We live in an era in which we are accustomed to great changes. In barely a century, the life expectancy of large corporations has fallen by more than 50 years, and the vast majority of analysts expect this trend to continue into the future.
Although individuals have quickly adapted to digitalisation, companies are still working with organisational structures from the last century.
The present and the future are reserved for agile and adaptive organisations, companies formed by high performance teams, perfectly designed, trained and synchronised, not only to respond to change, but to lead the future, achieving:
The era of disruption
If there is one thing we can anticipate now, it is that change is the new reality and that it will become more and more frequent in the future. We live in an era in which work systems that functioned on the basis of linear and predictable dynamics will be totally useless. In this new context of accelerated evolution, the game rules have changed.
90%
Today, 90%* of companies are undergoing a transformation process aimed at becoming more agile organisations, able to adapt to the present and meet the challenges it poses, but only a few successfully complete this process.
Only 9% of organisations initiating organisational change achieve the desired results. In most cases improvements are imperceptible or only temporarily noticeable in some of the organisation’s key indicators.
The introduction of new technologies to work without establishing guidelines and routines for their use has led to a productivity reduction of up to 70%. Digitalisation has given us tools but not the systems and routines to use them efficiently.
Technology is not the answer. Successful change in organisations is achieved by acting on all elements of the system, generating the routines necessary to turn objectives into actions and actions into results sustainably.
Digital organisation
In every organisation, digitisation projects coexist with a new situation which could be described as the digital organisation. Although the root of both terms is the same, we should not mistake digitalisation for digital organisation.
Digitising is to transform the means by which an operation is carried out, moving initially from a manually executed activity to the same activity executed, in this case, in an automatic or computerised way. In this process of automation, the essence of the process itself and the value provided by the activity remain unchanged while the only variation occurs in the way it is executed. The digitisation or automation of processes is a priority for many companies needing to compete in an increasingly demanding market. A market that requires the continuous application of cost reductions on the same products. For many companies, the possibility of staying alive depends on their ability to reduce costs by automating or robotising their processes. In general terms, digitalisation can therefore be defined as a process automation project based on an internal analysis with the aim of reducing losses and increasing efficiency.
In contrast, digital organisation poses a new challenge of rethinking the business purpose, taking into account the current technological revolution with the core objective of delivering value in a different way to the client. Digital organisation is the result of looking outwards. It is the logical consequence of understanding the client in all their dimensions and their needs. Instead of a quest for efficiency, the digital enterprise pursues disruptive innovation focusing on added value.
Digital culture
It is obvious that technology cannot be the only solution to this great challenge we are facing. Cultural change is the needed one, and only organisations which take action on all the elements of the system achieve a successful outcome.
A digital organisation is a flexible ecosystem whose teams continuously adapt to the environment to respond to client needs and market requirements. The change from a traditional, hierarchical culture to a system of self-organised teams can only be achieved by acting on each of the following dimensions, establishing the necessary routines which generate new working methods:
- PURPOSE: Definition of the organisation’s priorities and objectives. Drafting and communicating the purpose to the whole team.
- PEOPLE: Designing teams to achieve impacts in line with the organisation’s priorities. Training people to accelerate team development.
- PROCESS: Development of implementation routines aimed at achieving the established goals. Actions for incremental improvement of results and continuous impact assessment.
- PROGRESS: Integrating innovation into implementation routines. Design and implementation of innovation systems. Continuous adjustment of the working system and redefinition according to needs.
Only by acting on the four levers will your teams be able to respond to the most ambitious challenges facing your organisation by generating the routines needed to turn goals into actions and actions into results in a sustainable way.
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