Organizations of the future

Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash

We hear these terms “Strategic Agility” or “Agile Organization” when we look for how organizations should change themselves to successfully do business in the digital world.

In the traditional organizational model, we talk about shareholder values, perfect strategy, successful execution of that, short, mid, long term strategies, and all.

But will these work in a world, that is changing so rapidly?

Pundits in this field say, not possible at all. They say from the ground-up things have to change in the way a business is run.

If that’s the case, what is that we as leaders need to do?

Building Agility:

The days a specific leadership team deciding on strategy and shoving down the line of command is gone. Strategy building now becomes an organization activity. Leaders should empower employees to share their thoughts and collective wisdom should prevail.

A perfect strategy is also gone. The strategy has become an ongoing activity that needs to be changed, according to the internal and external events and how it affects the business.

So, do we need to as leaders, help form multiple teams according to our situation? No, teams should be self-formed. They should be a band that comes together to solve a problem and once done, move on to other targets. A high level of maturity is the key to success in this model.

We all would have heard from our bosses, if you fail you are screwed. This is also gone out of the window. Encourage individuals to take the risk. Build a culture that failure will be rewarded. Trust me, innovation happens only if we move out of the box and do things differently. There is no guarantee of success if we tread on a path that was never gone before.

For an organization to succeed, it should build an innovative culture. For this to happen, leaders should accept failure as an option.

Encourage employees to innovate.

What happens now to all managers, as it seems everyone is participating in building an organization, so managers are not needed right? Should we fire them then?

A BIG NO.

Managers should become advisers.

They should re-invent their career by equipping them with domain and technology knowledge. With this immense knowledge, they will be part of the team, who will advise them by validating their actions, helping them to do a course correction, and infusing the team with new knowledge, that will help the team win.

Yes, managers are relieved from their people management position and now entrusted with much more responsible position of an advisor.

Hint for the current crop of managers:

Whatever vertical you are working now, start mastering its concepts, figure out the trends of that vertical, how technology is shaping up them, and have a 360-degree view of what is happening. As an advisor, you would be expected to have this level of knowledge.

In today’s very uncertain world, an organization should be very flexible to change and have a team that supports this dynamic business environment.

This is the biggest challenge for businesses across verticals to achieve.

Hence this is where more opportunities are there for us to contribute and succeed.

God Speed towards this change to become an agile digital business.