estrategika

The future business is the unknown

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:12:45 -0300

Great part of the organizations development is found in a virtual assembly of situations that still today they are unpredictable. Therefore, to be prepared to be more efficient on a known world, does not guarantee the continuance nor the competitiveness in the future. But, then: What does it mean to prepare for the unknown? It is the de

Thinking about the unknown as intervention space, implies a new assembly of tools to undertake the dynamics of the context that has a different logic than last century�s, signifies to expand the strategic over view to define actions without certainties and to manage materially and psychologically this journey. To participate in complex and unstable markets it is necessary to bring up to date obsolete strategic maps, to abandon the intent of control of the reality to manage dynamic processes, to design networks and alliances with shared objectives and to develop powerful symbols around which to build common realities with different stakeholders.

Being competitive is associated with being prominent in specific context. Which does not signify directly "to be number one", but it does imply two central aspects: to be perceived and to be valued. Since this point of view of the competitiveness, to be prepared for the unknown signifies to change the position from analysts of the phenomena to creators of the phenomena. This implies giving form to the apparent chaos that surrounds us, to see in the invisible, to be brave to lead the skepticism of the first moments, to be flexible and intelligent to handle the calendar without losing the course of action and to be innovators to offer alternatives of development and to design value in the different products. One of the key factors for the people and the organizations is to expand its capacity of reading; but not in the sense to incorporate more information but to build a map of possibilities. The competitiveness depends on the operating capacity of the strategic maps and this involves the need to renew ideas, models and attitudes. It does not serve to read the events from default roads, because we are not going to see nothing new. On the contrary, we are going to have a flood of information that carries us into confusion.

All the decisions start from a construction of the reality, of a map that defines where we are standing. But if this map is obsolete and out of date it will not carry us anywhere, on the contrary it will leave us inert set against the movements of the environment. This process of updating implies to pass from the administration of the certainties to the management of the uncertainty, with all the fears and anxiety that this situation generates. Every change involves resistance although with different motivations. Therefore it is impossible to expand the capacity of reading of a person as of a group without working their fears, anxieties, and expectations.

The management of the unknown

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:40:53 -0300

We are living a historical moment which is generating deep changes in the social economic context regarding previous decades. In this environment we face a double challenge: on one hand, a global challenge related to the dynamics of a new context plagued of unknown situations. And the others, a personal challenge related to the capacity of approaching the instability to advance on unknown territories of development and competitiveness. This second challenge is a substantial change regarding the planning and is marked by the passage of the administration of known things to the management of unknown ones. We have been educated to live in stable contexts and we continue being formed to be efficient in known spaces. But the current conditions of competitiveness present us an extremely different environment, where the way the gap between the known and the unknown is faced, defines the framework of operating capacity and competitiveness.

Then, how we prepare to go through unstable contexts, when the conventional tools are not enough because we are set against unpublished characteristics of the context? The difference between the models of management and the operating capacity reduces the competitive possibilities of the leaders and the businesses. In this case they fall in the confusion; they react compulsively trying to control the events and to accommodate them to their own model of reality.

This context sets a great challenge for the companies connected with how to transcend this routine and to look a bit further to design and consolidate a platform of competitiveness, to be coached in new competences and to be prepared for an increasingly more unstable market. On the capacity that their businessmen have to expand their vision, reorganize their resources, design value in their products and manage strategically their actions depends their prominence and their development in this new market characterized by fluctuations and unknown situations.

The projection of the growing complexity leads to think that the instability, with its forks and breaks, will be the permanent state where the periods of stability will appear like transitory moments. This dynamics invests the conventional sense of the events and introduces us into a new moment of business.

Five challenges for times of change:

To manage the local impact of the global complexity: related to expanding the capacity of reading of the context and the management of the impact of the global movements in the local markets, the design of value in the corporate products and the renewal of models and tools of management according to the current dynamics.
To transform the instability in development factors: related to the decision board design that allow to do visible some patterns of the context and to materialize in a map of possible connections among actors, rules of interaction and emerging situations that define the framework for the interventions.
To design a platform to explore opportunities: related to a new competitive architecture for maintaining the prominence set against the dynamics of the context. The competitiveness is the capacity of interaction to be perceived and valued in a context of volatile actors and rules of variable play.
To coach teams for the unknown: related to new personal competences to undertaking unstable contexts. These competences are related to the personal perceptions of the capacity to face projects, the management of the uncertainty, the capacity of change and the perception of the future.
To act in the present without losing the future: is related to the design of an intervention maps that allow to handle different levels of complexity, to maintain the interventions in the present articulated with objectives to medium run and to develop more sensitive managements indicators according to the tendencies and movements of the environment.

Manage the uncertainties

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:59:20 -0300

Manage the uncertainties it is an exercise to enter an unknown territory, in situations and events that do not yet exist but, probably will impact in future projects. So, the challenge is: how do I manage this uncertainty about the future to be operating in the present?

The end of the certainties, the beginning of the strategy

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 08:46:28 -0300

We are living a turbulent transition, from an old foreseeable industrial model, toward an unfinished economic context. This complexity can be characterized by three elements: the diversity in the structure of the global markets; the speed of the changes supported by technological development; and exponential multiplication of unknown situations that generate an unpredictable environment. Therefore, when companies try to analyze this present times with tools based on static models they fall in a vulnerable confusion.

Each a companies defines the map of its reality by a mixture of perceptions, about their possibilities and fears. Thus, each company builds its action territory and, at the same time, makes the limits of its development. But, the context moves changing these living conditions permanently, so the most important challenge at this moment is the maintenance of the operating capacity in the instability of the present. The keys for the competitiveness in the unstable context can be focus in three strategic points:

To expand the capacity of reading the context incorporating new variables of analysis and integrating diverse points of view.
To generate value in the products defining an offer transcends the ordinary categories.
To design dynamic models of management based on the complexity of the context, not on the classical strategic plans supported by the time.

The market is a web of meanings where what is important is what the people build as perceptions, habits of life and of consumption. To be competitive in this market two essential qualities are necessary: to be perceived and to be valued. If a company is not perceived if does not exist and if is not valued, is if easily replaceable. How to be prepared to maintain a dynamic territory?

The first essential factor is to maintain a structural vision of the activity because facing the intensity of the routine thing, the first thing that loses focus is the strategic project; people remain overloaded of incomprehensible information or multiplicity fragmented tasks, which generate more pressure and anxiety.
The second point is to integrate the diversity as source of resources that allows to expand the capacity of reading the context. Being permeable to different perspectives (technical, cultural, methodological, etc.), enables an open structure to new information and new interpretations of situations in the present times.
And the third key factor is the management of the information that implies the capacity to create a context of meaning to integrate the movements of the environment and to interpret the data of the context in function of the corporate objectives.

Every corporate strategy implies a bet of development and growth that aside from competing against other strategies, competes with a context that does not offer certainties of stability in time. In this sense, the position set against the uncertainty implies the articulation of three processes: the design, the implementation and the management of the corporate map with the one that the organization defines and participates in its routine context. It is the basic strategy of a group of people to carry ahead a common project facing the complexity of the events.