Technology Presents Massive Opportunities and Threats

Technology and the digital age presents both massive opportunities and threats and therefore a huge dilemma for many established organisations and their leaders.  On the one hand it will impact on business as usual. What will it mean for customers and existing competitors, never mind those new competitors that we cannot yet see who will be enabled by it? And then there is the issue of our own employees. Technology is a relatively new and fast (the fastest?) growing sector in its own right.  That in itself is impacting upon the ability of many sectors and established organisations to recruit the kind of people they need to stay on top. It therefore has huge implications for how we do business, and it alters the whole competitive landscape, one which is changing at an ever quickening pace.

My interest has been growing for some time but this blog was prompted by a series of timely conversations and reading Brian Solis’s blog entitled “2012: The Year for Digital Darwinism”.  Charles Darwin famously shocked the established view in 1859 by publishing “On The Origin of Species” in which he provided his theory of evolution.  He explored five themes – I paraphrase and simplify these shamelessly here to make my later points:

• probability and chance (there is no plan set in stone as to how species evolve)
• selection (strongest and fittest survive)
• adaptation (we are descended from less biologically sophisticated creatures)
• the tempo and mode of change  (i.e. the rate at which change happens and what precipitates it)
• essentialism versus nominalism (the idea of change happening at the level of a species versus individual adaptation)

The “Digital Darwinism” referred to by Solis therefore refers to the increasing rate of change being precipitated by technological advances in the context of business.

Future Strategy

My question to business leaders is whether this seemingly inevitable trend is being a) acknowledged and b) built into the future strategy of established businesses and sectors.  New entrants to any sector can be easily seen to utilise technology to reduce their operating costs and increase their global reach making them at the same time much more profitable and “scalable”.

As an organisation design specialist with a background in marketing,  I frequently talk with business leaders about what performance really means, in the context of their business.   How do they achieve high performance through their staff?

For some performance is about growth and the ensuing strategies to achieve that (mergers, acquisitions, diversification), for another group it is “simply” about survival – so considerations around divesting, retrenching to core business activities, downsizing and outsourcing in order to be profitable and prepare for an uncertain future.  For this second group, the key to long term survival is recognising where future threats and opportunities will come from, and aligning the organisation (and hence people) to deal with these.

“…digital Darwinism threatens rigid and traditional practices everywhere. Regardless of industry, digital Darwinism is a phenomenon when technology and society evolve faster than the ability to adapt.   Indeed this is a time when organisations will invest in change to better adapt to emerging market opportunities, to more successfully engage with customers, employees and stakeholders, rethink systems and processes, and ultimately revive the company’s vision, mission and purpose. The result is an adaptive culture that signals an end to business as usual.”

 Brian Solis 20 January 2012

Wow! Did you catch that? – Essentially this short extract captures all the elements that I believe top executives should acknowledge as essential to high performance.  One aspect of an inevitable future – namely the inexorable rise in importance in technology in all our lives, will have a huge impact on organisations’ business models.  Failure to deal with this “threat” or “opportunity”, could therefore mean extinction.

Who’s Next?

In the same week we saw Kodak go to the wall, with its demise attributed to digital technology,  I was discussing the impact of legal reforms on traditional bricks and mortar based law firms.  So called “Tesco Law” is likely to lead to a number of new entrants to the UK market – Alternative Business Structures (ABS’s).  These ABS’s will be businesses owned by non lawyers with increased access to finance through the markets, to provide legal services.  Initially the commodity type aspects of law, like conveyancing and wills, seem the likely starting point as one can see these realistically being delivered through the web or phone, as customers do now with insurance products and banking.  This new breed of legal service will be able to cut their costs by employing non-lawyers, overseen by a trained legal person.  They won’t require the same large, city centre offices. They won’t necessarily offer the charge- by-the- hour services of a lawyer, they can automate and provide services 24/7 via the web and thereby increase their reach to many more customers, etc. etc.  Should the large law firms be worried? I think so. Are they? – I’m not sure.

As with any industry, well established ways of working and thinking can lead to a culture of rigidity and complacency.  I don’t only include some legal firms in this analysis; it has led to the obsolescence of many types of operation and working practices over the last thirty years and this trend will only accelerate, largely due to technology. One wonders who will be next?

This is a time for organisations to realise that remaining rigid and fixed in their current ways of working means potentially serious future threats.  Changing how organisations operate comes down to shifting the culture and this means being proactive in ensuring that leaders and employees alike, understand what the future means.

In a world where the brightest and the best were lured into the law, then financial services, by the prospect of fat salaries and large bonuses, the trends are that they are now flocking to technology firms like Amazon and Google, who are amongst the fastest growing global companies. The new language of commerce is programming languages where writing your own app, game or software programme is like writing your own ticket to success.

Determining a strategy to meet these challenges successfully (i.e. performing) means truly understanding the context and reality of what is coming.

Are your current generation of leaders up to that task?

It means checking the vision, mission and values in the light of the current reality as well as maintaining heightened awareness as to whether employees are aligned AND engaged with them.

Now is the right time to review strategies, develop and implement methods that prepare employees for the changes they will inevitably have to make. Indeed, in many organisations, staff may well be well ahead of you.  In short it is a time for engagement at all levels – with customers, stakeholders and shareholders, leaders and employees.  It is a time for alignment – internally and to the external environment.

Liz Moody

We know from our extensive experience of working with leaders and managers that they spend their time, too often on things that reduce their effectiveness.  Many things could increase their efficiency including delegating and empowering staff but doing this often involved stopping doing other things.

Take time out

So how is it we get ourselves into these poor working habits?  Many managers will seek to blame the organisation – its culture and the current climate. They clearly feel that they have very little choice in how they change things and this increases an already pressure building situation at work.

As employees we often end up succumbing to “time thieves”. Those endless, fruitless meetings; the email tag; unplanned phone calls and visits and so on.  Even if we comply with every tip on good time management, there still doesn’t seem to be any guarantee that we will ever get the opportunity to exercise our creativity by designing and improving elegant solutions to complex issues.  The fact is, brainwaves and light bulb moments rarely happen in the 9 to 5 hurly burly of the office.

More Headspace

Overwhelmingly, the managers we speak to relish the opportunity that workshops and coaching present to step back from the workplace and their staff, and meet with others either from other areas of the organisation or external to it.
Why?

• Managers, like many employees are so busy working with their heads down that they seldom take time to reflect, evaluate or consider how things could be more effective

• Organisations can become so task focused that their employees spend little time recognising the ineffective habits of how they and their teams work, often reacting to the stimulus around them in an inefficient way, rather than responding in a more considered way

• Our best ideas and creativity rarely arise in conditions of stress – and our workplaces are becoming increasingly stressful for staff and managers from whom more is expected from less.  TIME to reflect or appreciate what is going on around us is needed to figure out ways to make things work better in the future.

Deliberately getting away from everyday situations, break time chats with colleagues serve as useful ways of slowing down for a while. Time to address relevant issues, focus without interruption on issues that are nagging at you is not time wasted.

So what advice should we be giving managers and staff?  Slow down, focus on the present and reflect on what is working for you and what is not.

A recent workshop I attended on Mindfulness in the Workplace highlighted a growing number of large employers who are introducing meditation practices to help increase resilience to stressful situations, improve focus and concentration, support creativity and innovation. They are evaluating the impact of these interventions on decision making, memory, emotional intelligence, cognitive flexibility, productivity and employee satisfaction and engagement.  We have begun to investigate its effectiveness in safety and accident prevention.  Watch this space for more information coming soon.

Formality – The Enemy of Innovation?

Lose Control

So how do organisations become agile and flexible enough to release their potential?  Arguably, it could be through their culture.  The answer may lie in enabling the opposite of what decades of management practice have encouraged – control.  As human beings we are programmed to look for form, create order from chaos, structure situations, define and even encourage engagement!

We dislike uncertainty, so we constantly look for patterns and meaning as a way of dealing with ambiguity. Hence in business we have come to regard building models, making correlations and measures as a way of bringing predictability to our work.  But these don’t always help us in turbulent times and it can be argued that they are the antithesis of the behaviour that gives rise to innovation.  In fact, models and obsessive measurement are often the hallmarks of the bureaucracies and behemoths that entrepreneurs spurn and successful start-up ventures reject.  New technology has led to disruption in many sectors, and means that change is happening at  a quickening pace.

It is people and not technology who have the capacity to innovate

In tough economic times, it could be said that a number of business functions, if not all, have a role in innovation.  However HR and marketing professionals tend to be much better at facilitating and managing planned change compared to opportunistic or the spontaneous kind of change needed when there is no time for detailed forecasting and planning.  Creating a culture that encourages communication of new ideas, releases new initiatives to happen quickly requires different, adaptive ways of thinking and working. Employees require freedom, opportunities, trust, encouragement and support to enable innovation. Furthermore they need to see evidence of it all around them in the attitudes and behaviours of managers and leaders throughout the organisation and a willingness to demonstrate and facilitate their intention to change.

For example, looking at examples of successful start-up organisations, or renowned innovative brands (e.g. Gore) it is clear that some working environments and conditions lend themselves much better to spontaneity and innovation than others.

Co-location in an open plan space contributes to ease of communication between key roles as do flatter structures that take out layers of decision making. Even the more relaxed conditions contributed by having a radio on may well stimulate the kind of conversations and ideas that spark different ways of thinking. Spaces and places to play around with ideas – writing or drawing on flip charts and whiteboards and whitewalls rather than the stiff rules that forbid posters, stickies on the paintwork, and working in virtual silence etc.

Rules send a clear signal  that order and image, individual achievement rather than collaboration, are more highly valued than spontaneity.  Without the right level of disorder ideas are stifled at birth rather than stimulated.

People and Culture

During the recession HR have come to the forefront of business strategy, in the process becoming adept at implementing strategies for survival.  Their innovation and evolution in areas like contracting – zero hours, temporary employment, outsourcing etc. have increased flexibility in the workplace. While they may not be popular with some employees or their representatives, they do also present opportunitiesand they may, in fact, offer a key to innovation.  Most shrewd organisations have not simply sought to reduce head count for easy, immediate savings. They have recognised and sought to retain vital knowledge, as well as potential, in their organisation. Innovation is not the sole preserve of either the longest serving or the newest recruit.  Innovation is about attitude, irrespective of time served, and a mix of valuable skills and knowledge, applied with fresh thinking. In a culture ‘unencumbered’ by history and add in experience and voila! You have a potentially powerful mix.

Innovation is often about right idea, right place, right time, right circumstances or any combination thereof.

Innovation Skills

Good facilitation, engagement and enabling skills are required to build a picture of what is required.  You need to build skills in questioning and listening, encouraging and leading new ways of thinking about solutions, rather than getting fixated by reductive ways of analysing problems and challenges.

Encouraging diversity and rewarding challenge and suggestions are behaviours recognised as good signs of true employee engagement.  Challenges after all are often signals that people care, and signs of potential solutions.  Actively seeking and listening to feedback and a willingness to experiment, take risks, test and measure impact are all behaviours and skills that can be trained and encouraged – or if they are missing, need to be recruited in to build innovation into a culture.

Neontics works with leaders, managers and their teams to introduce innovation to how they think and work to create a higher performance culture. Contact liz@eneontics.com for more details.