|
Teachings from
Tao Te Chin by
Lao
Tzu |
|
Men are born soft and supple; dead, they
are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant; dead,
they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a
disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. |
|
Three
Major Stages of Organizational
Evolution1 |
-
Bureaucratic:
strategy is not emphasized; hierarchical structures; linear focus;
dehumanized
-
Complex:
quantitative strategy; laterally complex structures; bifurcated,
conflicting focus; limitations of workforce performance
-
Adaptive: visionary, human
strategy, simpler in context structure; work/family integration
systems; capability and efficacy of workforce
|
|
Building in Adaptiveness at Three Level |
-
Strategies
-
Organizations
-
Operations
|
|
Creating a Questioning
Organization3 |
-
As a leader,
ask many fundamental questions
-
Encourage everyone ask how
things could be done differently, and how things could be made
better
-
Instill a questioning attitude.
Ensure that everyone understands the
vision and
goals of the enterprise,
that
people are empowered to achieve, and that they know they have to
question every rule and assumption, every established way
of doing things if they are going to initiate creative changes that
the organization needs.
|
|
Why Adaptive Organization?
In
today's world
characterized by rapid unpredictable change and volatility, the sustainable
ability to change is much more important than the ability to create change
in the first place. Companies, like any living organism, must become
learning organizations that change and adapt to suit their changing
business environment.
For truly adaptive firms, a rapidly changing
environment becomes a
strategic advantage. In a sense-and-respond organization, leaders use
information technology
and fundamentally new approaches to management and organization to respond
better and more quickly to customers and fast-changing conditions in the
marketplace and economy at large.5
Surprise
To Win: 3 Strategies
3Ss of Winning in Business
Jack Welch's 5 Strategic Questions
The New-Generation Adaptive
Organization
Adaptive organization is a new
third-stage organization based upon
radically new logics of content, configuration, and change based on human
capabilities rather than limitations. The three new logics for adaptive
organizations include:
-
New logic of content:
requires that concepts of
strategy,
structure, and systems are broadened to include a greater emphasis on
human values, goals, capabilities, and efficacy.
-
New logic of configuration: specifies a new relationship among
strategy, structure, and systems that gives priority to supporting
workforce engagement and capability.
-
New logic of change: asserts that people seek meaning in work
through accomplishment and contribution to shared organization goals,
and specifies a top-down-bottom-up sequence of development activities.
Entrepreneurial
Organization
Entrepreneurial organization promotes
entrepreneurial
activity adapting structure, management, and processes accordingly in order
to gain the required agility,
speed,
creativity and drive to act profitably upon specific
opportunities.1
8 Key Entrepreneurial Questions
Entrepreneurial
Leader: 4 Specific Attributes
There are two phases in
developing an entrepreneurial workplace. Phase I creates the environment
necessary to support and encourage it. Phase II is building your staff's
entrepreneurial skills...
More
Flat Organizational
Structure
When organizations get large, they become slow, awkward, unmanageable,
inflexible, and difficult to focus. They distance people from each other,
and consume more energy than they release. Innovation-friendly organizations
are
flat and participative. They divisionalize to
sustain innovation,
flexibility and
customer intimacy.
Division is a
business unit
having a clear set of customers and competitors. A division can be
independently planned for within the organization and has profit and loss
responsibility...
More
Ask Searching Questions
Don't ask one or two questions and then rush straight towards a solution.
With an incomplete understanding of the problem it is very easy to jump to
wrong conclusions.
Ask open-ended questions that elicit a wide rage of answers:
More
Case in Point
BP
Finding an Equilibrium
between Chaos and Order
To evolve
BP into
an adaptive organization, one that would be better able to survive and
prosper in today's uncertain and turbulent times, John Browne decided to
raise the creative tension. He established the preconditions necessary
for creating such tension and deliberately moved the organization to a
situation that was at the edge of chaos. That is, the point at which a
natural equilibrium is found between
chaos
and order, comparable to the conditions in the evolving natural world...
More
Case in Point
Silicon
Valley Firms
"In contrast to traditional firms
where organizational structure defines the framework within which work
occurs, Valley firms use the work to define organization's structure."6
These structures are best described as flat, flexible, permeable, and fluid.
"Reorganization is a way of life in the Silicon Valley. Organizations mimic
nature's most adaptive organisms as they constantly reformulate themselves
to meet the latest challenge."...
More |
