Turbulent Times and Change are Constant – Thoughts from Drucker on Your Need for Systemic Innovation

Adapted by Michael J Griffin from The Daily Drucker

Times of turbulence are great opportunities for those who can understand, accept, and exploit the new realities that create value. Think about how Zoom exploited Covid and morphed working from home with virtual teamwork to be a new normal.

One constant theme is the need for you, your team and your company to face up to reality and resist the the temptations of the certainties of yesterday, which are about to become the deleterious failures of tomorrow. Being born in Detroit, I saw this happen in the 1970’s with the “Big Three” automakers being overwhelmed by higher quality Japanese cars. I see it again today as BYD, Tesla and possibly other Chinese or Korean electric vehicle manufacturers assaulting the auto majors in the quest for “green vehicles.”

Ron Kaufman, the Up Your Service guru, painted the picture of you or your company on the downward escalator: If your organization stands still, it will descend into irrelevance. If you cannot change and grow, you may become irrelevant! What is needed is the continuous upward ascension of innovation to remain relevant, robust and profitable in these times of turbulent change. Your organization, and you personally, must make innovation part of your personal and corporate DNA.

Peter Drucker states, “The only way in which your organization—whether a government, a university, a business, a labour union, an army—can maintain continuity (and relevance) is by building systematic, organized innovation into its very structure. Institutions, systems, policies, eventually outlive themselves, as do products, processes, and services. They do it when they accomplish their objectives, and they do it when they fail to accomplish their objectives. Innovation, entrepreneurship (and teamwork) are thus needed in society as much as in the economy, in public service institutions as much as in business. The modern organization (your organization)  must be a destabilizer; it must be organized for innovation.”

Wait a minute! Do we jettison all the past successes, policies and traditions? Throw the baby out with the bath water? Do we innovate just for innovation sake? Read on…..

The more your organization is organized to be a change leader, the more it will need to establish continuity internally and externally, the more it will need to balance rapid change and continuity. Fons Trompenaars call this reconciling seemingly opposing values or practices. Innovative organizations reconcile seemingly opposing dilemmas to disrupt and create value. The Nike value of “Coopetition” is an example of reconciling competition with cooperation in Nike teams to innovate.  In other words, companies need to maintain continuity while embracing innovation that leads to positive value – value of profit, value for the community, the market and society the organization operates in. One way is to inspire trusting teamwork in change the basis of working relationships.  The foundation for organizations to balance change and continuity requires work on relationships & information. Nothing disrupts continuous innovation and corrupts relationships more than poor or unreliable information. This has become more and more important as more organizations & teams come to rely on people working together without actually working together—that is, on people using the new technologies of information to innovate. The bedrock of innovating through change is the need for continuity to the fundamentals of the organization: its mission, its values, its definition of performance and results.

Innovation therefore must create value so your organization is competitive and relevant in the markets you thrive in.

Finally, innovation involves motivating people to change. The reconciliation between change and continuity has to be built into your company’s compensation, recognition, and rewards policies. Organization will have to reward continuity—for instance, by considering people who deliver continuing improvements to be as valuable to the organization, and as deserving of recognition and reward, as the genuine innovator. Teamwork makes innovation and continuous improvement work!  

Michael J Griffin
CEO and Founder of ELAvate
We ELAvate Training Through Innovation!