Today’s global economy is one of rapid transformation, disruption, and unpredictability. New technologies, shifting business models, changing consumer behavior, and geopolitical dynamics create tremendous pressure for companies to adapt faster than ever before. Organizations must be nimble and adaptive to succeed in this new environment. The old way of doing business—with its siloed organizational structures, departmental hierarchies, and command-and-control leadership styles—is no longer effective in today’s dynamic environment. In order to thrive in this new world, businesses need a modern set of operating principles that will empower them to move quickly while maintaining control; to think more creatively while tackling problems from different angles; and to partner more proactively with suppliers while also retaining the ability to pivot on a dime if necessary.
Organizational Agility
A company’s agility refers to its ability to respond quickly to change. Achieving agility requires bringing together people, processes, and technology in ways that enable organizations to assess problems quickly and devise solutions to them. Businesses today are dealing with new business models, shifting customer preferences, and new technologies that require a significant change in the way they operate. Successful companies are those that are able to make the necessary changes quickly, without sacrificing operational effectiveness. Agility is a hallmark of successful organizations, and it is a key capability that is ever more critical in this new world. Organizational agility is dependent on having the right organizational structure, decision-making processes, and leadership style in place.
Culture of Creativity
A business’s ability to create value for customers and its shareholders is directly tied to its ability to generate novel ideas. As the pace of change quickens, creativity becomes an increasingly important business asset. This is not surprising, since the ability to generate ideas that are original, useful, and appropriate to the situation is central to success. It is, in fact, the basis for competitive advantage. Creativity is a combination of divergent thinking—thinking about a problem in different ways—and convergent thinking—bringing all the possible solutions together to arrive at one solution. A culture of creativity is one in which employees are encouraged to explore new ideas, experiment with different ways of doing things, and take calculated risks when needed. Such an environment is important not only because it promotes creativity itself but also because it enables all the other elements of an agile and adaptive organization.
Partnering Agility
Partnering agility is a company’s ability to forge successful partnerships with vendors, suppliers, and other organizations within and outside the company. Successful partnering requires organizations to know how to select and engage partners that are critical to their success, as well as how to build strong, sustainable relationships with them. This is particularly important in today’s environment of distributed innovation, in which companies are increasingly collaborating with smaller firms and other large organizations to develop new products and services that meet customers’ evolving needs. Successful partnering is based on the ability to choose the right partners, have the right expectations of them, and work together to achieve mutually beneficial results.
Continuous Improvement
A company’s ability to continuously improve its operations and processes is important for several reasons. First, it enables a company to always do better and meet the demands of customers and stakeholders. Second, it drives innovation by always seeking to find the best way to do things. And third, it provides a way for employees to voice their creative problem-solving ideas and contributions to the organization. Companies that want to become more agile and adaptable must adopt a continuous improvement mindset. This requires a change in how business leaders think about their organizations and a new set of operating principles that emphasize continuous improvement as a core value.
Bottom-line Thinking
Businesses must always be focused on the bottom line. That doesn’t mean, however, that they should focus exclusively on the financial results of their operations. Rather, they must be focused on delivering value to customers, engaging employees, and making sure the organization is meeting its strategic objectives. That said, success in these areas drives financial results, so a company must always be focused on the bottom line and use that as a way of measuring its progress. A company’s leadership must always be thinking about the business from a strategic perspective. They must be asking questions such as, “Are we solving the right customer problems?”, “Are we solving them in the best way?”, and “If not, what changes do we need to make?”. And they must be thinking about their company’s financial results as a way to measure the progress they are making toward achieving those objectives.
The Bottom Line
Businesses today operate in a hyper-competitive environment where speed, agility, and innovation are critical. The global courier company, UPS used to use the tagline “Moving at the Speed of Business”, which was among my favorites, because that phrase commanded a real-world challenge; we are here for you when you need us no matter your enterprise pace, wherever, whenever. They must be able to transform their organizations to meet these challenges. They must also be able to attract and retain the best members of their teams, who want to work in environments where they can thrive and be creative. This requires companies to move away from the traditional hierarchical organizational model, which is designed to control employees, and replace it with an empowered model that leverages employees’ skills, creativity, and passion. In this new environment, success will go to those companies that have the ability to change quickly and seamlessly, while keeping everyone on the team focused on delivering value to the customer.
~ Christopher Harriman, President and CEO - Brightside Industries Group, LLC
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