The Characteristics of Nimble Execution
In a previous post, I defined a nimble organization as one that has a sustained ability to quickly and effectively respond to the demands of change while continually delivering high performance. Gaining and sustaining nimbleness is not easily or casually achieved. To fully leverage its potential requires commitment and tenacity from the very top of an organization. This begins when members of the Board (or equivalent strategic sanctioning body) and senior leadership declare their deeply held belief that nimble execution is a vital strategic advantage. This conviction must then be translated into two levels of intention: more
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The Contained Slide
In my last post, I talked about The Zone, that place where dysfunctional symptoms form and begin to have an adverse impact on productivity, quality, and safety. This is where an organization can learn to operate in a “contained slide”—functioning just short of losing full control, yet able to squeeze the optimum speed and agility from its reservoir of adaptation resources.
Competitive ice skaters must contend with pushing the limits of their speed when going around corners as well as the traction that occurs between the blade on their skate and the surface of the ice. There is an optimum point when pressing this boundary that produces what can best be described as a contained slide. This is when skaters rely on their abilities to read the subtle information gained from their senses and experience to accelerate or slow down so they only briefly lose their balance (chaos), but then quickly regain it (order). Just as the speed begins to exceed a skater’s ability to regulate further action, he or she more
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Between Bedlam and Calm—The Nimble Zone
In my last post, I described nimble organizations as those with a sustained ability to quickly and effectively respond to the demands of change while delivering high performance. Constrained organizations, on the other hand, constantly inhibit their own efforts to implement change.
Today, clients struggle with perpetual unrest and ongoing change, and there is no terrain without vulnerability—only greater or lesser risk and liability. Constrained organizations see themselves as having to choose between two hazards: non-competitive order or hyper-unstable chaos. They fear that if they under-use their adaptation capacity, they won’t be able to keep pace with market demands that are growing increasingly dynamic and competitive. Yet, if they thrust more change on their people than they can effectively absorb, more
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How to Manage Capacity
There are two aspects to capacity management—its relationship to stability and uncertainty, and the measurement of its variables.
The Zone
Managing capacity involves:
- monitoring the supply of, and demand on, adaptation capacity, and, when necessary,
- making adjustments in order to operate in “The Zone” (a space for pursuing as much change as possible while minimizing the negative effects of future shock).
As I stated in the first post of this series, future shock occurs when the demands of change exceed a person’s or group’s capacity to properly deal with its implications. (This is reflected in their inability to maintain productivity, quality, and safety standards). At first glance, you might assume that future shock is something to avoid at all cost. However, that’s not what I’ve seen from leaders who consistently achieve their change objectives. more
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How Do People Learn to Adapt to Change?
Major change is triggered when people face a significant discrepancy between what they expected and what actually happens during change. People adjust to change, not by learning to like what is taking place, but by forming new expectations that can lead to success under the new conditions. At a personal level, three types of energy are required to make these adjustments in expectations: more
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©2010 Conner Partners, Inc.
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Future Shock: The Scourge of Organizational Change
“Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.” —Alvin Toffler
Toffler nailed it. Forty years ago, in his groundbreaking book of the same name, he coined the term ‘”future shock” to describe the various problems that arise when people deal with more change than they can metabolize. Like fingerprints or cornea signatures, each person has a threshold for dealing with change. Once past that boundary, any more change triggers the “shattering stress and disorientation” of future shock.
Toffler’s prediction of what could happen is an all-too-familiar reality for us today. A quick glance at any TV, Internet, or newspaper summary of current events provides ample evidence that we live in a world inundated with dramatic fluctuations and redefinitions of what we, until recently, thought was stable. The increases in the volume, momentum, and complexity of transitions we contend with surpasses anything we could have imagined only a few years ago. There is no longer any safe haven from ongoing turbulence and uncertainly. Everywhere we look, people are either in future shock or recovering from some degree of it.
Organizations Feel It Too
To keep up with customers and competition, organizations must react to external pressures for change, as well as accommodate their own desire to change. To a growing extent, the combination is overwhelming. In fact, it is precisely because the downside of change has become so prevalent and costly in recent years that our profession has grown as much as it has. more
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Are You Stuck?
“Most obstacles are imaginary; the rest are only temporary.” ~Scott Sorrel
We all get stuck sometimes…it’s part of the human experience. We know what we want to achieve and have a plan for doing it, but suddenly we’re faced with a challenge that mystifies us. The situation may involve a problem or opportunity, but the fact is, we don’t know how to resolve it given the present circumstances (or aren’t willing to because of certain implications). In other words, becoming unstuck isn’t about problems/opportunities—it’s about problems/opportunities with no clear way to address them.
There are as many ways to be stuck as there are aspects to our lives. We can become stuck with our spouse or kids, our friends, our careers or boss, our physical well-being, our spiritual development, etc. Anything of significance that we set out to accomplish can, and most likely will, become stuck at one time or another.
Professional change facilitators are not immune to being stuck. From time to time, even the most accomplished practitioners, applying the most capable execution methodologies, are unable to find a viable resolution to a particular more
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Use Mindset and Behavior Patterns to Your Advantage
(2) Comments
Once you understand that a specific mindset and its associated behaviors can either facilitate or impede success, you have a level of insight that can be truly invaluable to a sponsor who is less familiar with these kinds of change dynamics.
Mindsets are made up of frames of reference (the ways individuals make sense of situations) that lead to the formation of priorities (the relative importance of various options). Shared mindsets within an organization serve as the foundations of culture and ultimately lead to common patterns of behavior.
Successful change requires a specific mindset that is shared among key players as they perform their respective roles. This “success mindset” reflects the more
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