communication; now a bane of the office worker’s existence. What method do you use to communicate with your colleagues and customers? We are using Slack and text messages for internal communications, and a combination of email, dashboards, chats and forums for communicating with our clients based on their preference.
Six months ago that was not the case and in six months my answer will change. Email is a fairly benign example. The rapid pace and breadth of innovation is changing every aspect of business.
With the advent of lean startups and other approaches to drastically reducing time to market, competitive landscapes are changing almost overnight. We were working with a client to develop a novel product in the transportation sector. By the time we were ready to launch, under a fairly rapid development lifecycle for this client (months instead of years), there were three competitors who stripped us of the first mover advantage. When we began the project those competitors were nonexistent.
Recently, much of the work we are engaged in revolves around helping transform organizations to better respond to this new world order where change is the only constant and speed/innovation is less of a competitive advantage and more a cost of doing business.
There is a plethora of frameworks, methodologies and approaches to build the necessary capabilities to compete in our current global environment. You’ve likely heard of, used or are using a methodology like SCRUM or XP (SAFe, LeSS or DAD if you need to scale) or the aforementioned lean startup approach. The approach we use at Certus is called Adaptive Execution which is based on many of the same principles, with a twist. In addition to a focus on people, process, technology and communication, we focus on positivity and reframing interactions.
Regardless of chosen methodology, a change in some aspect of your organization’s day to day operations will be required. The generally accepted approach to driving change in a culture was codified by Dr. John Kotter. A brief overview of his model can be viewed here:
The specifics of implementing change vary dramatically from one organization to another. What works in one culture may completely backfire in another, and that is what makes change management part art and part science. Generally, where we find the greatest success in facilitating change are situations where:
1. There is a clear and present need:
Organizations that are experiencing a downturn, be it in market share, revenue growth, profitability or some other key metric are more open to reassessing how they operate. The more public and well articulated the pain, the more pressing the agenda for change.
2. We have the support of at least one key executive:
While I am a firm believer in the power of grassroots approaches, in today’s organizations where fewer people are doing more work, it is challenging to organize people in a short time frame without an executive sponsoring the initiative.
3. There is an opportunity to pilot the approach on an impactful initiative:
A carefully selected pilot project that minimizes the overall organizational risk, but has a quantifiable impact can have a profound impact and intrigue enough people in the organization. This also gives the working team an opportunity to tailor the approach to their culture and way of operating before it spreads. Ultimately, there should be a demonstration of value in adopting a new approach.
Furthermore, the impact needs to be noteworthy (think 10x or greater). Recently we employed a pilot to restart a stalled initiative which rallied people and brought renewed energy and focus on the project.\
4. The organization understands that the approach is a means to an end:
Whatever methodology or hybrid methodology your organization selects, that is only the beginning. The goal of any new way of working is to simplify the delivery of value to your customers. No approach is a panacea. It will need to be broken and experimented with repeatedly and it will still need to evolve with your organization, customers and competitors. Being adaptive means constant reassessment and revision. A few weeks ago, This American Life aired a repeat of an episode about the NUMMI venture between General Motors and Toyota.
You can listen to this episode which captures the change journey here:
This American Life #561: NUMMI 2015
5. We tell a compelling story:
Storytelling in the corporate world is seeing a renaissance. Articulating your voyage, and painting a picture of the art of the possible is increasingly being expected and is a differentiator in an otherwise crowded sea of initiatives.
The hallmark of all these approaches is discovering and doing more of what your customers value, faster. That spirit is embodied in the principles of Lean manufacturing, which has been a driving force in reshaping entire industries. If you think of the factory owner as the customer and maximizing throughput as the goal, it can also be found in elements of mass production. At the start of this piece I referenced the industrial revolution and other periods of great innovation and change. Perhaps we are not so different in the way we work from our ancestors?
Regardless of industry, there seems to be a common way to work today. The goal is weaving together the most appropriate elements to deliver the most value to your customers in the shortest time with minimum effort.
In parting, while the world has changed and continues to change, I believe our only recourse is to adapt. I think that advice is timeless, but particularly timely today.
Link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-being-adaptive-responding-our-ever-changing-world-marwan-rateb
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/guided?startTask=ADD_CURRENT_POSITION&force=true&trk=cspad-prof-dsply-pos1n
Opens to me-
https://www.linkedin.com/home
No comments:
Post a Comment