Becoming a Self-evolving/ Self-adapting organisation

 

Most leaders that I have engaged with have expressed the desire to become this.

The questions that remain largely unanswered for them are related to the ‘how-tos’.

Here is my attempt to answer these.

In the interest of mutual learning, I welcome your thoughts on this topic.

The increasing pace of change and uncertainty over the past few decades has alerted business leaders, across the world, towards an urgent need to build an agile and adaptable organisation.

This sentiment has only grown with the onset and spread of the global pandemic, one that has served as a major inflection point for organisations, who have either had to embrace change or risk becoming obsolete.

The story of Choluteca Bridge, in Honduras, recently went viral on social media.

It has personified this uncertainty rather well, shedding light on a very important management lesson i.e., build a ‘self-adaptable’ organisation.

 

 While dynamic leaders aspire to make their organisations grow exponentially and/or  ‘jump-the-S-curve’ on an on-going basis, most of them struggle to achieve this. This is because, not every stakeholder in the eco-system is capable of matching their level of passion to pursue such goals.

Organisations that have succeeded in continuously delivering on such aspirations, are the ones that have been designed to evolve continuously, or as I say, become a ‘self-evolving’.

I have observed that most leaders are aligned to the thought of building self-adapting/ self-evolving organisations.

However, the questions that remain largely unanswered for them are related to the ‘how-tos’:

1. How to identify such situations?
2.  How to prepare and/or deal with these?
3. How to leverage these realisations/ findings for their specific context?

This is where systematic approaches to innovation become useful.

Systematic approaches to innovation have many triggers, tools and techniques that can be leveraged for this purpose.

But it can only flourish and sustain when an enabling environment is built, one that encourages and nurtures the following traits for every individual within the organisation/ eco-system:

• Identify and question the status quo/ fundamentals.
• Map and deal with (micro and macro) trends.
• Take-on aspirational goals.
• Explore domains, other than one’s own, for identifying solution triggers.
• Uncover the ‘unsaid’ from people.
• Experiment, to enhance learning and evolve minimal working solutions.
• Scale-up, working solutions.

To imbibe such traits, everyone in the organisation, from the Chairman to the ‘Chai-man’ (butler), needs to have a common approach that is contextualised for the organisation.

This approach also needs to be synergised between people, processes, platforms, and principles.

Everyone in the organisation needs to apply these traits within their own sphere of control, and support areas that are in their sphere of influence.

Even so, the approach needs to have a common directional point to act as an anchor, and enough ‘hand-shake’ points for each one’s aspirations and pursuits to be streamlined. Only then, will one be able to create a multi-fold impact.

Remember, unexpected situations may arise without any fore warnings, much like the examples shared earlier. The self-adaptable/self-evolving organisation may get caught off guard, but it will have built greater resilience to adapt and evolve from such situations.

I’ve inferred that it typically takes about 2 to 5 years for an established organisation to evolve and adapt to such an approach.

However, the end result of such endeavours are very rewarding – an organisation that: learns to learn, goes beyond being built-to-last to become built-to-adapt, and continues to evolve disproportionately.

While one may not find an organisation that deploys all the above-mentioned traits, I have gathered these ‘golden nuggets’ from organisations that have leveraged at least few of these successfully.