Saturday, January 21, 2023

Ignorance

Ignorance about the importance of cognitive or capability difference and the behavioral dynamics contribute to the generally poor performance.


With “VUCA” digital normality, business leaders today need to keep navigating the unknown and build up the team which includes the complementary mindset, diversified background, and different skillset to co-solve over-complex problems. 

In reality, most organizations get stuck at the lower level of maturity, creating silos, building roadblocks, reacting to the changing dynamic; the digital laggards try to drive changes via a single dimension or a few casual business initiatives. Successful business transformation must be partnered with solid communication plans, with comprehensive change management discipline.


Ignorance: Uncertainty, complexity are part of normality; you have to be humble and realize there are many things you know you don’t know and perhaps even more which you don't know what you don't know. Ignoring important factors in decision-making and problem-solving would cause more issues later on either individually or at the organizational setting. Ignore the trivial, but pay more attention to the significant details, seek out knowledge, address ignorance and the assumptions you make to minimize it.

Break down the large issue into smaller problems without ignoring the interdependence of those pieces. The more complex the situation is, the more possible that you need to analyze the problem, dig into root causes. Otherwise, people fix the issues, but the symptoms continue to get back, so they stop the effort. But their ignorance perhaps becomes the pain and causes more serious issues. From a management perspective, the ignorance about the importance of cognitive or capability difference and the behavioral dynamics contribute to the generally poor performance.

Inertia: Change is the new normal, but it becomes fundamentally difficult in most organizations due to culture inertia. People often resist changing because they don't understand how it is relevant to them.The more dramatic and powerful the change is, the greater the risk would be. So it’s always critical to acknowledge the resistance and deal with it properly. It’s no surprise that people often have a “we always do things like that,” mentality, and hold on to their set of common beliefs. Change makes a lot of people nervous because it means they have to move out of their comfort zone, which causes change inertia. When business leaders or managers are comfortable with the status quo, they often miss the big picture and become complacent.

Hence, it’s always important to rejuvenate creative energy, empower change agents or innovators who have courage to think and do things differently. Once that complacency barrier is broken, people become learn-agile, overcome change inertia, deepen understanding about the necessity and imperatives of changes; so organizations become agiler, innovative and flexible.

Rigidity
: Raid change and frequent disruptions require organizations across vertical sectors to become nimbler and reliance for improving organizational performance. However, lagging companies have an overly rigid organizational hierarchy, and outdated procedures, having all sorts of barriers to changes and deficiencies that get their business stuck.

Innovation is the most needed unique business competency. A strong blockade for innovation is rigid thinking, relying only on how things were done before, lack of “out-of-box” thinking; If there's an idea gap, it means the cause of the gap may have something to do with rigid corporate culture. Also, an obsession with the rigidity of efficiency stunts the innovation creation process. Overly rigid processes perhaps cause inflexibility and discourage innovation. Efficiency and short-term goal orientation often divert focus from innovation in general. It is imperative for improving the organization's culture to one that is more innovative, inspires creativity, allows failure or prototyping.

The high mature digital organizations should be complex enough to act intelligently and nimble enough to adapt to changes promptly. Surviving and thriving in today’s business dynamic requires strategic agility, structural flexibility, interdisciplinary collaboration, interconnected processes to reduce frictions and deal with conflicts or disruptions that arise, to shape a people-centric organization.

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