Your Communications May Not Be Communicating – Have you ever been in an organization where communication was not an issue? If so, you’re the exception rather than the rule. Large organizations in particular have always struggled with the challenges of communications. This HBR articles addresses the challenges of communications and provides practical solutions.
“Navigating Change for Success” is a collaborative white paper Don Johnston and Cindy Weeks co-authored that was presented at the MEMO conference in Ontario Canada in 2010. In this VUCA world, organizations need to continuously adapt to change in the ecosphere, change that is speeding up every year. Organizations that are intentionally linked to their ecosphere are in a position to co-create a future in which they can survive, and thrive. This is a deeper look at adaptive change in a VUCA world, including engagement strategies for each dynamic.
Denise Caron’s “It’s a VUCA World” is a colorful and creative powerpoint presentation on VUCA – what it means, where it shows up, ways to respond.
“Leading at the Cusp of Change”
is the presentation we shared at the Washington State Nonprofit Conference on May 11, 2012. It’s about the intersection of leadership and adaptive change, VUCA and VUCA prime, our change model, and what you can do to better prepare yourself and your organization for the future.
Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense-And-Respond Organizations – by Stephan Haeckel
Unpredictable, discontinuous change is an unavoidable consequence of doing business in the Information Age. Because this intense turbulence demands fast – even instantaneous – response, many large companies are fragmenting themselves into smaller, quick-response units. But in doing so, they relinquish important advantages of scale and scope. Is it possible to have it both ways? Can large, complex firms adapt successfully and systematically to unexpected change? Yes, says Stephan Haeckel, but only if leaders learn how to manage their organizations as adaptive systems. In “Adaptive Enterprise,” Haeckel updates the concept of the corporation for the Information Age with a radical and comprehensive rethinking of organizational strategy, structure, and leadership. He outlines the new sense-and-respond business model that is helping companies systematically cope with the unexpected. Haeckel argues that when unpredictability is a given, the only strategy that makes sense is a strategy to become adaptive – to sense early and respond quickly to abrupt changes in individual customer needs. As a result, a firm’s operations must be driven by current customer requests – implicit as well as articulated – rather than by plans to make and sell what customers are forecasted to want in the future. Here, for the first time, is a clear and comprehensive strategy for transforming firms into adaptive systems. “Adaptive Enterprise” is both a new way of thinking about business and a handbook for leadership of postindustrial organizations. It maps out, with examples and illustrations, a step-by-step plan that companies can use to transform themselves into a new type of organization – one in which change is not a problem to be solved, but rather an indispensable source of energy, growth, and value.
“Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World” by Bob Johansen.
We are in a time of disruptive leadership change. In a VUCA world – one characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity – traditional leadership skills won’t be enough, noted futurist Bob Johansen argues. Drawing on the latest ten-year forecast from the Institute for the Future – the only futures think tank ever to outlive its forecasts – this powerful book explores the external forces that are shaking the foundations of leadership and unveils ten critical new skills that will be required in the future, skills that you can learn.
In this second edition Johansen is joined by the prestigious Center for Creative Leadership. CCL’s contributions help readers understand the new leadership skills by linking them to existing skills, and they provide analytics and exercises to help readers develop them. This edition has been updated throughout, with a new ten-year forecast and new examples, and incorporates the lessons Johansen has leaned about applying the new leadership skills in the three years since the first edition appeared. In addition, Johansen deals with two new forces that are shaping the future. The first is the “digital natives,” or people 15 years and younger who have grown up in a completely digital world. The second is cloud-based computing, which will enable new forms of connection, collaboration and commerce and will greatly facilitate reciprocity-based innovation – giving away to get more – which Johansen sees as the biggest innovation opportunity in history.
