Leading Change — Exponentially.

From linear to exponential change.

We are coming out of an era, where a change in our society and business was linear: we were able to predict possible advances ahead of us and people had enough time to adapt to these changes. Things were pretty swell.

This is no longer the case. Today, we are living in an era driven by the rise of exponential growth — accelerated by technological advances. The problem is not so much the unpredictability, but rather the incredible speed of growth that is accelerating in itself. This creates massive amounts of complexity. Companies face market demands never even seen before.

What we have to accept, but stubbornly still do not, is this fact: the way our businesses are designed is for the old era — long planning processes in hierarchical structures are carefully weighing risk and reward one pay level at a time. They say they are “agile”, yet organigrammes rule the world. This leads to the uncomfortable truth: with these old structures, organizations are too slow to sense new opportunities, too slow to see ahead the pitfalls and on top of that, due to the employee disengagement with the larger vision, they are constantly instilling a collective lack of courage to take decisions in all levels.

The paradigm shift from slow, plannable, linear evolution to surprising and exponential evolution is scary, indeed. Being in this state breeds fear. It’s a path to the unknown with unmotivated travelers.

A healthy organization that is thriving in this new exponential era is one that is in constant motion towards it’s ideal future state together with its employees, or “travelers” if I may call them.

Accessing that opportunity, however, requires organizational evolution.

Exponential Idea. Case for Change.

When we look at the evolution of the most successful businesses, then we notice a pattern: they have been evolving through the shape of an S-curve. This shape is a life cycle of the business as it goes through the eras of beginnings, growth, and maturity. Instead of resting in the phase of ripeness after every successful endeavor, it continues to repeat the cycle one era after another by constantly reinventing its products, structures, strategies. It is able to sense the current needs of the market, leverage the employee potential and is self-regulating on the go.

Duarte, Sanchez “Illuminate” (2016)

Each S-curve is a transformation driven by leadership. But by leadership, I don’t necessarily mean the highest pay grade — it is a combined effort from leaders (no matter what their position) across all levels of the organization. This constant growth rate can handle exponential transformation because it always anticipates the current and future needs of the people and the organization.

How? Well… by “Just doing it.”

Start small.

Every new venture that we see on this visual graph usually starts with one or two people. Yet, they cannot manage the outcome by themselves — it depends on the involvement of other people. These ventures will take flight only if their mission becomes a common dream for everyone involved. When they adopt the “why” and the vision, they infect others and amplify growth exponentially and naturally.

As it slowly grows momentum in the beginning, it infects others on the go on a much faster pace: involving 20, then 40, then 80 people and beyond — until there is an actual movement. These people are what Duarte & Sanchez call as “co-travelers” what I referred to earlier (see their book “Illuminate”). What the early movers of these movements do, is creating the first framing about where the venture could go: via communications, vision, narrative, values. And truth. Simple undisguised truth. Because the more honest and clearer the vision, the more urgently the “co-travelers” feel the urge to move towards it.

And then Accelerate.

But the question still remains: how we can encourage this type of transformation and mindset without completely needing to re-build organizational systems from scratch?

Let’s look at it from a grand scale of things. As one option, we can view through the lens of Harvard professor John P. Kotter. His book “Accelerate” introduced us to the “dual operating system”. As the name goes, it is “dual”: One side of the organization can stay as it is, in its hierarchical form, and the other side, fully treated as an equal system, is functioning as a network-like structure that is devoted to the development and implementation of strategies in much faster agility. This type of dual system can develop over time and can give the organization time to adapt. That is the key: it can start in small steps. Organizations can still “cling” to their good old hierarchy side, but the network system runs nevertheless, until one day, possible and hopefully, it overrules the hierarchical side.

The future is an emergent process.

We need to understand that in the exponential world, an organization’s future longevity depends on this constant renewal and state of change. Every venture the “travelers” undertake is part of a larger epic story. Think of Apple or Tesla who have embraced these uncertain times with courage. Working in an era of exponential change means also that we need to buy into the new kind of working and leading — and sometimes, by simply starting small.

Want to know more about the topic?

I am Liisi from 1789 — Beyond Revolution , a strategic consultancy with a focus on helping organizations create new structures and empowering teams. Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts? Do you want to share your story?