July 25, 2016

Shaping business for the future

Posted By: Fiona

How do we need to shape business for the future?

Business in a rapidly changing world

Over recent years the term “VUCA” has increasingly been used to describe the business world: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. How can you shape your organisation so it can thrive in this environment, rapidly adapting to change while keeping people aligned and productive?

A new paradigm

We need a new paradigm for business. The old hierarchical, command-and-control, mechanical paradigm is cumbersome, slow to respond to change, and it fails to tap into the intelligence and creativity of people lower down in the hierarchy. People rarely do their best work when they’re treated like cogs in a machine.

As the pace of change increases we need to get better at noticing, making sense of and adapting to the changes. This more natural, organic approach is similar to emerging fields such as biomimicry. Perhaps a better paradigm would be one of business as a garden, where its people are the gardeners.

Shift from predict-and-control to align-and-inspire

The idea we’re in control has always been an illusion and is becoming more obviously so as our business environment changes more rapidly. How long does it take for even the best plan to go off track? Sure, we can control some things and influence others, but there is a vast range of factors to which we can only respond. We need to learn to tune into what’s going on around us, adjusting our approach like a surfer adjusting to a wave.

This represents a new form of leadership. Leaders need to learn how to set an inspiring direction, create and maintain alignment, monitor the health of the overall organisation, and give their people the freedom to adapt their actions to emerging conditions.

Set an inspiring direction through a higher purpose

In late 2015 Forbes published an article stating businesses without a higher purpose “will be on life support in 4-7 years”. The author writes of the importance of purpose for engaging employees and customers, and this is absolutely true. One of the key factors in intrinsic motivation is seeing meaning in your work. In addition, having a clear and compelling purpose means everyone knows and cares about what the organisation is striving to achieve. Every decision can be measured against the question “Will this help achieve our purpose?” This keeps everyone pulling in the same direction while giving them the freedom to decide how best to take the next step.

The higher purpose should ideally emerge from the organisation itself and be periodically refreshed. In this way people have a clearer idea of how they personally can and wish to contribute to the organisation’s higher purpose, and the purpose can evolve over time.

Align behaviour through the organisation’s values

Organisational values can be thought of as behavioural elastic, rubber-bands drawing people into agreed ways of collaborating to achieve their common purpose. Every action can be measured against the question “Is this how we want to be?”

As with purpose, if an organisation is to thrive in a changing world the values need to be emergent and alive, not dictated top-down and posted-but-ignored.

Think systemically

Everything is a system within a system, from the smallest cell in our bodies to the universe itself. And everything is interconnected. Each part of your business has an effect on and is affected by all the others. Similarly your organisation has a rich network of causes and effects with the outside world. Sometimes business leaders encounter recalcitrant problems that won’t go away no matter what they do. This is often a sign the problem actually originates somewhere else in the system, somewhere they haven’t looked.

If your business is to adapt to and shape its internal and external environments it will need to:

Build and maintain itself as an integrated system
Be highly attuned to its stakeholders, their needs, and how well they’re being met
Constantly and broadly scan its environment, both internal and external
Set aside time to reflect on and make sense of what is being observed
Decide what action/s to take as a result, and
Follow those actions through

Encourage self-organisation and collaboration

A nimble organisation is one in which people can adjust direction rapidly when exposed to new ideas and changes in the environment. If all decisions need to pass up the organisation through a series of checkpoints this creates delays, expense and filtering of information. It also reduces people’s autonomy, meaning it undermines their intrinsic motivation and hence reduces their creativity and productivity. Decisions should be taken as close to the coal-face as possible, catering for systemic implications by seeking input from as diverse a range of relevant stakeholders as possible.

Provide suitable supporting structures

Supporting technology and processes in a rapidly-evolving business need to be carefully designed to provide structured flexibility. Enough structure to optimise efficiency, enough flexibility to enable change. They should promote the desired culture, encourage systems thinking, and facilitate rapid and effective innovation and handover.

ADAPT by Design has been created specifically to address all these challenges.

Like help shaping your business for the future? Reach out

Posted By: Fiona
Posted In: Business, Change, Employee engagement, Future, Innovation, Leadership, Motivation, Purpose, Self organisation, Shareholder return, Systems thinking, Values

"The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why"

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