adminPeter Sibanda Business Correspondent
I was reading a short story entitled “Ducks Quack, Eagles Soar”. It got me to understand why greatness has always been associated with personal responsibility, action and resilience.Some companies currently behave like ducks, they just can’t stop complaining and blaming, while others are like eagles, they adapt and are resilient.
The good thing about the current economic depression is that it offers everyone the opportunity to be stretched in whatever they do.
Get me right, I am not saying the crisis itself is good, but only emphasising the opportunities that come with it.
High abilities of all kinds are developed during crises, leadership development flourishes during crises, and resilience of organisations is built during the same.
Alternative explanations to phenomena are amplified. Organisations learn new experiences and how to persist during hard times. New managerial mind-sets are established.
There is a famous statement that a mind stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimension.
Resultantly, organisations are transformed.
Here is my opinion; mastering the art of becoming learning organisations is more than overdue if organisations are to move at least an inch forward. They just need to adapt, or perish.
When an organisation becomes a learning organisation, they understand how any new environment is a learning opportunity, and why some companies actually prosper during what others see as hard times.
Or even better, it enables an organisation to become a transformative engine, way beyond adapting while at the same time it also capacitates the organisation to match its strategies with extant business contexts?
The reason why corporate vision statements are always visible is so that everybody is reminded of the future, the wish.
The mission of the organisation (how we are living our vision for tomorrow today) our vision is an abstraction of the future based on current realities.
It’s easy to change the vision when the reality gets difficult, when the business environment is tough. I am quickly reminded of a common game of social soccer where the gates are made using stones.
The irony of it is that when scoring gets difficult, we normally reduce the size of the gates according to our level of tiredness or, if we are drinking, the degree of intoxication, so that we increase the chances of scoring.
We may not be at liberty to reduce the size of our vision now because the environment is not permitting?
No.
My opinion is that organisations need to push people, and let them push themselves – just beyond their current abilities, and force them to do things that they would not ordinarily do so that they realise and fulfil their mission. Why not?
The environment is not ordinary. An organisation can only survive, thrive and compete if it is able to learn faster than its competitors.
While the current business environment may not be predicted with precision, our organisational response can be, so that we can choose to prepare an organisation for the unknown.
In any case, it is managers who develop strategies, not environments. In the external environment, we only have a selective choice of fit.
The challenge only comes when organisations are not doing what they are learning, or when there is a long time between learning and acting.
Becoming a learning organisation is a process, and one which requires commitment at all levels.
Firstly it requires that the work environments stimulates learning, tolerates diversity, new ideas, allows openness and all employees are given time to review their work and find areas of improvement.
This is normally associated with a “learning culture”.
Employees need assurance that their ideas or suggestions are seriously considered without them being judged or penalised.
Secondly, organisations need to develop effective learning processes that holistically anchor learning; for example establishing a research and development facility to enhance an organisation’s understanding of its contexts (industry, competition, products, socio-economic and political trends, technology etc.).
Remember success comes from better data. An organisation’s “degree of freedom” is largely determined by the amount of data it has for relevant decision making.
In addition, there is also need to encourage learning and sharing of knowledge at all levels in an organisation. Senge (1990) argued that organisations learn through individuals who learn.
Here is the rub; if you still think training is a cost under these current environments, then try ignorance.
Finally, conditions of distress present genuinely great opportunities to develop leadership.
The current environment requires post normal thinking, which requires building leadership capabilities beyond what you or others in your organisation possess now.
Geoff Colvin at one time argued that it is difficult to be joyful about tough times, but this opportunity to develop leadership is so large that it’s almost worth being grateful for.
As meaning makers, leaders provide identity, purpose and direction, engagement, challenging work, positive work environment, learning and resilience etc.
The late Steve Jobs of Apple always made an infamous statement that, “when you are a janitor, reasons/excuses matter; but when you become a senior manager, reasons and excuses stop mattering”.
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