– shifting the paradigm to achieve transformative execution
Most organisations today are challenged by the looming threat of disruption and face an unprecedented rate of change, and therefore it’s safe to say that we operate in a highly complex and unpredictable world.
A system theorist would tell us that in a complex system, due to its diverse components operating at multiple levels (FutureLearn, 2019), we cannot control outcomes or solve problems, they can only be managed. Therefore, we are always in a relationship with a complex system. We will come back to the significance of this notion, shortly.
A complicated system, on the other hand, is highly predictable and dependable due to the causal (cause and effect) relationship of the components in the system. Therefore, outcomes can be controlled, and problems can always be fixed in a complicated system, as long as there is sufficient understanding of the system.
Now, this is good news and music to the human ear. The desire to control outcomes and our environment in order to stay safe is deeply embedded in our unconscious from millions of years of evolutionary programming (see one of our previous articles on the Negativity Bias for more info https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/contributiondna-carl-johan-axelsson). Add to this the profound influence, even to this date, on organisational development from authors such as A. J. P. Taylor, the creator of Scientific Management, also known as ‘Taylorism’.
Taylor was on a relentless quest to develop a scientific process that would deliver maximum efficiency. Basically, the idea is to maximise output from resources (these days we sometimes refer to them as people) through automation, repetition, and by applying rigours control and compliance mechanisms. This approach makes absolute sense if you’re dealing with a complicated system as it’s then possible, with high probability, to predict the output based on the input.
However, a Control & Compliance approach is highly ineffective when we’re dealing with a complex system. Why? Because we’re trying to solve a problem using a complicated system approach in a highly complex system, it just doesn’t work (Dignan, 2018). For organisations, this systems confusion is highly problematic and increasingly so as the environment is exponentially becoming more disruptive, i.e., increasingly complex, and the gap widens even further until it reaches its tipping point. Therefore, it’s no surprise that fifty-two per cent (52%) of all the S&P500 companies since 2000 have either gone bankrupt, been acquired, or ceased to exist as a result of digital disruption (HBR, 2017).
Many organisations have identified the urgent need to change their culture and become more adaptive. Hence, the current emphasis on investing heavily in transformation and cultural change programs. However, despite their best efforts, they are often only able to achieve marginal improvements and temporary change. Here’s the trick; it’s not possible to design a new culture and expect it to be successfully ‘implemented’.
Why? Well, culture is only a bi-product, or an outcome, of consistent behaviours over time (Rework, 2018). Hence, to change the culture, we need to change the underlying behaviours, and this is only possible if we also change the conclusions that inform such behaviours. This is where, in our view, most organisations fall short; they try to change the culture without closely examining and dismantling the conclusions that are no longer valid and/or no longer serves them.
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” – Peter Drucker
This becomes evident when you look beyond the shiny surface of the fashionable agile workspaces, daily scrum meetings, team retrospectives, and we look at the underlying structures, policies, reward systems, and leadership paradigms, we see that many organisations are still heavily invested in a Control & Compliance paradigm. It’s an artefact of Taylorism and it relies on a complicated system approach, geared towards maximising efficiency. However, given the level of uncertainty and complexity in today’s operating environment, one could argue that a complex system approach, based on Trust & Autonomy, is a much better bit for such an environment.
We’re not suggesting that one system is right or better, nor are we saying that they are binary systems. Instead, Control & Compliance and Trust & Autonomy sit on a continuum. Where organisations are on this continuum is based on their maturity and they will either evolve, based on the changing conditions in their environment, or they will eventually be eliminated through the process of natural selection as other organisations will be a better fit for that particular environment.
So coming back to the significance of relationships that we alluded to at the beginning of this article. In fact, one of the critical success factors of a highly adaptive organisation is their ability to be in a healthy relationship with their environment. Rather than trying to control the environment, they are exceptional at sensing (picking up on signals) and responding (executing) to changing circumstances in their operating environment. In other words, rather than applying a traditional top-down and directive approach where strategy is cascaded through tightly governed implementation, teams evolve the strategy by adapting the execution based on the current state of the operating environment.
However, for any organisation to maintain strong relationships with the environment they predominantly need to take a trust & autonomy system approach with the emphasis on removing unnecessary control mechanisms (i.e., policies and procedures) and building a culture of trust, displayed through leadership and teamwork. Therefore, the first step towards becoming truly adaptive is to examine the validity of closely held assumptions and to dismantle outdated conclusions to create an enabling organisational ‘playing field’.
