Half of CEOs rank new business building as a top three priority, and in the current economic environment, incumbents are advantaged over startups with relatively easy access to capital. While they are advantaged financially, they are often disadvantaged by their operating model. As Arthur W. Jones famously said, “All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get.” Many organizations reach a point where they realize that what got them to where they are is not what will ensure their future success.  

To win in today’s market, big companies need to move at the speed of growth. That means they need to experiment boldly, then convert successes into new capabilities at scale. They must learn to move faster at every step of their business innovation process: speed to customer insight, speed to strategy, speed to market, speed to impact, and – finally – speed to a new capability that can operate as a new, scaled business. 

What sets today apart is the rapid evolution of generative AI, altering the business terrain “slowly and then all at once,” to echo Hemingway. This swift progression presents equal parts opportunity and threat, yet instilling a sense of urgency around such technologies remains a challenge. The slow erosive impact of past technological advancements, like digital commerce and big data analytics, often desensitizes leadership to the acute needs of the moment. The dilemma persists: Is the best method to pursue widespread innovation across the organization, or should innovation be quarantined in specialized units?  

Many organizations have tried at least one of these methods in the past, and many have vacillated between them. At 3M, they tried to infuse innovation across the organization, but ended up with too many SKUs, without business rationale to justify a slew of new product innovations. More recently, the pendulum has swung the other way and their CEO has announced they need to accelerate new product development again. To insulate innovation from a potential drag from the core culture, American Family Insurance set up Tenney 110, a corporate venture studio stationed outside the core business. After a stint investing in external Insurtech startups, American Family Insurance leaders better understood gaps in the market. Further, they realized an in-house studio would enable them to bring their “unfair” advantages to the table to better serve their stakeholders (e.g., data, talent, capital, technology, access to customers). However, when funding and resources became constrained, and leadership did not provide adequate support from the top, the assets that made an in-house studio advantageous could no longer overpower the corporate inertia. 

In fairness, this is a dilemma that has been felt both by clients and consultants seeking to aid them. Clients have tried many methods, and they haven’t been alone in those endeavors. Over the years at Prophet, we’ve delivered ‘culture of innovation’ engagements for a company’s core business, and we’ve also helped to design centralized innovation functions that have subsequently struggled. 

What do organizations – both clients and consultants – that have tried both methods realize? That innovation is hard work and sometimes it requires a very particular model for success: active, hands-on capability building. Capability building means framing a clear ambition, an operating model and an organization designed to reliably enable the delivery of business innovation, in collaboration with the core business.  

To do this work, we bring our innovation expertise across the Human-Centered Transformation Model. This includes many ready-to-use frameworks that have proven successful in organizations of varying sizes and industries. These frameworks are highly durable, meaning that more effort can be spent on the unique innovation challenges and opportunities within a specific organization rather than reinventing the wheel when it comes to innovation methodology and capabilities. 

DNA

We define the organization’s DNA as the core ambition that should not change, ensuring everyone is aligned on the same target destination and direction of travel. This is an essential, yet often overlooked, foundational element. When an organization has a DNA problem, employees do not understand where they are going or when they will get there.  

A recent study reveals few companies have established a meaningful link between innovation and their overall corporate strategy or strategic intent. For many companies, innovation is perceived to be an expensive, time consuming, non-essential activity. Aligning around a clear and compelling ambition for innovation within or outside the enterprise can remedy this disconnect.  

“If innovation is not rooted in moving the purpose forward, then it exists for its own sake. Anything that exists for its own sake must continually justify its existence. And that lends itself over time to subjective scrutiny because the people around it can’t see how it’s moving our purpose forward.” 

Michael McCathren, Sr. Principal, Enterprise Innovation, Chick-fil-A 

Framework 1: The Ambition Template

The Ambition Template aligns the organization around a specific, measurable, transformative and timebound target destination. We unpack each part of the ambition with x-rays, and those x-rays then lead to KPIs. With this template, everyone understands what outcome is expected from innovation activities, and by when. 

BODY 

Next, we align the organization to the vision by co-designing a fit-for-purpose operating model, governance, processes, systems, and tools. If an organization has a body problem, then it feels too hard to get things done. 

 “A corporate innovation function must have disciplined governance and operating models so executive stakeholders have continuous engagement with how the team is driving applied impact.” 

Mark Jamison, Senior Vice President, Visa Inc. 

Framework 2: Innovation Capability Model 

The innovation capability model ensures the organization is building the capabilities needed for always-on innovation, from inspiration and investment to portfolio management and governance. Each of the 11 capabilities are based on underlying services. For example, the inspiration capability included safaris to learn innovation best practices, a speaker series to connect internal business leaders to external thought leaders, and hackathons to regularly source new ideas across the organization. 

Framework 3: DERPA 

Based on the innovation capability model, we determine the critical disciplines needed to progress new ideas through funding stage gates towards MVP and launch (or being halted as quickly as we can determine that it will not generate enough business value). Those skills include design, engineering, research, product management and analytics.   

Framework 4: Pods 

The operating model includes a studio of multidisciplinary “pods” each in charge of progressing a single idea and staffed with relevant disciplines. In addition, there is a portfolio management function in charge of determining which new ideas move into a pod, as well as inside-out and outside-in inspiration functions in charge of sourcing new opportunity areas for future innovation.  

Framework 5: H2A 

The hypothesis-to-action process, run in two-week sprints, ensures that all ideas are assessed fairly and killed as quickly as possible to re-allocate funding to more promising ideas.  

MIND  

Mind work includes the skills and competencies that the organization needs to operate the body. If you have a mind problem, you don’t have the right people to run the processes and contribute content and subject matter expertise.  

“The talent that you select is the single most important decision that an organization can make. It is a very different talent profile to drive true innovation versus managing a core organization. They need to be able to take risks, be analytical to make data-driven decisions, embrace diverse people and diverse experiences and be comfortable challenging the status quo.” 

Lisa Rometty, CEO, Zerigo Health 

Framework 6: Basadur Innovation Profile 

Mind work often includes using the Basadur Innovation Profile to increase awareness of how individual and collective preferences for different parts of the innovation process can impact the work and continuously delivering just-in-time teaching of new skill problem solving skills. This may include opportunity mapping, design research, business design and rapid prototyping and testing. At the end of each quarter, we codified our learnings and shared new methods for use within and beyond the innovation organization. 

SOUL 

Finally, the Soul motivates individuals inside of the innovation function by forging new rituals to work productively while also ensuring team health. If an organization has a Soul problem, employees don’t believe leadership is committed to transformation because their behaviors do not reinforce the ambition. Important leadership behaviors include separating process from content and championing agile ways of working for business activities, adding increment planning, sprint kickoff meetings and daily standups serving as forums for process discussion, and sprint closeouts and office hours provided adequate time and space to solicit feedback on work products.  

“There’s a certain amount of irreverence and risk tolerance that innovation leaders need to have. You have to be able to be strategic, but still be able to quickly pivot and flex, with a dogged determination to push through barriers. And you know you’re going to have barriers! You need to have team members who see barriers more like a speed bump or sales objection rather than an unchallengeable stop sign – a problem to be solved – and that’s a unique mindset.” 

Boris Pluskowski, Managing Director, Head of CXO Platform, HSBC 

Framework 7: SCARFS 

Innovation brings new ways of working and often sees employees working at pace and at the edge of their capabilities. As such, regularly checking in on team health and how individuals are processing the experience is essential. Our team uses the neuroscience-based model known by the acronym SCARF to evaluate how teams are doing across six key elements of psychological safety, satisfaction and productivity. We have improved it for innovation purposes, adding a second “S” to understand the individual and collective sustainability of our pace. 

While all these practices are essential to collective success, one of the most critical practices is that our team doesn’t design and walk away. We think of key roles within the operating model as “2-in-a-box,” meaning a member of the Prophet team is paired with a client so that learning and application is in real-world work, not merely a theoretical application in a workshop. This approach allows everyone to win and learn.  

“Innovation leaders build trust and credibility in an organization by delivering outcomes and the 2-in-a-box model is an accelerant.  By pairing innovation experts with talented insiders, the learning pace and time to results are exponentially faster with higher quality.” 

Diane Teed, Principal, Innovation, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. 

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This article is the third in a series based on our latest research, Catalysts: How to Build an adaptable organization that thrives during uncertainty. Conversations with senior executives in multiple industries helped us define concrete steps leaders can take to create a sense and structure for shared ownership within the organization.  

In his now-famous address to Congress in 1961, President John F. Kennedy laid out an audacious goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” The President lauded the endeavor’s impressiveness to humankind and its importance to future space exploration. The speech also represented an unspoken political gauntlet throwdown: pitting the distributed intelligence and decision-making of the US’s market-based economy against the Soviet top-down, centrally-planned model. 

At the time of JFK’s speech, and for the better part of the twentieth century, management theory favored predictability and consistency as means to economies of scale. This resulted in streamlining business processes and organizational structures to maximize standardization and minimize marginal cost. Whole disciplines such as Toyota Production System (TPS), Six Sigma, and Lean emerged as proven methods with terrific results when implemented well.  

Today we operate in a very different economy. The advancement of digital technology has upended the economics of value creation. As a result, we live in a world that is more unpredictable. Today’s leaders must channel President Kennedy’s faith in systems with distributed intelligence and decision-making to thrive. Rather than centralize decision-making, leaders can gain better control through the twists and turns of the market by “letting go” – empowering autonomy and decision-making within their organizations by establishing the organizational structures, processes and culture to make it successful. 

The Benefits of “Letting Go” 

Leaders and managers who look at the big picture quickly realize that delegation of authority greatly benefits the firm and its customers. The company gains strategic agility because it can pivot faster to respond to market shifts. Customers benefit because “bringing authority to the information” increases customer intimacy, driving the development of more relevant and impactful products, services, and experiences. 

Additionally, shifting decision rights lower in the organization drives greater employee engagement, resulting in a 23% productivity increase, according to Gallup’s 2020 meta-analysis. It also delivers a radically improved employee value proposition, as demonstrated by significantly increased retention and ratings for employee wellbeing. 

C-suite leaders that we interviewed for this series told us they are working hard in 2023 on letting go. “This is a major cultural shift that we need to make in order to unlock the potential of the great talent we’ve hired and the leaders we have on deck,” says the Vice President of Talent of a multinational e-commerce company. “We constantly ask ourselves, `What can we do today to step out of their way and unleash that potential?'” 

Three Critical Shifts for Empowering Autonomy and Decision-Making 

“Organizations often underestimate what’s required to release control and still achieve results,” says Jane Hanson, former Chief People Officer of Nationwide Building Society, the UK’s third largest mortgage provider. “It’s not just a matter of leaders stepping back and declaring others are empowered. It’s about building the scaffolding and putting the right systems in place to help people be successful.”  

Empowered teams need the authority to make or influence business decisions. As recently as 2015, just 11% of US workers said they could consistently influence decisions critical to their work. However, it takes more than just leadership’s permission to “let go” successfully. Teams also need the organization’s formal structures, the “Body”, to follow suit. Through our research, we uncovered three critical structural changes required to enable more adaptive and resilient organizations.  

1. Clear Vision, Goals and Accountabilities

To operate with agency, teams need clarity on the strategic direction for the company overall, what success looks like, and how the team contributes to the larger organization. A clear vision and goals at the organizational level establish a “north star,” while breaking enterprise goals down to team-level outcomes and accountabilities gives the team the direction they need to make effective decisions on prioritizing their efforts.  

How goals are framed is equally as important. JFK aimed “to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth.” The goal is ambitious and transparent, and its outcomes are easily measured (an astronaut either returns to Earth or they don’t). Yet the goal does not prescribe outputs or how to achieve it. The goal doesn’t stipulate the spacecraft’s design, the mission’s trajectory, the number of crew, etc. Instead, NASA was responsible for determining how they would accomplish this goal. By articulating goals as outcomes (versus outputs) and holding teams accountable to those outcomes, organizations can create greater resiliency and scale by delegating the “how” to teams. 

Outcome-oriented goals can also become an essential facet of the company culture. A senior product leader at one of the world’s largest tech firms shared, “When we pass someone in the hallway that we haven’t seen in a while, typically the first question you ask is ‘what’s your goal?’ not ‘who are you reporting to?’ or ‘what project are you working on?’ Everyone understands what the company’s goals are. It’s actually how we navigate the organization.”  

2. Transparent and Responsive Resource Allocation

In addition to clarity on outcomes and accountability, teams also need resources to achieve their goals. Delivering great products, services, and experiences takes human effort, financial resources, and technological capabilities. Simply having access to those resources is not enough. Teams also need the ability to reallocate those resources to pivot quickly. Too often, financial planning and allocation of talent is an annual process that, for most organizations, is far too infrequent to facilitate effective pivots. Faced with emerging opportunities or market shifts, teams can often find themselves saddled with resources committed to one project while watching opportunities for higher and better use of those resources pass by. Redirecting resources usually takes time and attention-consuming escalation to senior leadership.   

“Letting go” often requires redefining how resources are allocated within an organization, making those processes more agile and giving teams greater autonomy in regular resource reallocation.  

3. Cross-Functional Work 

Reorienting teams around outcomes versus outputs can be liberating but requires more cross-functional work. Rather than being accountable for a single activity or component, teams responsible for business outcomes, such as customer satisfaction, operational efficiency or launching a new product, need the talents of many functional domains that often operate in silos.  

Organizations seeking to become more resilient and adaptive by “letting go” should find ways to accelerate cross-functional collaboration. That could be by shifting the organization’s structure outright, such as to agile teams or matrix models, or by evolving how individuals and teams are aligned to work.  

Putting “Letting Go” Into Practice Across the Organization’s Mind, Body, and Soul

Every organization can find its way to the level of shared, distributed decision-making that best fits its strategies and goals. Using our Human-Centered Transformation Model to think holistically, here are some actionable ways leaders can empower autonomy and decision-making within their organizations.” 

DNA: Define the Strategic Destination 

• Make decision-making faster and easier at all levels by promulgating clear and compelling statements of corporate purpose with well-articulated values to support it. The clearer they are, the easier it is to trust that decisions will be made consistently at all levels. 
• Identify where autonomy and decisiveness are best aligned with company values. 
• Celebrate significant decisions that are well-aligned to purpose and values. 

Mind: Enable Employees With Necessary Skills and Knowledge 

• Shift hiring practices to include problem-solving and cross-functional collaboration, not just hard skills. 
• New responsibilities require new capabilities. Create learning and development resources that help employees build an ownership mindset and cultivate the underlying skills, such as data analysis, to contribute to better decision-making.  

Body: Provide Structure and Governance to Deliver the Strategy 

• Charter work for business outcomes and empower decision-making in the teams that need to achieve them. 
• Simplify governance models as much as possible by moving decision makers closer, if not into, the work process. 
• Advance managers into true coaching models that avoid micromanagement. 
• Ensure all relevant employees can access the data, systems, and inputs they need to make the best decisions.  

Soul: Motivate and Ignite Belief in the Strategy

• Reward progress in decision-making quality, speed and accountability, not just outcomes. 
• Spotlight employees who demonstrate an ownership mindset and recognize them publicly. 
• Champion new leadership behaviors.  

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This is the third article in a series based on our latest research series, Catalysts: How to Build an Adaptable Organization That Thrives During Uncertainty. In the previous article, Catalysts: Transform Purpose From Catchy Slogan to Growth Engine, we explored how the most adaptive companies use their purpose to drive compelling business strategies.  

A culture of experimentation is essential for innovation and growth. And while virtually every business leader knows that’s true, at least in theory, relatively few companies know how to build that culture. Through our research, we uncovered plenty of reasons organizations resist experimentation. Fear and short-term thinking top the list.  

Today’s economic uncertainty makes many organizations even more timid about investing in experimentation. “Since the Great Depression, there have been nine bear markets,” says Mark Jamison, former Global Head of Design and Innovation and currently Head of Global Accounts for Visa. “Humans are not designed to take a longer view. They tend to be reactive, particularly in times of stress. Leaders need the fortitude and the foresight to step back and ask, `What strategies might we put in place to go after opportunities this uncertainty has created?’ You can then use this foresight to focus the organization’s energy on delivering outsized impact while competitors are inwardly focused.”  

But too often, organizations shut down that scientific spirit. Experiments often fail, and that scares people. A 2020 Gallup survey found fewer than one in ten respondents strongly agreed with the statement, “I take risks at my job that could lead to new products or solutions.”  

Ironically, the same leaders who struggle with encouraging experimentation are often the same ones lauding data-driven decisions. To foster an organization that effectively uses iterative experimentation, leaders must promote the discipline of regularly testing hypotheses. And, like any scientist, they have to learn to view every outcome, failure or success, as progress. Only then can innovation flourish.  

Encouraging an A/B Ethos 

Firms born in the digital era, such as Amazon and Netflix have repeatedly demonstrated that experimentation through A/B testing can help identify how to generate more value.  

Amazon, for instance, discovered that making a mobile game called Air Patriots easier unexpectedly increased the enjoyment of its end users, leading to more revenue. Netflix runs constant experiments to determine how best to personalize artwork so that each customer sees images with actors and genres they like best.  

Ghost kitchens have given rise to new levels of innovation for many large restaurant groups over the last three years. These kitchens are used to test new menu items, new restaurant concepts and even branding. They provide an efficient way to offer food delivery, of course. But these kitchens have also proven to be ideal testing labs. Since many have no visible connection to their existing brands, companies can measure market demand and consider how to scale winning concepts with relatively little risk. 

Increasing Organizational Experimentation 

There are specific actions organizations can take to lower the costs of experimentation and increase innovation. At Prophet, we use our Human-Centered Transformation Model to think holistically about an organization. We view the organization as a macrocosm of the individual, with four distinct components. 

DNA: Define the Strategic Destination 

A company’s DNA is its purpose and core beliefs, which should inform all decisions and strategies. If innovation is part of these core corporate values and most companies recognize that new ideas are essential to survival, make sure the definition of innovation includes the idea of experimentation. Innovation often becomes synonymous with “new,” neglecting the disciplined experimentation required to hatch ideas. 

Mind: Enable Employees With the Necessary Skills and Knowledge   

Leaders must also examine the skills and competencies needed to encourage test-and-learn thinking. Knowledge, capabilities and skills compose the mind of an organization. Our research finds that the most innovative companies are reinforcing employee learning in multiple ways, including:  

• Invest in bringing in knowledge from outside the organization, including secondments with other companies, university relationships, entrepreneurs-in-residence and speaker programs. 
• Build experimentation into the performance review for every role. Embedding innovation into the reward and performance structure is vital. 

• Make agile methods, design thinking and innovation skills standard training across functions.  

Body: Provide Structure and Governance to Deliver the Strategy 

Leaders may also reconsider organizational structure. Companies need to be designed in ways that facilitate experimentation. Not only does that differ from company to company, but it also calls for various operating models within each enterprise. Groups working on near-term innovation likely require different teams, funding, processes and incentives than those working on long-term horizons. And organizations need ways to astutely assess the risks and rewards of each flavor of innovation.  

“We use the concept of one-way and two-way door decisions,” says Gabriel Mas, chief marketing officer at Amazon Mexico. “A one-way door decision is almost impossible to reverse. A two-way door decision is easy to reverse. For one-way door decisions, more analysis, discussion and senior leader input are provided. If a decision is a two-way door, people closer to the decision are empowered to move quickly and execute, and we have mechanisms in place to learn from each decision, good or bad.” 

Soul: Motivate and Ignite Belief in the Strategy  

Finally, the organization’s soul must celebrate experimentation, especially when an exciting hypothesis is disproved. That means developing traditions, symbols and rituals that make people feel safe. They must be encouraged to test ideas, even when their work results in negative data. It’s easy for a company to say it sees failure as a learning opportunity. But genuinely living that conviction is difficult.  

Leaders need to model and promote the scientist’s mindset, releasing any attachment to the positive outcomes of experiments in their organizations. They need to demonstrate that all experiments deliver valuable information. 

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This article is the second in a series based on our latest research, Catalysts: How to Build an Adaptable Organization that Thrives During Uncertainty. In-depth conversations with senior executives across industries helped us define concrete steps organizations can take to ensure corporate purpose becomes a powerful growth engine. 

Having a mission, purpose or vision for an organization has been a business essential for more than a decade. In our interviews with senior leaders, purpose emerged as one of the five most important drivers for creating a culture of resilience. Yet the practical application of corporate purpose has fundamentally shifted in recent years, and it is fast becoming one of an organization’s highest priorities. 

It’s hard to overstate how fast the purpose train travels through the business landscape. In 2019, the Business Roundtable, a U.S.-based organization chockablock with globally influential companies, released a statement that distilled the new definition: Businesses can’t exist just to make money. They must also serve customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders.  

Months later, the global pandemic arrived. The crisis vaulted purpose-driven thinking into a new realm. COVID caused billions of people to re-examine their individual purposes. Businesses recognized that their workforce and society as a whole had begun to question their expectations about work. By early 2021, academics, economists and journalists began to record a dramatic reshuffling. Whether they called it the Big Quit or the Great Resignation, it all reflected a ferocious desire to prioritize life based on meaning.  

Companies responded in many ways, from increasing work/life balance initiatives to taking stronger stands on social issues. They sought more transparency and better corporate behavior. The number of companies striving for B Corp certification, which requires a full-scale commitment to purpose and higher ESG standards, has risen 38% since the pandemic’s start. 

Moving through 2023, people’s search for meaning through work continues. But economic uncertainty and large-scale layoffs have thrown new curves. People are still increasingly thoughtful about the brands they associate with as employees, consumers and investors. But, they’re more focused on job security and exhausted by bureaucratic inefficiency. 

Authentic Corporate Purposes Unlock Uncommon Growth 

An authentic corporate purpose can inspire and engage both employees and customers. For employees, purpose can inspire belief and cultivate hope for employees that their efforts will add up to something more significant. And for customers, purpose creates brand trust and signals they can and should believe in those brands. Customers and employees are much more loyal when a company’s product or service delivers on its promised value proposition and expressed purpose. 

Well-crafted purposes are durable and can help an organization navigate, particularly in tumultuous times. “Purpose becomes the bridge between us that allows us to be less physically connected but not less aligned,” says Kris Ahrend, chief executive officer of the Mechanical Licensing Collective, a nonprofit music rights administration company. “Purpose minimizes confusion and accommodates creativity. It is integral to maintaining that connectivity and alignment.” 

It’s also a lens for what comes next. “Our purpose is always at the root of our decisions for what to do next and why,” says an HR executive at a large financial company. “We never take our eyes off why we’re here as an organization.” 

A properly developed purpose is part of an overall management philosophy and allows continuous engagement with investors, employees and customers. Operationally, a well-framed corporate purpose is a tool for leadership alignment, a source of employee motivation, a criterion for business decisions and a natural foundation for the brand.  

Making Purpose Practical 

The most adaptive companies keep purpose alive rather than letting it become a platitude. They continually find new ways to use purpose as an engagement tool.  

Patagonia has long been known for its fierce environmental commitments. Over the years, that’s been expressed through supply-chain innovations, leading the re-commerce movement with Worn Wear, voter drives, and even suing the federal government to protect public lands. 

Recently, founder Yvon Chouinard made the most significant purpose-driven move ever, donating the entire $3 billion company to a foundation that will protect the planet. Earth is now Patagonia’s only shareholder. 

This bold move has made Patagonia the most relevant corporate voice in the environmental crisis. And it speaks directly to its adventure-loving and environmentally-conscious customers and employees. 

No other company has gone as far as Patagonia, but more are finding novel ways to express and expand their purpose in memorable and credible ways. Calm, made headlines when it volunteered to pay fines for tennis players like Naomi Osaka, who skip press events for their mental well-being. Chipotle, which has long stood for cultivating a better world, has made massive investments in fighting hunger and food insecurity through tech. 

Every organization can find ways to use purpose just as effectively. To help companies think more holistically about operationalizing a strong corporate purpose, Prophet uses its Human-Centered Transformation Model. Here are four actionable steps that can help companies turn purpose into a reality.   

DNA: Define the Strategic Destination 

For a company’s purpose to be compelling, it has to be right and in tune with its goals and objectives. That means it should be: 

• Inclusive: Corporate purpose needs to encompass every internal and external stakeholder. Without inclusive language, it inherently limits the spectrum of inspiration.
• Built into the employee value proposition: People must understand and reflect on the purpose, so it should be integrated into the hiring process. Hiring skeptics who keep a company honest is great. Hiring folks who might subvert its purpose and values is an unforced error. Dick’s Sporting Goods, for example, is devoted to promoting youth sports and goes out of its way to hire people passionate about athletics,  including Olympic hopefuls. 
• Monitored consistently: Ensuring that purpose is healthy is an ongoing activity. Does it still resonate with stakeholders? Do employees believe in the company’s future? How confident are they that the company is improving the world? 

Mind: Enable Employees With the Necessary Skills and Knowledge  

It is important to identify critical skills required to achieve the company purpose by each function, enabling organizations to understand the roles and responsibilities of each function and champion the skills that best support that purpose. 

3M, for instance, is using science to solve the world’s most challenging problems. That requires diverse thinking, which explains the company’s $50 million commitment to closing the racial gap in STEM and intense recruiting at historically Black colleges and universities. 

Body: Provide Structure and Governance to Deliver the Strategy 

Companies must ensure that employees have the decision rights to infuse purpose in day-to-day operations. For example, Ritz-Carlton operationalizes its purpose, to provide warm, comfortable experiences by delegating every employee that responsibility. Each is empowered to spend up to $2,000 to rescue a souring guest experience without a manager’s approval. 

Soul: Motivate and Ignite Belief in the Strategy 

This means leading by example, making sure leaders demonstrate how they live and celebrate the company’s purpose.  

• Make language purposeful: Include corporate purpose in the internal language, identifying employees as “one of us.” Pfizer employees, for instance, are encouraged to “zig-zag,” making non-linear career moves to bolster personal and organizational growth.  
• Infuse purpose into the everyday: Find “moments that matter” within the experience of both customers and employees. 
• Give employees a platform: Help employees share and celebrate their connection to the purpose by creating forums, social networks, and events. Alaska Airlines’ promise to “run our company with care” has taken on new meaning in the last 18 months, when passenger-facing travel roles have become especially grueling. They now host an annual day-long retreat focused entirely on mental well-being. 

 A company’s purpose must be holistic, permeating all aspects of the organization. That’s what builds adaptability. “Resilience is about understanding your organization’s strengths and areas of focus and aligning people to pursue these things as a collective,” says Danielle Clark, eBay’s vice president of talent. “An adaptive business model or value proposition isn’t enough to create resilience. You need purpose and people behind it.” 

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The turbulence and upheaval of the last few years have become routine. That’s good since many believe this era of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity is here to stay. Business leaders should pay close attention to the post-pandemic twist on Darwin’s law. 

It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; but the species that is best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment which it finds itself.

Charles Darwin 

Recent disruptions have proved that while some companies are already impressively agile, many aren’t. Many larger businesses have spent the last few years lurching from one crisis to another, relying on limited moves torn from old playbooks.  

This article – the first in a series – is based on interviews with senior leaders and is focused on how enterprises can tap into variety, building organizational flexibility.  

Our respondents detailed their successes and setbacks, and ultimately illuminated five critical principles for creating adaptability at multiple speeds during this critical moment in time.  

Defining Adaptability in a Post-Pandemic World 

At Prophet, we define “adaptability” as the ability to anticipate and respond to opportunities created by a shifting market. And we define “at multiple speeds” across three horizons.  

Something that separates humans from other animals is the ability to plan ahead and imagine multiple potential futures. In modern life, we do this quite naturally:  

• What’s for dinner tonight?  
• Where might we take the family on vacation this year?  
• When can I retire, and how much must I save?  

Here are just a few ways our respondents are anticipating and responding to uncertainty across these three key horizons.  

Optimizing for Today 

Our respondents are evolving operating models to deliver the current portfolio of products and services to the same customers. They are organizing resources to increase customer satisfaction and profitability. And they are hunting for efficiencies, like centralizing or outsourcing back-office functions for greater scale or lower costs. 

Innovating for Tomorrow  

Planning within medium-range windows includes expanding product and service portfolios or reaching out to adjacent target customers. And while many of our respondents may be leveraging brand relevance to expand into new categories and integrate new capabilities, it’s still happening within the boundaries of the existing business model. 

Building the Future  

To build for the future, our respondents are transforming their business models and fundamentally changing how the business makes money and creates value for customers. It’s a seismic shift, like Netflix’s move from mail-order DVD business to a content studio. 

Five Ways to Build Adaptive Organizations 

Our research led to five key strategies to enhance adaptability and create future-ready, resilient organizations.  

1. Put Purpose to Work  

Purpose-driven branding has been part of the corporate playbook for over a decade. Yet the definition and expression of that purpose keep gaining importance. Customers increasingly demand that companies stand for something, and people insist employers care about more than money. They won’t settle for a slogan on a wall or some fluffy catchphrase dreamed up at an executive retreat. It must mean something. 

Like human DNA, an organization’s purpose is fixed. “To operate in an environment filled with uncertainty, you have to create stability in other ways,” says Kris Ahrend, chief executive officer of the Mechanical Licensing Collective, a nonprofit focused on streaming royalty distribution. “Our culture is what gives us stability.” 

But while purpose may be steadfast, it can still be leveraged differently and more effectively, filtering throughout an organization’s activities. That way, it can provide renewed focus, guiding decisions and strategies. 

“Our purpose is always at the root of our decisions for what to do next and why,” says an executive at a large banking company. “We never take our eyes off why we’re here as an organization.” 

2. Gain Control by Letting Go 

Decentralizing governance can feel counterintuitive in these turbulent times. “We’re all moving forward wishing we had a crystal ball,” one human resources executive says. “Between the war in Europe, pandemic recovery, economic instability, and return to office policy, everything feels more uncertain.” 

But respondents feel strongly that this uncertainty is what makes pushing decision rights down even more important. Many wish they’d worked harder for this change in the past.  

Decentralization lets those closest to customers and operating problems make better and faster decisions. “It’s not just about tactical changes,” says Danielle Clark, a talent executive at eBay. “We have to address the underlying behaviors that enable leaders to step back and lead differently. It requires trust and a greater appetite for thinking boldly.” 

3. Lower the Cost of Experimentation 

 Adaptability requires innovation. And innovation, by definition, involves failure. Organizations must have realistic conversations and processes about what that means and what those failures might cost, especially in an uncertain economy. It’s easy to invest in experimentation when business is good. But experimentation is too often a prime target for budget cuts when revenue gets tight.  

“To be truly resilient, your organization must practice failing,” says one tech executive. “This is supported by a culture that encourages fast and safe failure with risk mitigation measures in place, so resiliency is exercised regularly.” 

4. Reinvest to Realign  

Aligning new strategies with existing structures is often challenging, especially for big companies that typically overinvest in growth areas during prosperous times and overcorrect in culling these growth areas during times of economic uncertainty.  

Over the last year, we’ve seen this pattern emerge within the technology industry, resulting in a hemorrhage of talent, confusing investors and disappointed customers. These massive gaps between their current structure and new strategy inhibit growth.  

The companies that overcome this risk and protect their business from boom-and-bust cycles are the ones creating agile operating models and continuously aligning structure with strategy.  

It is critical that business leaders get crystal clear about what the organization will not do going forward. “We have a strong understanding of who we are at our core,” says eBay’s Clark. “The work over the past few years has been to innovate boldly to maintain relevance while delivering with impact. This has led to our focused category strategy.” 

5. Embrace the Next Wave of Digital Transformation 

 Digital transformation continues to reshape how industries operate and deliver value to customers. The recent explosion in AI makes automation more accessible than ever before and will usher in the next generation of digital transformation.  

Best-in-class organizations embrace new technology to innovate the customer experience and streamline operations. They are using it to redefine systems, making work and life better. Rather than fearing it, they’re upskilling employees to work with these innovations, finding ways to drive a better business outcome.  

“We are asking questions about the business and people benefits,” says Jane Jin, a vice president at Takeda, a multinational pharmaceutical company. “What productivity might we gain when using these technologies? How might we develop our people so they continue to bring value to the company if technologies automate some of their tasks? How do we innovate responsibly and remove bias? How do our values translate in this digital age?” 

With a leadership team determined to decide when and how to adopt new technologies proactively, companies can guarantee decisions that boost productivity and encourage growth while staying true to their DNA. 

If history is any guide, these companies will grow faster and have an outsized advantage in attracting talent. Those that don’t will fall further behind. 

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The last few years have proven that disruption is the only “normal” in business. The world is still slogging through seismic plot twists of the previous few years, making inflation, supply chains, Ukraine and hybrid workplaces a critical topic on virtually every corporate agenda.   

While most forecasts call for nothing but grey skies, we disagree. History shows that periods of economic uncertainty heighten innovation and lead to new products, services and business models. After all, companies like General Motors, Microsoft and Electronic Arts formed during recessionary times.  

In 2023 we expect to see new ideas and products emerge from the rubble of disruption we’ve experienced on a global scale. But to get there, c-suite leaders will need to rethink how they lead their organizations.   

We expect the most successful c-suite leaders to lean into these six key leadership trends in the coming year.  

1. Productivity Improvements Will be a Critical Path to Profitability   

Over the last few years, a handful of digitally native organizations have chosen growth over profitability and had ample investors who were happy to take risks on future opportunities.    

Rising interest rates have ended that party. And as a result, investors are pressuring companies to continue to grow and make money or at least commit to concrete paths to profitability.   

Throughout the second half of 2022, many organizations abruptly shifted their focus from growth at all costs, even if that meant risking profitability, to achieving profitability by cost-cutting measures. 

 And while some companies may need to lean into cost-cutting efforts in 2023, more c-suite leaders will look to enhancing productivity within their workforce to achieve sustainable growth and profitability. For these leaders, the productivity improvements will come from technology, data and analytics.  

2. Balancing Short-Term and Future-Back Planning to Drive Sustainable Growth  

Long-term planning will always be a core component of business strategy. But the upheaval of the last few years has made it painfully clear that companies need to speed up the journey from thinking to doing. And that means integrating quick wins with future vision, so that the results you drive today do not hinder your long-term progress. 

Take, for example, Disney’s recent decision to increase prices for park admissions, annual passes and vacation clubs. This decision infuriated loyal Disney fans, who accused the company of price gouging. While the company may have achieved a quick win from this plan, the long-term effects of the decision may slow Disney’s progress toward its vision.  

In 2023, c-suite leaders will need to carefully balance short-term and future-back planning:  

• Short-term planning: This type of planning requires leaders to think and make at the same time. Risks are reduced with small bets to show progress quickly. Using data and behavioral insights, companies can identify things they know, which they can execute now. They can also explore what they think they know with new and near-term concepts. And those efforts will inform what they think, allowing them to hypothesize, and validate along the way.
• Future-back planning: This approach is about creating predictive models of the future, nine years or more out, to model the probable and preferable future. Which levers should a company pull to get there? Might they do better to build, buy or partner? It considers complex elements, such as politics and socioeconomic shifts, so leaders can confidently see where the business fits in the future and the immediate steps they need to take to get there.    

C-suite leaders who successfully lean into this leadership trend will be well-positioned to achieve immediate wins while also investing in the future of their organizations.   

3. Purposeful Data-Driven Decision-Making Will Reduce Risks   

Data-driven decision-making is critical to increasing confidence and reducing risks. And while that’s been true for decades, more and more companies realize they may have too much historical data and need more predictive data to better inform their decisions. As a result, many executives are making different demands of their AI and analytics teams, aiming to sharpen their business strategy.   

But being data-driven in your decision-making is only one part of the equation. During times of uncertainty, it’s essential to be purposeful in utilizing data to inform your decision-making.   

Amazon has long aced this approach, using analytics to evaluate whether a decision is a one-way-door or a two-way-door.    

Two-way-door decisions are safer and relatively easy decisions to reverse. For example, if the pricing strategy for a new service is hindering performance, it is possible to right-size and reposition the offering or pricing strategy.    

One-way door decisions are more complex, nearly impossible to undo, and require rigorous scrutiny. For instance, a company that misjudges the demand for a product or service has no opportunity to take that decision back. These decisions require rigor and high confidence levels that predictive data modeling can provide.    

In constrained business environments, risky decision-making can be detrimental to the success of your organization, which is why it is more critical than ever to understand the true impact of the decision and be purposeful in how you evaluate the opportunity.   

4. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Regulations Will Require Businesses to Rethink Their Global Approach 

There was a time when everyone building a global business and a global brand thought they could have one approach that would work across different countries: One operating model. One brand positioning. One value proposition. That time is over. Every country has divergent priorities, consumers and governments requiring differentiated business strategies.   

Consider the increase in ESG regulations that have surfaced globally. For example, the European Union (EU) recently passed the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This new directive will soon require large companies that meet specific requirements or are listed on EU-regulated markets to disclose environmental and social metrics across their supply chains. It will also hold these companies legally responsible for their ESG commitments. To meet CSRD targets, large companies doing business in the EU will have to rethink their supply chains and operations and their entire value chain from product and service design to business models and innovation.   

And in the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new proposed rule amendments will require domestic and foreign companies to disclose climate-related risks, governance of climate-related risks, greenhouse gas emissions, climate-related financial statement metrics, and information about climate-related targets and goals.  

Global businesses need to ditch their one-size-fits-all approach to international expansion to meet evolving government regulations and consumer preferences. Instead, these companies will need to find new innovative ways to tailor their brands, business strategies and operations to meet the diverse needs of each market. 

5. New Models of Production Will Unlock Sustainability, Efficiency and Customer Intimacy   

The era of mass production may be ending right in front of our eyes. As a result, we’re seeing a new leadership trend emerge from the c-suite: decentralization. Not only is this a solution for the supply chain challenges it is also a more sustainable and efficient way to impact local communities.    

Many leaders also realize that decentralization can get their products into the hands of their customers in a quicker and more sustainable way. Localized production also allows for co-creation with their customers, improving service and a low-cost path to differentiated and more relevant product offerings.   

There are risks, however. Getting decentralization right will require leaders to closely re-examine their operating models, decision rights, and leadership skills. Without leadership setting a solid direction for the organization, leaders risk efficiency without innovation or innovation without efficiency.   

6. Leaders Will Walk a Tight(er) Rope When It Comes to Political Issues   

The purpose-driven gospel of recent years insists that companies take a stand on issues–or risk losing employees and customers. But figuring out how to do so keeps CEOs, CPOs and CMOs up at night.     

BlackRock’s struggles are emblematic of this challenge. Six states (thus far) have yanked billions in investments from the world’s largest money manager, protesting its commitment to environmental and social change.    

Over the last few years, organizations have been called upon to take a stance on hot-topic political issues ranging from healthcare to ESG. But taking a stance (or not) has become more complicated as companies increasingly navigate accusations of being either too woke or not woke enough.    

In the year ahead, leaders will strive to sort out political agendas with three different pathways:    

• Publicly support political issues     
• Stay silent on political issues     
• Show support for political issues within their workforce policies without publicly supporting the cause     

Regardless of where you or your company stand, the decision to engage publicly on political issues needs to consider the full range of potential consequences that might arise. Speaking out quickly might feel good in the first 24 hours, but unintentionally create outcomes that fly in the face of the very values you espouse. 

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Summary

In Asia, effective collaboration is paramount to unite a diverse set of countries and strive towards a common goal.  

Our latest global research report, “Catalysts: The Collaborative Advantage,” unveiled that companies in Asia value collaboration more than other regions, but lag in execution. How can the region work to close the gap? 

In this webinar replay, leaders from Prophet’s Organization and Culture practice and the APAC team share insights from our latest global study, introducing clear pathways for leaders to prioritize and accelerate the efforts to build their collaborative muscle. 

Learn how effective cross-organizational collaboration can help your business unlock transformational growth through a holistic, human-centered approach.  

Key Takeaways

• How Prophet’s Collaboration Flywheel helps deliver better, more impactful outcomes faster over time through a 3-phase approach.
• Characteristics unique to the APAC region, and why effective collaboration is paramount to unite a diverse set of countries and strive towards a common goal. 
• Actionable tactics and case studies to unlock collaboration in today’s ever-evolving organizations with remote, hybrid and face-to-face workplaces and the future opportunities for improvement.   

Download the presentation PDF.

Summary

Collaborative initiatives are becoming even more critical. Mounting evidence shows organizations that demonstrate effective collaboration across their business also benefit from having a greater resilience – particularly essential in these challenging times. Mastering it allows businesses to act nimbly, anticipate, adapt and respond to incremental and sudden changes – benefiting customers, employees and the bottom line. The trouble is executing it effectively.   

As hybrid and remote working proliferate and disruption becomes the norm, it’s never been more important to ask: Are we collaborating effectively?  

In this webinar replay, leaders from Prophet’s Organization and Culture practice discuss the results of their latest global research report, “Catalysts: The Collaborative Advantage.” 

 Learn how to unlock the power of collaboration across all working environments through a holistic, human-centered approach and how to structure collaboration to ensure resilience is achieved.  

Key Takeaways

• Why collaboration is a muscle that can unlock the potential of a more human-centered and resilient organization.
• Actionable tactics to unlock collaboration in today’s ever-evolving organizations with remote, hybrid and face-to-face workplaces and the future opportunities for improvement.   
• The enhanced business outcomes and benefits of effective cross-organizational collaboration.

Contact us to learn how Prophet can help you unlock resilience with the power of collaboration.  

Collaboration is the future of work, benefiting customers, employees and your bottom line. The trouble is executing it effectively. As hybrid and remote working proliferate, it’s never been more important to ask: Are we collaborating effectively?

For business leaders, it’s imperative to find the right way forward. Siloed work, detached from organizational goals, is still common.

The latest global research from our Organization & Culture practice offers actionable tactics to unlock the power of collaboration across all working environments through a holistic, human-centered approach.

A focus on cross-organizational collaboration is another means to accelerate transformation. This report outlines the three phases organizations need to progress through in order to evolve their understanding of effective collaboration and drive better results.

Key Takeaways:

• A deep dive into collaboration today and the opportunities in remote, hybrid and face-to-face workplaces
• A new model: Prophet’s Collaboration Flywheel, helps leaders and organizations move toward a collaborative environment that is sustainable and delivers more impactful outcomes faster over time
• Understanding collaboration as a muscle and its power to unlock the potential of a more human-centered organization and accelerate transformation
• The enhanced outcomes and benefits for the business and individuals – beyond financial gains

For years, the workforce has accepted the dichotomy known as “work/life balance”: A fiction that these were two separate domains, compartmentalized from one another. Over the past two years, this illusion has been shattered. The pandemic collapsed domains of work, family, school, relaxation and wellness into a single reality. Knowledge workers were no longer able to easily compartmentalize their feelings about their work environments when there was no longer a physical separation for them to draw an imaginary line.  

Naturally, something had to give. For front-line “essential” workers, it was jobs that didn’t pay enough to compensate for the risk they assumed. For knowledge workers, it was employers who were inflexible; who were misaligned with their personal beliefs or values; or whose purpose no longer felt meaningful enough. Subsequently, large portions of the workforce recognized the illusion of work/life balance for what it was. And they recognized the truth hiding behind it: It’s ALL life. 

With that newfound clarity, a collective re-prioritization has been shifting the relationship and expectations people have with their jobs and their life. This has been variously named the Great Resignation, the Great Retirement and, perhaps most accurately in our view, the Great Reprioritization. Because in the end, that’s what is happening. The workforce is re-examining their priorities in relation to work and to employers. Now more than ever, there is a deep need to integrate personal values into the professional aspects of one’s life. But what is it that employees want?  

“We find that relentlessly relevant brands appeal to consumers simultaneously in the head and the heart—these brands, their products and experiences are pragmatic and innovative, personal and inspired.”

Prophet’s 2022 Brand Relevance Index® (BRI) and annual Organization & Culture research series, Catalysts, reveal a compelling story at the intersection of consumer brands and employee experiences. We find that relentlessly relevant brands appeal to consumers simultaneously in the head and the heart—these brands, their products and experiences are pragmatic and innovative, personal and inspired.  

We also find that the best employer brands are those that appeal to the heart and the head. These are organizations that have a clear purpose and values, and the ways of working, operating model, and training help employees accomplish their personal purposes. And it is the organizations appealing to employees’ hearts and heads that are coming out ahead in the face of the Great Reprioritization.  

The Head, Heart and Human-Centered Transformation Model   

At Prophet, we describe the organization as a macrocosm of the individual. Its DNA includes its brand purpose and values; its Mind is comprised of its talent; its Body is the operating model that creates value; and its Soul arises out of the mindsets, behaviors, stories and symbols that generate belief in its DNA. Whether you wish to forge a heart or a head brand, you must think holistically about how best to align your firm’s DNA, Body, Mind and Soul to achieve the desired outcome. The greater the misalignments, the more room for a competitor to win and you to lose your customers…and your talent. 

Take USAA, for example, a Top 10 brand in this year’s BRI. USAA has relative strengths in the heart and head—namely in trust and dependability, meeting an important need and upholding beliefs and values that align with those of its consumers. In looking through the lens of Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model we see USAA appeals to the heart and head by aligning the core elements of the organization.  

DNA 

For 99 years, USAA has been singularly focused on helping military families build financial security. Many employees seek out working for USAA to fulfill their desire to serve those who have served. Across sources such as Glassdoor, Indeed and Niche, employees remark how the company mission permeates operations and that employees are well taken care of “to encourage them to do the same for members.” As a result, 82% of employees at USAA say it is a great place to work compared to 57% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company according to Great Place to Work. 

Mind   

USAA has been a leader in digital member experience and was able to leverage such capabilities to keep members and employees safe throughout the pandemic. While doing so it also improved the efficacy of training. One example of this is USAA’s piloting the use of augmented reality-enabled glasses with field adjusters. This technology allows adjusters’ managers to see the damage without physically being present, thus eliminating dozens of hours of travel time for adjusters and enabling more efficient, practical training for new employees.  

More widely known might be the extensive and immersive training USAA employees go through which covers not only the fundamentals of their position but also helps employees understand the military culture. Prior to the pandemic, employees embarked on a boot camp-like training that simulates challenges military personnel experience regularly—such as eating meals-ready-to-eat (MREs) for lunch. The training is intended to give employees a better understanding of members’ perspectives and help them deliver more empathetic and effective service on the job. 

Body  

USAA has famously realigned the customer-facing components of the organization intuitively along the journey of its members. This effectively reduced the complexity and distraction of the full product portfolio to ensure that members are exposed to the products and bundles most relevant to their immediate needs.  

Internally, USAA is committed to leveraging technology to free up capacity for employees so they’re able to focus on service, not paperwork. For instance, USAA has deployed machine learning to digitize paper medical records and create materials for life insurance underwriting. The previous manual approach could take up to five days, whereas machine learning has reduced the time to just one day and has improved accuracy and capacity.  

Soul  

USAA’s commitment to immersing employees in the member experience is also embedded in the mindsets, behaviors, stories and rituals of the organization. One particular ritual is referred to as a “Mission Moment.” At the start of a meeting, an employee will share a story about a member. This story can be anything from their background, service, or interaction with USAA in moments that mattered along their journey. This seemingly simple story frames the rest of the meeting in a more member-centric mindset.  

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Veni, Vidi…VUCA: Time to Embrace the New Reality

In the New Year, the Economic Glass is Half Full

As 2022 kicks into full swing, many sectors of the economy have been reflecting on a remarkably strong performance through the second year of pandemic mayhem. While we continue to actively learn to navigate the constant shifting sands of the pandemic, albeit easier for some sectors than others, the global economy has – thus far – proven resilient and not ground to a halt.

But our Workforce Glass? Very Much Half Empty

And yet, 2021 brought progressive waves of challenges that will still require significant attention in the years to come. Consumers and communities demand that businesses take a more active role in broader societal issues. Employees and investors express the same.

Employees worldwide are actively reprioritizing their lives, questioning the role and purpose of their work. They’re also questioning the role of the office in their lives, creating significant tension in hierarchical cultures where daily office presence has historically been expected and leaders continue to cling on to established norms. The newly christened category of “front-line, essential workers” are asking similarly existential questions about their work: when is the risk of service too high? Is our service valued by society? And thus, the so-called Great Resignation is impacting nearly all generations and “collars” of the workforce.

Welcome to VUCA

Leaders are facing the reality that nothing will return to normal and that there isn’t even a “new normal” one might reliably anticipate. Years ago, military leaders coined the acronym VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. In a post-pandemic business world, it’s time for the rest of us to embrace VUCA as our new reality.

VUCA means that many of our most popular models of management have literally lost their relevance. 5-year strategic plans, 3-year ROI models, Gantt chart project management, hierarchical management structures, siloed work, narrow expertise and fixed annual cycles of performance management were all already being seriously questioned in 2019.

“VUCA means that many of our most popular models of management have literally lost their relevance.”

In 2021, we found in our annual global research that the firms that truly thrived in the confusion of 2020, those that met or exceeded their objectives, had higher change fitness because they had abandoned those waning operating models, structures, rituals, mindsets and tools wholesale.

What to Do in 2022

As we look backward on what we’ve learned over the last two years and then picture ahead to the coming year, what might make your organization more fit for change? Better yet, what ideas might propel you ahead of your current and future competitors?

Three Ideas to Help Your Organization Thrive in The VUCA Reality

1. Actively Balance the Urgent with the Strategic

All sizes of organizations worldwide had to move quickly to set up projects, programs and initiatives to address the pandemic-driven issues in their business and not just once, but on multiple occasions as the different variants struck. Simultaneously, many firms recognized that a lot of their actions were addressing long-known and long-ignored issues. Wise leaders consciously used the momentum of the moment to slingshot their organization to a more resilient future, desperately looking to accelerate fundamental transformations of their operating model, customer relationships, technology enablement and culture.

Entering 2021, we observed that our most progressive clients began changing their strategy development processes. Even as they adopted agile and design thinking to maintain a sharp market focus, they also began working future-back into their strategy so as not to get caught so badly flat-footed again. In 2022, there are inevitably a host of urgent needs. Make sure that you’re also making space (and dedicating resources!) for the strategic.

2. Seek to Forge a Unified Customer and Employee Experience

All successful organizations today have embraced the philosophy of customer experience. Some organizations have also come to embrace the idea that employee experience is something that can be actively designed and managed.

A missing connection you might address in the coming year is how to make those two experiences one. What kind of transformational effort might be required for those internal and external experience designs to be crafted, managed and measured together?

3. Build a Leadership Coalition for Transformation

The ineffectiveness of organizational structures and the challenge of silos remains a constant challenge to transformation – our 2021 global research yet again highlighted this barrier. Addressing this does not begin with some re-engineering blueprint but rather with the recognition that key functions and areas need to work together differently for a different and/or new outcome. Put another way, the “new advantage” is collaboration.

We might think about the EX/CX opportunity described above to build and amplify them for mutual success. Achieving that kind of business outcome means that a unified EX-CX initiative cannot sit simply with HR nor simply with Marketing. In fact, it is more than likely to also need the buy-in from the CIO let alone operational leaders.

The bottom line is that sustainable transformation fitness and effectiveness is only sustainable with a leadership team that operates beyond individual representation and is prepared to be accountable to one holistic agenda. Organizational resilience in a VUCA environment requires alignment on that agenda now – if you haven’t already.

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Introducing a Human-Centered Model for Change

Pulling on insights from their latest global research study, “Fit for Change: Driving Growth & Transformation for the Future of Work,” the speakers propose a way forward for leaders of transformation to accommodate change while getting your organization fit for the future of work in Asia.

Thank you for your interest in our webinar. You can also download the presentation deck here. If you’d like to learn more about increasing your organization’s change fitness to support long-term growth and resilience then get in touch with us today.