How are your soft systems?
You're ready for Big Data, your tech is radically upgraded, you're engaging on social media and you have put your staff through innovation workshops - the 'changing face of organisations' is definitely on your agenda! But do you have the Soft Systems to keep up with the change?
What are Soft Systems? This is our phrase to refer to the cultural paradigm of an organization and the way this influences the ability of an organization to be agile, responsive, and changeable. It includes the network of leaders and influencers; the dynamics; the unspoken limits, traditions, and communication rules; and the way in which the intentions in a company flow, loop or just dry out.
We work with the idea of training for 2020. Partly because it's catchy and there's a book and an Oxford University report on it (Google it), but mostly because training is vital to support critical agility and is a medium-term solution to get you from Here to There. If your organization is not able to carry itself through on a flexible system of innovative, disciplined, aligned people-power it is unlikely to be a key player in the next 5 years and beyond.
The Soft Systems of an organization need to be considered when we face change. Many organisations are opening to new management styles and systems, but stumbling as they find that their leaders cannot carry the change through. It's the mindset of your key people that will get your organization through the changes that are shaking us now and the new ones coming to meet us. Remember, people are people with the usual fears of change and subtle resistance to letting go. If they're running on old habits and unconscious biases, even with the best intentions they're unlikely to hold things together and something will have to give.
Probably their stress levels and your business edge.
Let us draw your attention to the choice you have now - to open up to the unknown and strengthen your ability to deal with it. If you bear down and hold tight as the wave of multiple changes stirs up chaos around you, burn-out will spread like wildfire through your leadership and middle management, and your organization risks being washed up as debris on the shore.
Change is deeper than technology, hard systems, management theory and good intention.