Hacking HR to Build an Adaptability Advantage
Reading through the excellent contributions, there seems to be a thread building around the need for a new management paradigm. A paradigm that reflects and helps create:
- New principles
- New values
- New systems
The following extracts are all taken from this site and by viewing them together, it's hoped that the case for building a new management paradigm and it's accompanying features can be made.
Gary Hamel wrote:
Put bluntly, there is no way to build organizations that are adaptable at their core atop the scaffolding of 20th century management precepts. To jump on a new management S-curve, we’re going to need new principles.
Robin Stafford wrote:
Review the literature - its depressingly unchanged! Much the same ideas being re-cycled. The Mix needs to look deeper for the both the causes and some answers.
Fiona Savage wrote:
We need to establish new thinking, identify and challenge our assumptions and automatic beliefs.
Do we fundamentally need to rethink a) How we manage the system and not the people as per Deming, Senge, Seddon and other systems thinkers?
And added elsewhere:
The world out with the organisation system has peaked and a new system is being born.
Paul Cesare wrote:
When we talk about "change and adaptability, we're talking about a level of human capability and systemic capability that is rarely taught, nourished and embraced.
Stephanie Sharma wrote:
If our bias toward seeing things through outdated paradigms blocks our ability to see future potential, how we can eliminate the bias of the old to truly evaluate new ideas and foster their consideration.
Peggy McAllister wrote:
So as our corporations are led by senior leaders who are currently benefitting from the shareholder value /short-term no-risk approach, what will it take to stop feeding the current system?
Perry Timms wrote:
Break the hierarchy, open up the power base, and allow more influence across the board.
Leonardo Zangrando wrote:
Overregulation creates a status of helplessness in workers.
And perhaps the most evocative, Jimmy Van de Putte wrote:
It makes no sense attacking just one or some 'enemies', it needs all of the seven heads attacked to be successful. Participation, responsibility, serving management, common goals, authentic leadership, transparency
The new principles are based on our ability to realize that there in no one truth, that we need a plurialistic approach to management, that incorporates all truths, without limitation of the constraints of our mindset.
The new vales are based upon observation, compassion, ecology, multiple ideologies and principles, that are plurialistic and are always changing and adaptable, that change is heatlhy and serves us.
The new systems are the collective ego, collective consciousness, collective possibilities so that we can create new social structures, working practices, customer relationships, government policies, co-capitalism, holistic holder value versus share holder value that is accountable to all the values that serve us moving into the new world.
We are the singularity, through our thoughts we modify our environment through new management practices and technological innovation, this enables us to transcend the context of the boundaries that are our mindset and behaviors.
We are at the dawn of new era where mankind is grasping the context of his epistomologies, the context of context, the thoughts of thoughts, its this that is the true singularity, not the technology we create, this is a metaphor for our shifting and evolving mindset changes.
Through the new management practice paradigms we implement we are catching up with what we have already grasped as possibilities, through innovation we are making this pervasive, and ubiquitous to the world.
I do have quite a number of ideas about how to redesign organizations. But, I had to write a book in order to get the discussion going.
But, let me give you a taster. Here are the titles from three of the chapters. They explain much of what isn't working and why: The Myth of Rightsizing; The Myth of Competitive Advantage; The Myth of the Balanced Scorecard.
These myths are believed by companies that are still trying to modify the organizations to fit the new paradigm, rather than redesign themselves according to the end they want.
Very briefly, the myth of rightsizing is the idea that all you have to do is a bit of radical restructuring, and you, too, can have the organization that you want. But, all that really happens is you end up with a smaller version of the same problem you started with.
The myth of competitive advantage is based on flawed reasoning. But, by implication. So you have to think it through. You have to ask yourself what's wrong with the model.
For example, how many executives in the same industry do you think have read Porter's book on Competitive Strategy and the Competitive Advantage of Nations? The book was a bestseller. Does that give you a hint?
Is it reasonable to assume that all those companies followed the guidance that was given, but that each somehow still hold a competitive advantage over the others?
Or how about this idea? What is a business cycle? Or what is a product cycle? You see, no company and no product has ever experienced sustainable growth? So makes people think that they will be unique in that respect?
The myth of the balanced scorecard is an extension of a business principle that is true, most of the time. The rule is that you can't manage what you can't measure, but that's not always true. Einstein said that not everything that can be counted, counts; and not everything that counts, can be counted. So measurement in and of itself does not equal good management.
But, it gets worse. The assumption is made that more measurement is better management. And of course, that's a lie.
More measurement means shorter evaluation periods. Now you have people working to achieve short-term goals. But that's the opposite outcome that companies say they want when they create strategy.
The Balanced Scorecard is driven by financial results. Whatever else it measures, the financial health of the company overrides everything else.
Now that's a perfectly legitimate way of measuring organizational success. But let's stop kidding ourselves that our method of measurement is balanced. It isn't. It's very much one-sided.
The world of work is in the throes of a revolution, which began in the 1960s.
The banana really hit the fan in the mid-1980s when the Nashua Corporation made the infamous assertion that they could no longer guarantee their employees a job for life. It was then that workers first began to notice that the goalposts had been moved.
But it took more than a decade for organizations to discover that the traditional structures, which were based on 18C designs, no longer worked. And lately, this fact has become increasingly obvious.
If you want your company to ride through the current revolution, then you have to redesign it.
As Stephen Covey said in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you must begin with the end in mind.
But that's not what is happening. Instead, organizations are trying to go forward by looking back. In other words, they want the benefits of change, but they want to keep doing what they've always done.
It seems that they may be getting the message that that's not possible.
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