By Mostafa Sayyadi and Michael J. Provitera
Agility and innovation are the key components of business success in today’s hypercompetitive world. To achieve a high level of agility and innovation, organizations need to adopt the systemic survival approach. This article emphasizes this issue to show how organizations can achieve a new order that is necessary for agility, innovation, and survival.
Introduction
We need a new form of organization. Organizations today must strive to be agile and innovative. [1] [2] [3] The sad reality is that as organizations grow in their business environment, they move away from agility and innovation. This growth sometimes brings inertia and less agility. Innovative and creative ideas in this bureaucratic environment are quickly suppressed and efforts of the organization are focused only on achieving a high level of efficiency. A handful of companies like Apple are still focused on the original idea of helping society through technological breakthroughs. The systemic survival approach can play a very important role in achieving agility and innovation and reducing the gap between external changes and the proper response to these changes. Taking the systemic survival approach that strengthens a dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and people should become the task of innovative and transformational leaders in today’s business environment.
To achieve a high level of agility and innovation, the systemic survival approach factors into this complex equation by strengthening a dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and people. This approach increases the exchange of innovative ideas among employees leads to the growth of knowledge flow and causes the realization of organizational innovation. Some organizations must redesign their organizational processes to maximize the interaction of these processes with organizational strategies to achieve a systemic approach. Redesigning organizational processes to further align with strategies is necessary to help organizations become more compatible with their business environment, through more effective, timelier, and more innovative responses to the external changes in the business environment. While many organizations do not suffer from a lack of ideas, they do not have an effective and applied approach to sharing these ideas and using them. The systemic survival approach is the missing link for realizing this potential. The systemic survival approach is a vital and also necessary factor in achieving agility and reducing the gap between changes and the response time to them. And it is the organization that uses this approach and ultimately improves agility and innovation.
The Systemic Survival Approach
The organizations in which we work can help us, as individuals, help us fulfill our desires, and meet our aspirations. This combination enhances the American Dream and provides exciting collective results from careers.
An example of this comes from the CEO of Mercedes-Benz Dieter Zetsche, who asked himself why cars crash? [4] [5] [6] [7] This question has led to the growing use of intelligent sensors that bring sleepy drivers to the required level of alertness with successive alarms, video camera technology, and sensitivity settings through automation. Many drives have heart attacks behind the wheel, drivers lose consciousness, and inventors are attempting to create cars that can intelligently take control of themselves and park themselves automatically in a safe place and contact the proper authorities.
Questions posed and answered like this one example of how to prevent car accidents led to an amazing result and a sustainable model of the future cars that eventually prevented many car accidents across the world.
With a dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and people, which, from now on, we call the systemic survival approach, companies can provide a showcase of camaraderie between our individual aspirations and exciting collective results. For example, Cristiano Ronaldo, in football, posturing with the most goals and assists, eventually improves the position of the Portuguese national team and his club team in the international rankings. This successful systematic survival for the future can be captured across industries.
In the systemic survival approach, organizations are seen as a set of processes, strategies, and individuals that form the identity of an organization as a thriving mechanism, aligning the organization toward the right goals. [8] [9] [10] Processes activate strategies that matter for organizations, and strategies enhance the capabilities of the individuals and the organizations to respond to the situations they face in a timely fashion. Building a solid foundation of systematic success and from this point on, the organization is capable to withstand turbulence and hypercompetitive pressures from rivals.
Executives at the highest levels of the organization are responsible for developing the systemic survival approach and growing a dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and individuals, to increase its agility in innovative response to environmental changes. Placing strong precedence on innovation will win new and more practical ideas and keep organizations safe.
Organizations that rely on a hierarchical and pyramidal approach, like dinosaurs, will disappear and will be replaced by organizations based on a systemic survival approach.
Successful examples of such organizations can be seen in companies such as Tesla, Apple, and Toyota. [11] [12] [13] These three leading companies are riding the market trends. Processes, strategies, and people interact so dynamically that all market opportunities are exploited to the best of their ability at these three organizations.
Taking the systemic survival approach and increasing the dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and people to grow innovation and agility for the organization will also help prevent a tragic event such as what happened to the prestigious company Nokia.
In Conclusion
Now that you know the essential step of enduring survival, take the systematic survival approach and increase organizational agility and innovation. Adapt to the changing environment. Increase innovation and be as agile as possible. This is your next step to become systematically successful and improve customer and stakeholder satisfaction and help you to be a thriving company in the business environment.
About The Authors
Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders.
Michael J. Provitera is a senior faculty professor of Management and Leadership, in the Andreas School of Business at Barry University, Miami, Florida, USA . He is an author of Level Up Leadership: Engaging Leaders for Success, published by Business Expert Press.
References
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