In this article, Jörg Bakschas, independent workspace specialist, change coach and design thinker, discusses what companies will need to do to be fit for the future. Agile methods, building trust and developing resilience will create opportunities for companies to harness the human strength of their workforce as well as manage digital transformation.
Introduction - making your company fit for the future
For some years now, the digital revolution has changed our markets and business models dramatically. Globalisation has contributed to the fact that even smaller companies can network at will through the internet. On the one hand, processes are constantly being accelerated; on the other hand, the ever-growing amount of data is increasingly becoming a problem, not only for companies, but also for people.
Disruption
Digital transformation enables more efficient information exchange and collaboration across any distance and time zone, virtually in real time. The Internet of Things (IoT) first became established in the production sector and revolutionised companies that have the necessary technical and economic prerequisites. Value creation structures and business models have changed in a very short time. You will often hear the term ‘disruption’ used in connection with digital transformation.
With little warning, old "industrial steamships" have been thrown out of the market by small innovative "speedboats" in the form of start-ups. Entire industries have changed in a short time or have disappeared completely because they are simply no longer needed.
The VUCA world
When analysing the economic development in Europe, we recognise increasingly difficult framework conditions for corporate management and speak in the context of the "VUCA world". VUCA is an acronym for the English words: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.
As if all this were not challenging enough, for over a year, people around the world have also been struggling with the Covid pandemic, which has turbo-charged digitalisation through the forced widespread introduction of mobile working. Companies must therefore position themselves strategically, to be able to cope with the latent threats posed by digital change in the VUCA world. The "change process" with a precisely defined process plan and end date no longer exists. Rather, today everything is in constant change, without fixed boundaries. Change is thus becoming part of our culture. In order for employees in a company to be able to deal with it, the right mindset is needed.
So far, organisations have been embracing new structures formed as a result of technical changes. But where there is light, there is also shadow.
In order for the real-time networked systems, which often transcend company boundaries, to be stable, a completely new crisis prevention and crisis control system is required. Historically, problems and dangers were relatively easy to locate and define. But the more open and interdisciplinary the processes are, the more difficult it is to recognise dangers and find appropriate solutions very quickly. This can be due, for example, to the fact that employees outside the company are not fully integrated into the organisation and communication, or that internal interdisciplinary processes still have weak points.
Resilience
So, if you want to make your company fit for the future, the main thing is to develop "resilience".
What do we mean by resilience?
The term resilience originally comes from psychology and describes the resistance of a person, i.e. the ability to cope with change and also to survive difficult life situations without lasting impairments. According to the "Deloitte Global Resilience Report 2021", 54% of the managers surveyed worldwide see "flexibility & adaptability" as the most important characteristic of the workforce for the future of the company.
The current pandemic situation has quickly shown where the problems of mobile work lie. Above all, the psychological strain on people, some of whom work in isolation in a home office, has become clearly visible. Resilient employees are able to react flexibly to the rapidly changing working and living conditions. They adapt their working methods and processes, including communication channels, on their own initiative.
The need to be resilient also applies to the entire company. In an economic context, we speak of "organisational resilience". This is the ability of a company to react and adapt to changes. It is also able to anticipate future threats and opportunities and recognise its own vulnerabilities.
Thus, building a company's future resilience is about two factors at the same time:
the personal resilience of the employees
the organisational resilience of the company
If the employees are not resilient, then it follows that the company cannot be either, since the employees, with their attitudes and skills, will form the basis for the company's success and ability to survive in the future to a much greater extent than in historical organisational forms. The personal ability to see changes and threats as opportunities also strengthens the respective team through the growing importance of collaborative and interdisciplinary forms of work. The introduction of agile methods is one of the most important building blocks in strategic organisational development for securing the future of the company.
Agile methods
From my experience, it is important that the agile methods or their building blocks that are to be used fit the company. The use of Scrum will be familiar to most from IT. However, working on a day-to-day basis with the customer's benefit at the centre of all considerations is key to any department.
Recently, Design Thinking, which actually originates from product development, has also been introduced as an agile method in many companies. The advantage of interdisciplinary cooperation with the earliest possible development of a prototype of the product or service lies primarily in the customer focus. The customer is described and defined in detail in the form of a so-called "persona". It is essential in Design Thinking that the problem must first be identified. Through several iteration loops, the team then arrives at the solution.
For smaller projects, Kanban is also suitable as an agile method if the complexity is not too high. In practice, you can also find mixed forms of Scrum and Kanban that are individually adapted to companies or projects.
Occupational Health Management (OHM)
In this context, it makes sense to maintain and promote both the health of the individual and the health of the company. The importance of "occupational health management" (OHM) must be re-evaluated and strengthened accordingly. For the personal resilience, it is essential to create a sense of coherence. This means achieving a basic conviction that life is meaningful, and that one can master it successfully. This is the basis for being able to survive as a human being in this and future economic scenarios.
This applies to everyone in the company, including employees and their managers. The understanding of the manager's role changes completely in agile organisational forms and must first be learned.
The successful experience of one's own resistance resources based on this sense of coherence is characterised by:
the consistency and comprehensibility of the work based on open and transparent communication and management.
the balance between high and low workloads, based on work-related and social resources.
participative leadership with meaningfulness of work demands and common goal pursuit.
Corporate culture
Imagine that the corporate culture functions like a lighthouse. It not only gives the employee orientation, but also strengthens the sense of belonging. This is especially important if the organisation is geographically dispersed and thus the bond to the brand and thus to the company is to be maintained. Working conditions have changed completely, but in many cases, people still behave as they did previously. A corporate culture that only exists in a glossy brochure is seen by people as mere lip service. Promises that are not kept result in a feeling of futility and thus work against resilience building.
I would like to briefly describe two important factors for the development of a future-oriented corporate culture.
Trust culture
The most important thing is the culture of trust. The paradigm shift in the development of future work is the transition from control to trust.
This, of course, must be supported and lived by everyone involved. The requirements for trust work do not only concern managers, but also every single employee. Managers often still have to learn how to lead networked teams, even virtually. On the employee side, this is supported by the new agile forms of work, since the teams can determine very quickly and often more precisely which people perform well and which less so. This is more difficult for the supervisor, who may also be physically separated. For the future, it is worth considering the introduction of 360-degree feedback methods, as these are particularly suitable for networked, geographically separated and virtual teams.
The new error culture
The second aspect is the absolute necessity of a new error culture. This new understanding of error must be exemplified by management. In view of the high pressure caused by rapid changes in the markets, errors are generally seen as a sign of weakness or inadequacy. The more agile work is done, and the more open processes and organisational structures have to be designed in the future, the more difficult it will be to identify weak points in the company itself. Errors should serve as a source of information to uncover weaknesses. Based on an active error culture in the company, real errors trigger learning processes among employees. This enables them to better anticipate future threats and unexpected crises.
Agile leadership
The agile manager is in a new role that is unfamiliar to many managers. They are responsible for strategy development and the individual development of the employees. They must create the framework conditions that enable the team to implement the agile projects together with the resources and existing guidelines. The old culture of control must be transformed into a culture of trust for agile organisations to succeed.
Therefore, the following applies to the agile leader:
They have a mindset that allows them to let go.
They work participatively and in partnership with their team.
They trust their employees and have a positive view of human nature.
They put their employees first.
They communicate transparently.
They give regular feedback and demand it themselves (e.g. 360°).
They lead their employees situationally.
The other strategic fields of corporate development, such as production, technological security, innovation management, financial structure etc. are not part of this article, but it is important that all corporate divisions are part of the interdisciplinary agile teams and contribute their views.
Fear of new things is human, even if they are expected improvements, they initially meet change with rejection.
A resilience-oriented organisation gives employees and managers the necessary self-esteem and optimism to keep the company on track for success in the long term. Companies thus develop permanently into learning organisation.
Jörg Bakschas is an independent workspace specialist, change coach and design thinker. He is a member of several European committees working on standards for the office and works closely with the team at Adapt Global Group.