How can we really build a culture that can bring in real agility to our organization? How can we handle culture needed to get the right mindset, and have employees adapt to the new principles and values? How can we tailor a set of process needed to bring in the real agility? What negative impact we will need to encounter when we attempt to transplant best practices and adopt models/frameworks that work at other companies?
Since the dawn of modern management that we know today, which is just 100 years old, all organizations have been struggling and been challenged to align all employees towards its vision, to continuously evolve, and to innovate in order to survive in the ever changing world.
Now the speed of change that is happening around is much faster. Even if we pause for while we will be out beaten by competitors, and even if try to paddle faster the pace of change and innovation is more challenging than ever before. Thanks to IT industry and software developer community we have gained new knowledge, skills, and tools in our management practices that is helping to increase quality, cost and rate of deliverables. Is this new knowledge in Agile project management models are enough to build a right culture that will help to innovate and to continuously evolve to a better business model? Or do we need to dig deeply for new knowledge that we have gained on organizational design, science of complexity, organizational behavior models, psychology, and several other management models during the last several decades?
If we can pause for a while and try to understand the nature of an organization, whether that be for profit or for non-profit, and the nature of the service or the product that the organization is trying to promote then we may discover the clarity in the path to develop a right organizational culture.
“The true reality of a business organization is not a product or a service that the organization is trying to promote, but the net positive satisfactions of all human minds in the ecosystem i.e. of the customers, the employees and the shareholders. Any unbalance in this ecosystem will create a downward pressure in the organization and cease to exist. Ability to see an organization as social systems and understanding its elements will help to develop a set routines in the daily work practices in the organizational culture, the operating system of an organization, which eventually help the organization to meet the needs of all stakeholders. The life of any service or product is very short, so any organization can survive only when the needs of the people are met in that ecosystem.”
Though customers are the reason for the existence of a business organization, it cannot sustain unless all stakeholders work together in sync to provide value. This value always changes with time. Who can really perceive the changing needs of the customer?
Any organization that solely depends on the process and the technology to be competitive cannot sustain itself in the industry. Then, what is a better approach to meet the challenges in the ever changing world?
How can an organization keep this alignment in the right orientation when the dynamics of human nature is difficult to understand? This change is being compounded by the geometrical progress in science and technology.
In the never ending challenges in the business environment, the employees in the organization need to fuse together with the process and the technology, like a twisted cable. In addition, having a right set of philosophy, people, process, and problem solving skills that helps to develop deliberately a set of patterns/routines in the organization's culture will help to create a perfect alignment to the vision of the organization.