Organizational Dynamix for Business Sustainability: F3

What makes an organization sustainable?  This article focuses on three keys to maintaining relevance over time.  While there are certainly more than three keys to sustainability, F3 provides the business professional with an easy to remember and manageable starting point to work from.

Foresight

Foresight is not a new concept; rather, it is a tried and true business best practice.  Foresight comes from keeping a finger on the pulse of the organization's industry, tracking with customer needs and wants, and reading the domestic and foreign climate.  The ability to see the direction in which to take the company for success is not an innate ability, it is largely a matter of being cognizant of multiple climates (e.g., market, economic, political, and consumer), recognizing the opportunities worth taking and identifying the risks to manage on the horizon. As the captain of a ship charts the best course based on the climate and other factors; organizational leaders must continually monitor the climate in the sea of business. 

Fluidity

We're not talking about the recent organizational fluidity business model here.  That is a concept that is controversial in the business and organizational development literature, as addressed by Georg and Jorg.  What we are talking about is fluidity of the workforce.  A recurrent theme at the recent Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology conference was fluidity of the workforce, indicating that science-practitioners are beginning to recognize that organizational change is best managed in a proactive, rather than a reactive manner.  Fluidity of the workforce is concentrating on the skills, knowledge and abilities of an organizations' workforce and capitalizing on those organizational resources to maneuver the organization as needed to remain relevant and reactive to the changes in market, economic, political, and consumer demands.  

Flexibility

Being able to harness and capitalize on the fluidity of the workforce requires the organization to maintain a reasonable amount of flexibility of function.  This form of flexibility is not a business form, rather it is a principle of the organization's climate.  Leadership must foster a culture conducive to change to have flexibility of function.  In such a culture, employees feel safe taking reasonable risks that allow creativity and innovation in the organization.  Employees learn from their mistakes and improve, finding what works from what doesn't work.  In this type of an environment, business units can exercise flexibility of function to maneuver the organization into the optimum position as identified by foresight.

Organizational Change Dynamix

Simply put, organizational change is necessary to maintain the organization and business relevance.  The need to change is driven by both internal and external forces.  Internal forces; such as, a need to restructure, realign the business model, or reorganize the workforce.  External forces that drive change are often competition, economic conditions and government regulation.

What dynamix does an organization need to thrive?  The short answer to the question is change readiness.  Change readiness must be ingrained in the organizational culture and supported by the organization's leadership, management, and employees - at all levels of the organization.  Creating an organizational culture that is adaptable ready for change requires an assessment of the organization's current state of change readiness and developing a plan to increase the organization's readiness for change.  The plan must be specifically designed to move the organization from the actual current state to the desired state of readiness taking into consideration the unique nature of the organization - this is what we refer to as the organization's change dynamix.  

Simply put, it is unlikely that a mass market "how to" book will meet the specific needs of the organization and be the right recipe for developing an adaptable, change ready organization.  There are numerous change models, methods, and processes that make up the toolbox of an organizational development professional.  Improving an organization's change dynamix can be a costly effort, and not necessarily in terms of the cost of assessing and implementing change.  To succeed; shareholders, management, employees, and customers  must have confidence in the effort succeeding.  Failed attempts undermine future attempts, making it crucial to do it right the first time.