Don't Just Play Well - Change the Rules of the Game

The current VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) era is characterized by a world full of risks and challenges—in a hard to predict and often confusing technological landscape. Organizations are struggling to get their strategy right, and those which do have a reasonable grip on the business strategy run the risk of failing in the execution. 

As per a recent global survey by a leading global consultancy firm with more than 6,000 respondents from companies of various sizes, geographies and industries:

• Only 32% of the respondents think that their strategy is bold enough
• 70% of the executives are concerned that their strategy is not clear enough about how they create value.
• 55% of the respondents highlighted that their strategy is out of reach
• Overall, only 35% of the executives believe that their strategy is going to lead their company to success

While alarming and downright scary, the above numbers also offer the business leaders an opportunity to re-imagine their why, what, and how for real sustainable competitive advantage.

So, what does it take for an organization to win and succeed in the new VUCA era?

We need an approach which enables business leaders to strategically shaping an organization’s future. It’s about challenging the conventional wisdom and the status-quo, seeing around the corners, and disrupting themselves before being disrupted, and most significantly, identifying and committing to a new identity and culture.

Admittedly, this requires a tremendous amount of passion and courage—but if the organizational leadership (individually and collectively) is not inspired and determined to change, then perhaps the battle is already lost.

"You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore" - Christopher Columbus

Unfortunately, passion without capabilities is a battle lost as well.

While shaping-the-future strategy requires re-conceptualizing the hard side (products and services, processes and systems, skills and knowledge), equally or perhaps more importantly it requires business leadership to focus on the soft side (mind-sets and behaviors, structure and interfaces) of the transformation journey.

The last decade has taught us that the “new breed” of successful organizations (a startup or an incumbent alike) have strikingly desperate hard and soft characteristics compared to those outlined in the classics and best-sellers such as “In Search Of Excellence” by Tom Peters, “Build to Last” and “Good to Great” by Jim Colins. 

These new breed of organizations are what we call - the Exponential Organization (ExO). In their seminal work, Salim Ismail and others decoded this “new” formula of success to be 11 key attributes - MTP + S.C.A.L.E. + I.D.E.A.S.

In the context of these 11 exponential attributes, I believe that the organizations of today's era, when it comes to their “ways of thinking and working” could fit one of the six archetypes ranging from LOST to EXPONENTIAL.

• LOST: Lacks clear and relevant direction and/or basking in historical success. Need for change doesn't exist/not appreciated. 
• AWARE: Aware of the threats and need for change, but not proactive enough to shift from "traditional and linear" to exponential through an integrated strategy. 
• DEVELOPING: Inspired to re-imagine and proactively focus on building "new" exponential capabilities, while addressing different organizational limitations. 
• COMPETENT: Has re-imagined the purpose, and focusing on scaling few "new" exponential capabilities while learning from and refining the execution approach. 
• EXCELLENT: Massive Transformative Purpose driven and has effectively deployed few exponential and differentiated capabilities on scale, while staying focused on and committed to fully getting there. 
• EXPONENTIAL: Has embedded capabilities across several of the ExO attributes and build an aligned culture, and uses their coherence to not just playing well, but changing the rules of the game.

Leveraging the 11 ExO attributes (MTP + S.C.A.L.E. + I.D.E.A.S.) as the new cornerstones, an organization can aspire to be purpose-driven, aim to disrupt instead of getting disrupted, and strive to deliver sustainable and exponentially superior business results. Pursuing this journey towards becoming an Exponential Organization is never simple—but it is always a transformation worth making. The choice is yours.

To learn more about the 11 ExO attributes and to become an Exponential Organization— reach out to embark on this highly rewarding and exciting journey.

Authored by : Chander Nagpal

Chander has more than 22 years of global line leadership and management consulting experience across financial and professional services, and chemicals and discrete manufacturing. He is an ExO Ambassador and Consultant, and partners with business leaders towards achieving transformational and sustainable improvement of organizational performance and embedding an agile, high-performance culture.