The power of pull

Do the organizations of the 21st century sit on a melting iceberg, oblivious to the need for change? Do the organizations of the 21st century sit on a melting iceberg, oblivious to the need for change?
“ The only thing that does not change is change itself”, so goes that paradox that firmly expresses that there will always be change and change is a continuous process. For a 21st century organization, change is imperative in order to survive in the highly competitive business environment that seems to continually become competitive in every aspect. From the rapidly changing technologies, the increased presence of smaller to mid sized organizations in the global arena due to the internet presence, to the manner in which consumers digitally get access to goods and services that is different from yester years, indeed the 21st century organization is sitting on “ melting iceberg”, oblivious of the urgency needed to make changes to the new business model that would ensure their survival.
Hagel, Brown, and Davison (2010) have analyzed the paradigm shift that has been occurring in the world of business over the past decades, especially the past two decades. Indeed, the current business environment is characterized with endless stream of knowledge, interconnected workforce, blurred borders with increased global movement of knowledge, talent and capital, and a shift in power balance, where the power has moved from corporations to the consumers, and employees have also have power without necessarily being in trade unions. All these changes have mainly been due to changes in technology and liberalization of the business world. Organizations are increasing finding newer ways to attract, retain and develop talent, even as employees’ priorities and motivations change with changes in generations. It is only in this new business environment that you find employees working as a virtual team or a big percentage of an organizations employees working from home. It is in this business environment that sales made online for a given business may by far exceed offline sales.
However, despite these quite clearly notable changes, most organizations, especially those that have existed for a long time, are still focused on doing things the way they have always done. They still hold on to the old culture oblivious of the changing business landscape. Like the penguins in Kotter and Rathgeber (2005) work, the organizations are complacent in the way things have always been done, and are unaware that their iceberg is melting. Newer emerging 21st century organizations are coming up and taking advantage of the shift and surpassing older established organizations in business performance. Such include the Amazon which in only a few years has reigned in online sales than other older retail companies. In fact other organizations such as Face book have flourished in this new business environment, almost making other businesses in physical mail obsolete, while revenue realized from phone calls have dropped as people tweet and text message.
We are in the centre of a disparity of huge change: whether it’s a shift from magnetic poles to earthquakes, or the way volcanoes shifted to tsunamis. When top businesses and nations appear to be left behind in their dominant sectors, it is evident that there is no chance of maintaining a status quo in today’s ever changing environment.
In order to survive in this scenario, organizations need to develop strategies to effectively manage unanticipated crisis, challenges and events. Survival of businesses requires that the procedures followed by organizational leaders to learn and convey operational knowledge should be as quick to overcome the speed of environmental change. So the first step towards change management has to be initiated by the organizational leaders and then transcended to all the levels. For this purpose the best strategy to be adopted is continuously adapting to change and matching its frequency with organizational developments, through keeping in an eye on ways the survival in such turbulences can be maintained.
For organizations to becoming anxious towards competition is as short-ranged solution as dinosaurs pegged their endurance on competing with amphibians. The dinosaurs despite being mighty lost the battle because they couldn’t manage to cope with the changes occurring in their environment. To be quick in response is essential for managing an organization in such a tremendously changing environment. Shorter duration to respond and Agility are vital to survival and this requires companies to have less capital so that its allocation and achievement of constant rate of return may be possible in all scenarios. So the challenge is not limited to capturing more market and being competitive but to be able to survive and adapt in accordance with the environmental change.
The key to victory in an instance of systematic and deep change resides in focusing on the response time along with the challenge encountered. In a dynamic business environment, each organizational level must perceive its condition as a challenge, and not confining to rigid compliance guidelines but developing creative ways to respond through effective change management. The main problem in executing organizational change lies with the nature of human resources that requires things to go as they used to be. So in order to effectively implement change, the organizational leaders must inspire the human resource and help them in understanding the need to change. From simplest to the most difficult, change can be classified into four echelons which are
Knowledge.
Attitude
Individual change
Group change
It is easy to change the knowledge but changing attitudes is quite difficult. Although people may understand and grasp the need to change, still they avoid it. So the next level is to change the behavior at individual level and the last most difficult is to let it be inspired by a whole group.
In order to implement change process, the change phases are considered crucial to be known. These are.
a. Denial: As a change occurs, our natural response is a denial, as if nothing has happened.
b. Negotiation and Bargaining: Even though we try to admit change but at the same time we start bargaining as the change occurred is not good enough.
c. Frustration: Upon realization of the fact that something has happened that shouldn’t have had happened, we start getting frustrated on our incapability to control externalities causing such a situation.
So in order to cope with such a situation on should follow the following steps to mange change.
a. Accept: First of all the denial should be avoided and this can be done by accepting the change. Once accepted one can start managing it.
b. Communicate: Once accepted the reality, one may start discussing it with colleague, friends and associates. It will help in the generation of various ideas to handle the change.
c. Plan: For effective and efficient management, planning is crucial. So a well thought plan is required for efficient change management and for efficient implementation the plan should be communicated at all levels.
For organizations to effectively make changes in the current business environment, it is imperative that it changes its culture to be more responsive to innovation, and changing business goals and strategies that give the business a competitive advantage. Phillips (2012) indeed acknowledges that the culture may potentially be the biggest barrier to change and innovation. Unless an organization shifts from a culture of compliance to one of commitment and engagement, and from a rigid culture to one that is open to ideas, realizing strategic change to match the changing business environment may prove to be challenging. As an event planner and finance executive, I have noted that social media and enterprise cloud computing are the new changing interphases that are heavily influencing my organization’s pull tactic due to their democratizing influence.
Individuals in the organizations who are able to effectively apply these tools are those who are impacting the rapidity of innovation in the organization and are elevating the organization to improved performance. Though changes continually take place in the organization, in my role in relationship building such as that of Buddy or Alice in the penguin fable, to steer my tem towards achievable changes and targets.
Hence it can be said that change is inevitable in the modern age and companies denying it are considered to be sitting on a melting iceberg and the sooner they realize this fact the better it will be for them. Or else they may be eliminated from the business landscape like the dinosaurs. In order to cope with changing business world, organizational leadership must play its part and construct strategies for adaptation. The change management at all levels and creative thinking will help the companies to focus on the ways to counter the changing business scenarios. This will help them in their survival through all seasons (Tulsian, 2002).
References
Hagel, J., Brown, J. S., and Davison, L. (2010). The power of pull: How small moves, smartly made can set big things in motion. New York, NY: Basic Books
Kotter, J. & Rathgeber, H. (2005). Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding under Any Conditions. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
Phillips, J. (2012, July 20). Culture – A Powerful Innovation Barrier. Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://innovateonpurpose. blogspot. com/2012/07/culture-powerful-innovation-barrier. html
Tulsian. (2002). Business Organisation and Management. Pearson Education India.