Jedidiah 'Jedi' Alex Koh is the Founder of Coaching Changes Lives, Asia's leading Coaching Firm Specializing in Team Leadership Development.
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What’s the difference in organizations that are built to last versus organizations that exist for a period but disappear with the changing times?
Just two words—learning agility.
If organizations stay focused on just the bottom line and profitability, they will soon be outpaced and outmaneuvered by more agile organizations. Obdurate organizations hold on to what worked well, feast on past success and take pride in their current and past achievements. As history has taught us time and time again, past successes or failures are never good indicators of future performance. Organizations having a fixed mindset will soon be irrelevant to the changing needs of the future economy.
The problem of this fixed mindset comes from the repeated and often-misunderstood ideals of a VUCA world. The world today is no longer volatile, uncertain, complex or ambiguous in the same ways; if organizations are trying to respond to these VUCA demands, they are using outdated approaches to leadership and performance. VUCA was first used in 1987 and still today leaders are repeatedly using this term to describe today’s world. And that cannot be further from the truth. No wonder many organizations still struggle to figure out what hit them in the midst of chaos.
An organization only experiences the impact of VUCA by the way it responds to it; if the response to it is being reactive, then those in the organization are just in the mindset of doing. They have not grown. Growth-mindset organizations will move from just doing to asking why are we doing what we are doing — and how that will impact the future. However, if we remain just in a growth mindset, we miss out on a whole new dimensionality of agility.
It's time for organizations to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset to an agile mindset. A proactive agile organization doesn’t see VUCA as VUCA is traditionally seen but rather sees it as an opportunity for new and expanded ways of thinking. These organizations go from just doing to being. From doing agile to being agile. And all these begin first with vision.
Volatility To Visioning
Visioning is the versatility of the organization to stay true to its guiding values and mission and not fall into the trap of just changing things because that’s what everyone else is doing. When Spotify as a business began to adopt an agile mindset, it applied agile principles and moved from scrum teams to squads and tribes. And when other companies saw how they performed, those companies began to copy, only to find that it didn’t work for them. Those companies fell into the pseudo-growth trap of doing things. Without vision, organizations perish. They don’t understand what is truly needed to adapt their own organization. What works for others might not work for them.
Uncertainty To Unvacillating
The causalities of uncertainties are fear and expectations of the things to come and a sense of no control. Having a clear understanding of what the priorities are for the organizations will help move the state of ambivalence to a place of resolve. Decisions are often the things that impede leaders as they juggle the complexity and complication of various decisions across all the leadership strata. Being unvacillating will allow leaders to not be easily swayed by varying opinions.
Complexity To Contextualizing
Our world and the social-economic-political environment are getting complex and often complicated. To resolve the complexity, leaders need to contextualize the observable data and the inference associated with the data to sense-make the most judicious decision. Information is never complete, and often it takes the leader’s experience and judgment to make a case and take ownership of the decision-making.
Ambiguity To Agility
Certainty is the solution to ambiguity. However, the reality of the future of work is filled with many ambiguous dimensions that are often unpredictable. Being agile will allow organizations and leaders to be more responsive and adaptable to the changing demands of the economy. Agile leaders also don’t rest on their laurels of past success but always approach future performance with a Kaizen, or improvement, mindset.
Bringing It All Together With Coaching
To align visioning with an unvacillating approach that is contextualized to organizational outcomes and objectives requires leaders to be agile. This agility can be developed through coaching. A coaching organization is a learning organization. Coaching enables leaders and teams to be agile through a thought-provoking process to inspire sustainable performance and change.
Organizations and C-suite leaders have to see coaching as an integral part of an organization system. Systemic team leadership coaching is key in co-creating an agile mindset and creative and innovative culture among members of the organization.
Using the metaphor of the human body, it is made up of many organ systems; we have the circulatory system or respiratory systems, for example, and these are made up of organs, and these organs are made up of tissues and cells. Organizations big and small are made up of systems, and within those systems are organs, or departments, which are driven by teams and individuals.
The way organizations structure their systems is critical to being agile and adaptable. Hierarchical organizations tend to be lethargic and often reactive and may put strain on the systems. Flatter and more independent system structures utilize the concept of a team of teams to distribute decision-making across the various layers of the organization. Doing so reduces red tape and improves productivity.
Today, organizations can build in coaching for their executive leadership team: identified individuals with high potential for future senior leadership roles. Middle leaders and managers can take on agile team coaching and senior leadership and board members can take on systemic enterprise coaching.
Coaching has to be tailored across various leadership functions to ensure various perspectives are considered across various structures and systems. Coaching inspires organizations to constantly improve and shift their mindset from the old ways of VUCA thinking to new and emerging ways of VUCA.
Sometimes the call to leadership is about letting go of what seems good and pressing on toward greatness.
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