In his book, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organizations, and Life, Aidan McCullen writes about how, centuries ago, sailors would set out to sea with maps labelled with the Latin words hic sun dracones – here be dragons – which meant that they didn’t know much – if anything – about the uncharted waters and unexplored lands that awaited them.
When an organisation recalibrates to adopt a radically new strategy, most leaders focus on the changes in processes, practices and procedures. These are the mechanics of business, the easiest to measure and easier to implement. Successful change efforts engage both the mechanics and humanics of change. The humanics involves the community, collaboration and culture. In a world of constant change, organisations must adopt a “chameleonic” culture, one that is capable of rapid change in line with strategic change.
It is a pleasure to welcome the Executive Director of the Stanford d.school and the author of Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways, Sarah Stein Greenberg.
We are joined by the former CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, TJ Rodgers and his friend and author of Lead and Disrupt, Charles OâReilly III
Some organisations engage in renewal as an event rather than an ongoing process. In such cases, they find their organisational skillsets and capabilities are inadequate for the new reality. Often employees who excelled in a previous reality struggle in the new paradigm. In some cases, these employees become senescent. They can even act like a senescent cell and influence those around them to become toxic and malevolent.
In Chapter 5 of the Corporate Explorer, Binns, Tushman and OâReilly share how a Corporate Explorer created a new business inside the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte.
His new unit, Deloitte Pixel, uses the âwisdom of crowdsâ to solve complex management problems. Ice are joined by Balaji Bondili.
Our guest had just joined IBM from McKinsey and was assigned as an internal consultant charged with supporting these nascent businesses.
We are about to hear that story and so much more.
It is a pleasure to welcome the author of âThe Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Beat Startups at the Innovation Gameâ Andrew Binns
O’Reilly and Tushman illustrate how leaders can align their organization’s cultures to fit the needed strategy and how ideation, incubation, and scaling approaches, when used all together, can successfully develop new growth businesses.
Businesses throw Hail Marys when encountering a crisis, such as declining sales or disruptive innovation, or technology suddenly upends their business plan. Equally, leaders throw Hail Marys to meet analyst expectations when they have been coasting in the game for a long time. In sports, there is a thin line between arrogance and confidence, and business organisations often fall into the success trap.
In part 2 of our Tushman and O’Reilly series, Charles O’Reilly III explores the importance of cultural alignment in encouraging change. We focus on the cases of DaVita, Microsoft and AGC.