Changing the way we deal with change
Adaptability and agility are crucial for survival, writes GRANT SIEFF
I T IS a well-worn management refrain that change is the only constant — but these days, as author Gary Hamel points out, the rate of change has gone into overdrive, and it is shaking things up. Change is now multifaceted, relentless, rebellious, and occasionally, shocking — and it is becoming more so as each day passes.
Unimagined advances in technology, from the invention of the internet to the decoding of the human genome, as well as social and environmental pressures, such as climate change and the refugee crisis, are causing the very ground beneath our feet to shift.
One thing all of these changes have in common: they have come about as a result of change, and they have created additional explosions of change. Change begets change. And we have to figure out a way to keep up.
To survive the tumult, organisations and individuals will need to adopt the sort of strategic thinking that allows them to change and adapt in unprecedented ways.
A great paradox of our time is that change itself is changing. The future is becoming less and less predictable based on what is already known, or on what has happened in the past.
As this happens, nothing is sacred, not even century-old venerable institutions seem invulnerable to change.
The business models of the past were not built to be adaptable, but adaptability and agility are crucial for survival today. This is the contradiction that lies at the heart of most modern-day businesses, and is a problem that managers and leaders need to grapple with and solve.
Hamel, a management expert and founder of international management consulting firm, Strategos, says this of change in his book What Matters Now: “The only thing that can be safely predicted is that sometime soon, your organisation will be challenged to change in ways for which it has no precedent. Your company will either adapt or falter; rethink its core assumptions or fumble.”
That change can bring opportunity as well as disaster is quite commonly understood, but whether organisations will innovate or crumble when faced with inevitable change depends on their capacity for adaptation.
Today, they need to adapt more quickly than they have ever done before.
The problem is, as Hamel writes: “Those early management pioneers, a hundred years ago, set out to build companies that were disciplined, not resilient. They understood that efficiency comes from well-mapped business models and routine.
“Adaptability, on the other hand, demands a willingness to occasionally abandon these routines — and in most organisations, there are few incentives to do so. That’s why change tends to come in only two varieties: the trivial and the traumatic. Review the history of the average corporation and what can be seen is long periods of incremental fiddling, punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change.”
But it seems like a great waste for an organisation to run into a crisis that it cannot manage and lose billions of rand in market value before it gets serious about change. A much better approach for those companies looking to future competitiveness would be to get changeready. As Hamel writes in the book: “A turnaround is a poor substitute for timely transformation. That’s why we need to change the way we change.”
AND how do we change the way we change? It starts with revisiting and reorienting management and leadership skills towards how to make relevant change happen. All those careful systems, models, and routines perfected more than 100 years ago, need to go.
Managers today need to unlearn the lessons of the past and discover a new range of critical skills to stock a new strategy toolbox that allows them to engage others in conversation for change.
As it stands, the traditional strategy toolbox will not allow organisations to change the way they change.
Too often, present-day corporate conversations for change are missing one critical component: the psychology of strategy. This is the one single component that determines how leaders go about managing change.
Typically, business analysis tends to be the primary driver for making strategic choices, instead of a deeper understanding of human behaviour — again this means throwing out the routines that organisations are most comfortable with.
Organisations, when making decisions, still rely most heavily on quantitative parameters — the business case, for instance, because it supposedly offers a measure of certainty to decision-making about some future position that is inherently uncertain.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with business analysis or business case development — these are essential tools for the GM’s toolbox — but thought leaders must be willing to explore further whether they can get more effective results from a deeper understanding of human behaviour.
This is something most organisations remain uncomfortable with, because it requires an understanding of the personalities and behaviour preferences of those who are integral to organisational success and the major influencers of strategic decision-making: both the people in the organisation as well as the customers and stakeholders.
This takes hard work and time to develop. But it is this kind of multifaceted approach to tackling the complexities of management, leadership and change that will allow organisations to charter the uncertain territories of change.
JOHN Kotter, an authority on leadership and change, a best-selling author, and Harvard professor, offers some insights on making change happen.
He emphasises the power of bringing about desired change by attending to how people may be feeling — which he suggests is even more telling than how these very same people may be thinking about the new behaviours expected of them for change.
Kotter goes so far as to assert that the core of a new way of dealing with change is tuning into the hearts and minds — in that order — of those most affected by, and most able to bring about, change.
He suggests that by aiming to change how people feel and by role-modelling a desired behaviour, organisations become even more effective in making change happen than if they relied only on applying analysis and logic in an attempt to persuade others to think and, as a result, behave differently.
In other words, it is the ability and effectiveness of general management and leadership to place the human dimension of their organisation and their organisational culture at the forefront of change in a way that gives them the greatest influence over strategic change.
To optimise strategic alignment in an ever-changing world, leaders must be ready to adapt their personal style and focus to ensure that the dominant organisational culture and current strategy are aligned optimally with the demands of the market place.
A new approach to change must begin with a willingness to explore the relationships between general management and leadership, leadership and behaviour, strategy and innovation, and, ultimately, strategy and change.
It is only when leaders understand how important the connectivity of these elements are, that they can hope to change the way they change and build organisational resilience that will allow their organisations to stand strong when faced with wave after wave of uncertainty and change.
Sieff is the CEO of IC Growth Group and convenes a course on strategic thinking and execution for growth at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business.
That change can bring opportunity as well as disaster is quite commonly understood, but whether organisations will innovate or crumble when faced with inevitable change depends on their capacity to adapt