All organisations are seeking to survive—to endure—consequently how effectively our organisations adapt to the twin demands of increasing and pressing customer expectation and building the necessary organisational and workforce capability for the long term success (however that might be defined).

I have chosen three forces that I believe are driving strategic organisational reform in the public and private sector. There are many other forces that I have could have used. I have chose these three because they reflect my background, experience and interest. The three forces driving reform and shaping our organisations, for me, are:

1. the continuing impact of technological change as a force for organisational, economic and social transformation; 

2. demographic change as a force in reshaping the capacity and capability of the workplace (this is not about ‘generations’); and

3. the widespread re-positioning of the relationship between work and life as a factor in changing employment relationships. 

Combined, these three forces give rise to a more complicated and complex operating environment for those leading organisations than may have been the case in the past.(Although, the past was pretty complicated as well.)

In particular, I think these factors give rise to discontinuities in a firm's operating environment. These discontinuities are evident in a misalignment between demands being made of organisations as producers of goods and services and the capacity of leadership and workforce to respond effectively to those demands.

For executive leadership teams this manifests as tensions in employment frameworks, organisational design and workforce capability. Unfortunately, these three areas are often a blind spot in organisational planning, decision-making and implementation.

The managerial instinct in addressing these types of tensions is to reach for options that offer the satisfaction of direct and immediate intervention (revelling the illusion of control) and increased efficiency (with a focus on cost reduction at the expense of thoughtful organisational re-design). The immediate and concrete form these interventions share two underlying assumptions: first, they assume the destination is known, clear and certain; and second, they assume the path to reform is familiar, well-travelled and a matter of good communication and process.

I think the three forces outlined above require organisational design solutions that will mark out a new way of responding. These solutions will start with the assumption that discontinuities in the operating environment, by definition, represent a break from the past ways of doing business. If so, the remedy should assume that both the outcome and the path to achieving it are uncertain (and probably unknowable) until the journey begins. The response requires the mindset of and explorer rather than that of a manager. Consequently, the path the executive team chooses to tread and how it prepares for the journey (in terms of materiel to sustain the organisation but also in terms of organisational mindset) will be important for creating the conditions for success.

Our organisations need reform options that do not assume to control for a known future but rather understand the explorer seeks to shape, influence and, where no other option exists, respond flexibly.

These solutions do not exclude policies of direct intervention today. Indeed, they should focus on what the organisation needs to do today but also allow sufficient flexibility to change and adapt as reform progresses. Action creates certainty from uncertainty but it needs to be thoughtful and deliberate.

This leads me to wonder whether the true problem may not be with the operations and mechanics of today’s organisations but rather the fitness of the current institutional and organisational scaffolding that supports its activities.

This scaffolding might be expressed, in part, in terms of our employment frameworks; our understanding of and competence in organisational design; and the sophistication of our understanding of human capital (individually and collectively) as an organisational capability.

So, the guiding question (expressed in two different ways) for executive leaders might be:

1. To what extent are our organisations able to continue prospering from an organisational infrastructure that was laid down post-World War II? 

2. Have we exhausted that organisational and human capital scaffolding that has served us well for 70 years?

Maybe, we should put less time into wringing our hands about ‘big data’ and ‘digital leadership’ and spend more time re-thinking the fundamentals of organisation in order to better position for a productive and sustainable journey.

Photo credit:

Photo by tanakawho - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License  https://www.flickr.com/photos/28481088@N00

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