Hair On Fire

“The pandemic accelerated 3 interrelated transformations: #1 The development of new business models. #2 The adoption digital technologies and #3 The implementation of new ways of working”*. Even before the pandemic things were changing and now everyone’s hair is on fire!

With this recent succession of shocks, it’s normal to want things to go back to the way they were. Companies have understandably gotten caught up in traditional, linear, non-disruptive thinking and are attending to their immediate concerns. However, companies that ignore these three major transformation or fail to adapt quickly enough to them, risk becoming obsolete. Responding to these signals is not easy.

In the past, organizations needed to focus on process and reliability to achieve scale. They used to be able to differentiate themselves by reaching peak efficiency and by responding to the voice of the customer to retain their core value. As a result the infrastructure we run on today was built with a fundamentally different set of assumptions from what is required now for success.

 The ability to be adaptive was not a part of those assumptions; it is not a capability many organization are mature in … YET.

Today, we need a new scaffolding. Organizational cultures exist to align effort, engender shared “sense making”, increase predictability and to encode organizational lessons about what does and does not work. Culture change is what moves organizations to a new way of doing business; one that is more adaptive while retaining the strength that was built before.

Culture happens no matter what. Proactively get in front of it and create a culture that points your organization towards the kinds of values, mindsets and behaviors that keep your company adaptive in these trying times.

*Forbes, 10 Examples of How COVID-19 Forced Business Transformation, Blake Morgan