The challenge of walking and chewing gum: becoming a more effective ...

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The challenge of walking and chewing gum: becoming a more effectiveleader

Many organisations become trapped in the status quo long after thequo has lost its status. As such, it is becoming increasinglyimportant to invest time and effort into sustaining the relevanceof our organisations, writes Roger Collins

History reveals that many organisations become trapped in thestatus quo long after the quo has lost its status. This outcomerepresents the challenge of walking and chewing gum  the challengeof balancing the tensions that occur between managing today withpreparing for and creating the future.

Managing and enhancing the performance of your organisationscurrent business model usually relies on convergent thinking, sharpanalysis and rational decision-making. Evolving your organisationso that it remains relevant and effective in the future representsa qualitatively different contribution. It refers to theopportunity that you have to be a pathfinder in the sense ofvisualising or imagining what your organisation could  or should be in the future, and being a catalyst to mobilise others to joinyou in this quest.

This challenge often requires associative or divergent thinking,imagination and intuition. Its not enough to be able to do bothyourself, or to bring together a team who can make thesecontributions. Its also necessary to determine the relativeimportance of these two qualitatively different contributions atthis point in time.

It is critical that your organisation is neither over-led, norunder-led, nor managed; achieving the correct balance determinessustained success.

Time for transformation

Organisations of the future are here now. They offer more benefitsfor all of us, and its time to begin the transformation now orultimately to become irrelevant and disappear. However, the demandsof the present are often urgent and more tangible. Managers becomeentrenched in the present by their prevailing habits and skills.

This trap can be created by reward systems that generateproblematic second-order effects: managers can be lured by anannual bonus; analysts and shareholders can become overwhelmed byshort-term performance rather than longer-term potential; andpoliticians can live for the next election.

For many of us, focusing on and managing the present seems to beeasier or the default option.

Notwithstanding the importance of managing the present, there isincreasing need to prepare for a future that is arriving fasterthan ever. Therefore, I want to challenge your thinking about youropportunities to lead beyond the present in ways that sustain therelevance and success of your organisation.

One intriguing thing about the future is that it is already here.Parts of our future are being spawned around us if only we canidentify these developments for what they are. For example, severalyears ago Robert Miles and Charles Snow argued that organisationsneed have to be cellular, to be more organic.

Such organisational forms can be more agile, can allow increasedemphasis on lateral information flows, can unleash innovation, candevelop greater member engagement and can enhance collaboration andknowledge transfer. While many of us have some difficultyvisualising these lattice-like or networked organisations, theyalready exist. Gary Hamel has provided three case studies fromdiverse industries to illustrate both the viability of these formsand the generalisability of such an approach.

Different organisational forms

Gore is best known for the magical fabric Gortex. The founder, BillGore, fled Dupont because he thought its bureaucracy stifled thevery feature that initially brought it fame and success:innovation.

In setting up, Gore used small flexible membership teams as thebasic building block. Bill Gore did away with hierarchy, said thatinnovation was everyones opportunity, collocated members withdiverse skills, encouraged everyone to take 10 per cent of theirtime to dream and fiddle with new ideas, and used peer-basedprocesses to hire, make resource allocations, and initiate newprojects.

Google has demonstrated that the power of these ideas is notrestricted to manufacturing organisations. Among many initiatives,they have made the strategy process open, encouragedexperimentation and tolerated many that failed to realise theirearly promise, devolved power and given everyone 20 per cent oftheir time to generate options and ideas.

The third case study comes from a mature and staid industry supermarkets. Whole Foods relies on principles more than policies,uses teams as families to build clans and communities, gives themaccess to all performance data that enables local decision-making,and espouses higher order objectives to entice people beyondfinancial considerations to quality-of-life outcomes.

These developments are neither fad nor fashion. Rather, theyrepresent changes in the fundamentals of our understanding oforganisations, management and leadership.

Their success goes beyond just financial performance to member andcommunity wellbeing. As such they represent an opportunity totranscend our historical over reliance on economic indicators oforganisational and societal success.

While Miles and Snow saw the first evidence of the success of theseforms, Jeffrey Pfeffer has documented the empirical evidence ofsome of the high-performance work practises that characterise theseforms. In turn Gary Hamel has raised wider awareness of theirsignificance.

If these new forms of organisation and new management andleadership practices are showing so much promise, how can youevaluate their potential for your own situation? What can you do toavoid being trapped in the present that is soon becoming the past?

Avoiding the pitfalls

The first suggestion is to recognise that this is not solely yourresponsibility. It can be a challenge for leaders at all levels ofyour organisation and the opportunity for your CEO to createleadership forums that increase awareness, offer opportunities tocontribute and build commitment to remaining relevant andsuccessful.

A second suggestion is to challenge the language that we use todescribe what we do.

Terms such as differentiation, hierarchy, span of control, top-downand the ubiquitous human resources, all describe the ways in whichwe learnt about organisations in the industrial revolution and thearmed services. Linguists would remind us that the words that weuse influence how we ultimately think and behave.

If we want breakthroughs in organisational performance andsustainability and in member wellbeing, we need new ways ofconversing and thinking that enable these outcomes.

A third suggestion is to draw on outsiders to create sufficientdiversity to enable us to understand the gaps between the presentand the future. Too often members develop shared, but implicit,ways of thinking about things based on unchallenged assumptions orassumptions that are now no longer valid. So who could beoutsiders? Customers or clients, suppliers, the alumni made up offormer members and prospective members: young undergrads you areseeking to attract can all offer an external perspective.

Using outsiders can expose unspoken and unchallenged assumptions.They are often the source of innovation. It is a salutary lessonthat most of the initiatives that comprised the IndustrialRevolution came from fringe dwellers in that society. Forexample, both the steel and confectionary industries were spawnedby Quakers.

These communities were hardly mainstream at a time when theAnglican and Roman Catholic Church members were dominant as thoughtleaders and incumbents of the major positions of power. So draw inoutsiders to create the diversity that can enable you to deal withthe ambiguities and uncertainties of dealing with the future.

Finally, move beyond issues to questions. The issues of the warfor talent, the ageing workforce, attraction and retention havebeen pored over endlessly to the point of mental fatigue.

Its time to move to some powerful questions, questions thatgenerate conversations, challenges and insights that lead toaction. After all, the answers can often lie in a powerfulquestion.

Shaping the future

In sum, it is becoming increasingly important to put time andeffort into sustaining the relevance of our organisations,championing innovation in how our people think about management andleadership, offering path finding leadership to our colleagues, andacting as a catalyst for adaption and renewal.

To enhance your effectiveness as a thought and practice leader,ensure that you make time to consider and shape the future of yourorganisation. So in meeting the challenge of walking and chewinggum, may the force be with you!

Roger Collins is Professor Emeritus at the University of New SouthWales and a member of Human Resources magazines editorial board.