Driving through Change

Internet has started giving goose bumps to many of managers in big multinational organizations. It’s not that change was not happening earlier. What Internet and globalization are doing is making it all visible and impacting the speed of change. Attracting global markets was never that easy. Even before Internet, change specially the one which causes disruption for your current business model was never welcomed by most of the managers.

Organizations have people which are most of the time capable, specialist.These people as well have resources at their disposal.These smart people as well can see the change coming. But still one individual is more successful in one organization then other. Where is the issue then? What is that quality in a manager which can help them?

Before we go there, lets understand organizations a bit.”Businesses” & “Organizations” like a “society” or a “country” as a “whole “ consists of values,capabilities & processes.These qualities exist even without an individual arrives there. Where managers fail many times is to make use of those inherent qualities as much as they focus on theirs. Managers can become much more effective if they can develop a better understanding of their organization’s capability & constraints. At the end its organization where change has to be implemented .How much capability an individual has to absorb change is one of the deciding factors? Same is true with organization. There are so many programs & training available for managers which can help them to become a good people manager but so few which can help them through the organization’s capability which means abilities & disabilities both.

As organizations grow their strengths can become weaknesses. As much as this is true for organization,it is true for professionals. To take this thought little further the same strength in one organization can be a weakness in another organization. So managers have to think beyond their own strengths and weaknesses.   

As you grow or attempt to grow, the same very People, Processes, Technology & Values can be an organization’s strength in one situation but as well can be a weakness in another situation. The same strengths can be good enough to address one business challenge but may become a weakness to address another business challenge.

I have often seen organization’s creating cross-functional teams to overcome the challenges of “silos” mentality which exists in most of the organization. So because you are not able to or don’t have enough motivation or sponsorship to change the culture as a whole.You either start responding to the less optimal culture by becoming the same culture and further strengthening it or you try attempting to create a new culture on a small scale. This is good for experimentation or pilots but when it comes to organization wide implementation, the same success story is not being replicated

How we can address this challenge, I will continue talking in my next blog.