Three “Neutralizing Practices” to Improve Organizational Maturity

Taking neutralizing practices is less about compromising, more about balancing and harmonizing, for driving positive changes and moving forward. 

With rapid changes and continuous disruptions, today’s organizations are the mixed bag of old and new, the virtual platform and the physical working structure, different functions within an organization perhaps hit different learning curves and run at different speed. The business becomes complex if things do interact, particularly in the case of "non-linear" interaction, the multilayered diversification, and interdependent relationships. How to neutralizing differences to improve organizational maturity?

Neutralize polarization: The digital world is nonlinear and ambiguous, also multi-dimensional and uncertain. However, many leaders and business professionals still keep the old “bipolar thinking” habits built in the industrial age; for them, the answer is either right or wrong; people are either friend or enemy, and the world is either black or white; there are no shades in between. Such mindset is too rigid in the outlook; too judgmental in communication and business relationship management; too static to sense the change, and too linear to deal with the nonlinear world. To harmonize and move forward, it’s important to be open for diverse viewpoints, neutralize polarization, enforce empathetic communication and foster cross-functional or cross-regional collaboration. One of the biggest challenges in this complex digital world with high velocity and uncertainty is the fact that we need to have different perspectives, interdisciplinary knowledge, and take alternative ways to solve either existing or emerging problems. Thus, digital leaders and professionals shouldn’t take things for granted, they have to challenge conventional wisdom or some automatic assumptions about the problem, broaden their viewpoints, share a natural affinity for new perspectives, fresh ideas, and collective insight, and neutralizing differences in order to harmonize and move forward.

Neutralize internal politics & competition: It’s no surprise to know that many of today’s businesses are running as a sum of pieces, not a holistic whole. There are silos, overly rigid hierarchical pyramids, internal politics & competitions, and empires to consider in those organizations. It can have many other stakeholders and their egos, personal agendas as well. There are also a variety of business detractors such as communication gaps, decision bottlenecks, weak process links, outdated procedures, or bureaucracies, etc. Most of the organizations today are process and control driven, those processes become inflexible and stifle changes. To keep information flow, and thus, business flow across its ecosystem, it is the management's job to neutralize and determine when healthy competition is in order and when co-operation is preferable. Neutralizing is not always about compromising, it's about harmonizing and making positive changes. It is important to keep communication open and creative, proactively collect feedback from staff at the different level of the organization, neutralize internal politics or competitions, make an ongoing resource, process, and capability alignment to ensure that the business as a whole needs to be integrated seamlessly to improve organizational maturity.

Neutralize cultural difference: Culture is a collective mindset and attitude. Digital businesses often have their own culture themes based on their history, principles, and team building. In many large complex organizations, there are many subcultures in different divisions or geographical locations. You cannot consider culture as one element of the strategy execution unless you can identify the dominant cultures, subcultures, and the layers of those cultures. We can learn a lot from different mindsets (thought processes), cultures and positions, so organizations as a whole can be competitive enough to keep surging further. Forward-looking leaders will model and establish the framework and environment for neutralize cultural difference and develop the culture of learning, inclusiveness, and innovation. In some cases, organizational culture is so powerful and even then will be able to influence the surrounding societies of the organization. To reach a high level of maturity, organizations need to build an innovative and inclusive culture, this only happens when the ‘inclusiveness mindset’ is available to top management. Orienting people and making them aware of the diversity in their organization or team, helps them understand the value of harnessing the differences, and then giving them the tools and experience of how to effectively communicate, collaborate, and build trust to neutralize cultural differences across these diverse cultures are usually essential and the key to reaping the benefits of global organizations.

A digital organization can bring greater awareness of intricacies and the systemic value of organizational systems, business process, people dynamics, resource alignment, information power, and technological touches. Business leaders need to be both bold and cautious, appreciate diversity, but also neutralizing differences, apply multidimensional thinking and take multifaceted management disciplines to drill down the critical success factors that underpin each of the higher level performance dimensions to accelerate business progress. Taking neutralizing practices is less about compromising, more about balancing and harmonizing, for driving positive changes and moving forward. Digital transformation is not a stand-alone initiative, but a continuous journey to steer in the right direction and adapt to the digital new normal of the dynamic business world for reaching the well-set vision and the high-level organizational maturity.

Posted in: Digital Balance,Digital Master,Digital Maturity,Principle/Practice