A633.3.4.RB
Complexity
Science
The
graphic above reminds me of an Etch-A-Sketch gone wrong or a weird string art
project by a third grader. However, it
is a depiction of the “butterfly effect”.
Simply put, it reflects how something small can become something big.
In
this reflective blog, I am asked to “reflect on your own organizations strategy
and how it has evolved over time. Discussing each stage of development and how
feedback and strategy formulation have evolved. Consider the next stages in
your company's evolution and describe what it will look like in 10 years and
where will you be?.” Honestly, I cannot
do this with my current occupation as a public school teacher. So, I will use my former “employer”…the US
Army.
I
first enlisted into the United States Army in 1982. Most of the Senior Noncommissioned Officers
were Vietnam veterans and there were a few General Officers that were World War
II veterans. These were different
times. The “Air, Land, Sea battle
doctrine” was still alive and well. Essentially
this doctrine was to secure and maintain superiority in the air, on the land
and on the sea during combat operations.
Like pages on a calendar, pages would be peeled off as each month passed
as would change come to how we fought and defeated our enemies. Our enemies were adapting to our fighting
doctrine and gaining a foothold. Then
came asymmetrical combat. This turned
the air, land, sea battle doctrine on its head.
The butterfly effect no longer happened when we fought our enemies. Now, a small thing could easily become an
even smaller thing instead of having a larger effect.
The
military had to evolve its strategy.
According to Obolensky, “There are a variety of ways of looking at
strategy. The way it is formulated can be seen as top down, bottom up or a mix
of both. The strategy can also be seen in terms of how fixed/fluid it is, how
clearly it is understood across the organization, and how much it is owned
through the organization:
• The
extent to which the strategy is clear across the organization is often a
headache for many top executives. Clarity means that everyone in the organization
understands the overall big picture strategy and how they fit within it. This
is a perennial problem for top teams. There are, however, stages at which it is
natural that the strategy is unclear, normally in a period of transition into
matrix or CAS. In many ways the degree of clarity depends not on what the
strategy is but how it came about. Similar to the point about ownership below,
if there has been no involvement in the formulation of the strategy, do not
expect a high degree of understanding – people need to be engaged rather than
preached to. The lack of clarity of strategy is also used as an excuse by
followers to do nothing to take the initiative. This is looked at in more
detail in Chapter 7.
•
Strategies can also been seen in terms of how fixed or fluid they are. In
reality this is a continuum, but one can contrast the strategic approach of formulating
strategy on, say, a five yearly cycle and having a more fluid approach where
strategy is updated on a continual basis. The extent of fluidity and fixed
nature will be affected by the market the organization is in, as well as the organizational
evolutionary maturity.
• The
level of ownership of the strategy will be dictated by the amount of
involvement in formulating and deciding the strategy. The simple rule of ‘No
involvement = no ownership’ often applies. Many senior executives worry about
‘buy-in’ when in fact they should be concentrating on ‘sell-out’ – in other
words the process used by executives to sell internally is crucial. A key
hurdle is the inability to ‘let go’ which, when you come to think about it, is
vital when ‘selling’ and developing shared ownership. This is explored more in
Chapters 9 and 10.” (Obolensky, 2014)
This strategy
change for the military is a mixture of top down and bottom up. The war fighters on the ground (bottom) explained
to the senior members what was happening and the senior member (top) evoked
change that affected the war fighters.
This, in-turn, puts the butterfly effect correctly back into action.
In
ten years, we will have only refined the way we fight unless the enemy makes
another game change and we will have to evolve yet again.
Reference
Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty. (2nd
ed). Gower Publishing Company: Burlington, VT
No comments:
Post a Comment