Are You Running a Stable Business or a Stagnant Organization

Running a stable digital organization in the digital era is like navigating a ship on the sea, you have to make a timely adjustment for adapting to the changing climate.

With the exponential growth of information, businesses need to grasp opportunities for growth but also manage risks effectively. With the increasing pace of change and fierce competition. Organizations must keep the lights on and also make strategic movements all the time. Stability is not equal to stagnation. Like running up to the string, you have to strike the right balance.

Strike the right balance between chaos and order; stability and change: The emergence of potential opportunities for exploiting digitization is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern or exponential speed. It brings both opportunities for business growth and risks as pitfalls. So, you have to strike the right balance between chaos and order; stability and change; “run, grow and transform” accordingly. Change becomes the new normal, it’s important to follow the “balance” principle which means you need to keep the business running forward with certainty even you have to “rock the boat” accordingly. Being too aggressive is just as bad as being too conservative. Digital stability is not equal to stagnation though. Digital enablement is always about planning, funding, designing, building, operating, securing, optimizing and balancing. Running a stable business doesn’t mean to stand still, or stagnate; It’s about planning and taking the logical steps for achieving well-defined goals to move forward with predictability. It is also about how to strike the right balance between learning and doing. Digital organizations and their people must learn through their interactions with the business environment, they apply their learning, act, observe the consequences of their action, make inferences about those consequences, and draw implications for future action.

Having a steady flow of ideas and make a balance of innovation and standardization: Innovation differentiates winners from losers in the digital era. Innovation is about moving forward. In any business, if you are not moving forward, you are moving backward. There is no standing still. You need to make sure, that your company has a steady flow of fresh ideas floating in your innovation pipeline, and, therefore, you need a methodological mainframe that allows you to do that. But innovation has a very low success rate, to run a stable business, it is also important to balance the “old experience” and “new ways to do things.” Innovation needs to have a clear business goal, otherwise, innovation becomes the 'hammer in search of a nail" for the aggressive business, destroying creativity, and ultimately much of the stability of any given company. Consider the continuum between innovation and standardization. The business should always be open to, conscious of, and feel empowered to act upon-Out of box-thinking, but also make standardization to improve efficiency; to ensure that people in tactic or operational management understanding that they actually can go hand-in-hand together in an appropriate way.

Make continuous improvement steadfastly: Running a stable digital organization in the digital era is like navigating a ship on the sea, you have to make the timely adjustment for adapting to the changing climate. There seems to be so much uncertainty in a digital working environment today, riding ahead of the change curve takes vision, strategy, courage, methodology, principles, and practices. Changes happen seamlessly when changing is easier than maintaining the status quo; when people enjoy learning, spend more time on creativity. To overcome digital stagnation, empower your change agents who present game-changing mindsets, well-rounded changeability and bring positive energy to build the culture of improvement. The culture of continuous improvement means to continue to discover that "there is always a better way." There are different talent development/management practices, greater transparency, more engagement and retention initiatives, training and development at every level in the organization to involve, engage, emerge and evolve, evaluate and embrace changes.

Digital is all about the rapid changes, blurred functional/business/industry territories, expanded organizational horizons, stability is not equal to stagnation. The high-responsive digital organizations have to be solid enough to give some sort of form/meaning and fluid enough to its environment and respond to changes dynamically. Change is not for its own sake, a clear vision, strong teams with changeability, the logical processes and exemplified change leadership are all the key success factors to overcome challenges and run a dynamic digital business.

Posted in: Change Management,CIO Debate,Digital Balance,Digital Master