Shrinking the time… from recovery to growth

In our lifetime, it has never been more challenging for organisational leaders around the world to stay focused on recovery – especially when they are fighting off insolvency and making difficult decisions that are impacting the livelihoods of their people.

For the private and third sectors, leaders must go beyond planning for what’s next (getting operations running again) to identifying how to shrink the time from recovery to growth. Business leaders are under pressure to deliver shareholder value, so growth is a non-negotiable. For the third sector, a growth focus is important to raise the necessary funds to have a meaningful impact. Planning for this as early as possible will give the best chance of success.

But with the uncertainty ahead, what can organisations do now?

One route is to undertake scenario planning to try and predict what the future holds, and the organisational capabilities needed to succeed. However, with the speed of change and volatility today, scenarios are fluid – by the time action is taken, it is too late.

An alternative is for leaders to ensure their organisations can adapt at speed: to have the ability to respond quickly to changing conditions and pivot to a new course of action. This enables organisations to deal with a range of potential scenarios.

To reach this nirvana state of adapting at speed, the historic trend has been to turn to ‘Agile.’ Agile was born as a software development process that promoted adaptability – largely because the traditional approach of creating a perfect solution the first time didn’t keep up with the pace of change.

However, as Harvard Business Review’s June 2018 issue on Agile at Scale points out, there are large operational gaps by only focusing on Agile to accomplish things faster. Too many organisations are risk averse, struggling with bureaucracy and using command-control methods for teams that need to be autonomous.

So, we need to take a step back and look at organisational adaptability in a more complete way.

We have done research with 500 organisations across seven countries and identified the organisational capabilities needed to adapt at speed. This uncovered that organisations are broadly either solid, liquid or gaseous (bear with me for a minute) and this impacts how the entire organisation – from leaders to employee teams – is able to adapt to uncertainty.

  • When an organisation is solid, it is imprisoned by its structured processes and bureaucratic culture, and is slow to respond, resulting in lost opportunity and disengaged employees.
  • When an organisation is gaseous, it may be quick to respond, but lacks direction, consistency and focus, leaving customers and employees confused.
  • When an organisation is liquid, it uses continuous adaptability as a competitive weapon, and is always able to act fast and predict customer or stakeholder needs, with a clear purpose that empowers employees.

When a company is Liquid it embeds the four researched capabilities of Pioneering, Dialed-In, Agile and Transparent into its operations and culture.

The 4 capabilities of being Liquid:

So, how can organisations apply this practically?

The research enabled us to codify what each of these four Liquid capabilities looks like for the five factors of an organisation: Strategy and Business Planning; Leadership; Organisational Structure; Workflows and Accountabilities; and People and Capability – defining 20 characteristics for adapting at speed. Does this mean organisations now need to focus on all 20 characteristics? Well, yes and no.

YES, in that leaders need to understand the strengths and gaps of their functions against all 20, to gauge the ‘current state.’

NO, in that once leaders have a view of the ‘current state’ and have defined the areas to concentrate on, they can take targeted action. This means focusing on the most critical 3 – 5 characteristics to become more adaptable.

For example, Retail companies may need to have a more Dialed-In strategy and business planning process that is based on consumer insights; or be more Pioneering with their organisational structures, putting in place teams and processes responsible for innovating quickly. They may also need to have more Agile workflows and accountabilities to ensure they have the staffing capacity and processes to take advantage of increased short-term demand.

Whereas in the Pharmaceutical sector, organisations may need to improve patient-centricity by being more Dialed-In; refocusing role accountabilities to have shared goals, with increased cross-functional collaboration to break down siloes across the enterprise. They may also need to be more Pioneering to identify new value adding services for patients and healthcare professionals; focusing on creating rapid prototypes and using feedback to iterate and improve.

Whatever the specific sector, adapting at speed will be essential to shrink the time from recovery to growth. Embedding the four Liquid capabilities will enable organisations to improve their adaptability and chances of success. Taking action now will make the difference.

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Shrinking the time… from recovery to growth

In our lifetime, it has never been more challenging for organisational leaders around the world to stay focused on recovery – especially when they are fighting off insolvency and making difficult decisions that are impacting the livelihoods of their people.

For the private and third sectors, leaders must go beyond planning for what’s next (getting operations running again) to identifying how to shrink the time from recovery to growth. Business leaders are under pressure to deliver shareholder value, so growth is a non-negotiable. For the third sector, a growth focus is important to raise the necessary funds to have a meaningful impact. Planning for this as early as possible will give the best chance of success.

But with the uncertainty ahead, what can organisations do now?

One route is to undertake scenario planning to try and predict what the future holds, and the organisational capabilities needed to succeed. However, with the speed of change and volatility today, scenarios are fluid – by the time action is taken, it is too late.

An alternative is for leaders to ensure their organisations can adapt at speed: to have the ability to respond quickly to changing conditions and pivot to a new course of action. This enables organisations to deal with a range of potential scenarios.

To reach this nirvana state of adapting at speed, the historic trend has been to turn to ‘Agile.’ Agile was born as a software development process that promoted adaptability – largely because the traditional approach of creating a perfect solution the first time didn’t keep up with the pace of change.

However, as Harvard Business Review’s June 2018 issue on Agile at Scale points out, there are large operational gaps by only focusing on Agile to accomplish things faster. Too many organisations are risk averse, struggling with bureaucracy and using command-control methods for teams that need to be autonomous.

So, we need to take a step back and look at organisational adaptability in a more complete way.

We have done research with 500 organisations across seven countries and identified the organisational capabilities needed to adapt at speed. This uncovered that organisations are broadly either solid, liquid or gaseous (bear with me for a minute) and this impacts how the entire organisation – from leaders to employee teams – is able to adapt to uncertainty.

  • When an organisation is solid, it is imprisoned by its structured processes and bureaucratic culture, and is slow to respond, resulting in lost opportunity and disengaged employees.
  • When an organisation is gaseous, it may be quick to respond, but lacks direction, consistency and focus, leaving customers and employees confused.
  • When an organisation is liquid, it uses continuous adaptability as a competitive weapon, and is always able to act fast and predict customer or stakeholder needs, with a clear purpose that empowers employees.

When a company is Liquid it embeds the four researched capabilities of Pioneering, Dialed-In, Agile and Transparent into its operations and culture.

The 4 capabilities of being Liquid:

So, how can organisations apply this practically?

The research enabled us to codify what each of these four Liquid capabilities looks like for the five factors of an organisation: Strategy and Business Planning; Leadership; Organisational Structure; Workflows and Accountabilities; and People and Capability – defining 20 characteristics for adapting at speed. Does this mean organisations now need to focus on all 20 characteristics? Well, yes and no.

YES, in that leaders need to understand the strengths and gaps of their functions against all 20, to gauge the ‘current state.’

NO, in that once leaders have a view of the ‘current state’ and have defined the areas to concentrate on, they can take targeted action. This means focusing on the most critical 3 – 5 characteristics to become more adaptable.

For example, Retail companies may need to have a more Dialed-In strategy and business planning process that is based on consumer insights; or be more Pioneering with their organisational structures, putting in place teams and processes responsible for innovating quickly. They may also need to have more Agile workflows and accountabilities to ensure they have the staffing capacity and processes to take advantage of increased short-term demand.

Whereas in the Pharmaceutical sector, organisations may need to improve patient-centricity by being more Dialed-In; refocusing role accountabilities to have shared goals, with increased cross-functional collaboration to break down siloes across the enterprise. They may also need to be more Pioneering to identify new value adding services for patients and healthcare professionals; focusing on creating rapid prototypes and using feedback to iterate and improve.

Whatever the specific sector, adapting at speed will be essential to shrink the time from recovery to growth. Embedding the four Liquid capabilities will enable organisations to improve their adaptability and chances of success. Taking action now will make the difference.

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