Becoming nimble and responsive

Speed to market is hampered by bureaucratic decision-making systems, by multi-layered authorisation processes, by conservative managers who are threatened by change, by people with vested interests in preserving the status quo, and so on. New and small entrepreneurial firms typically have simple and flexible decisionmaking systems that allow them to be responsive to changes in the marketplace and to technological changes.

Is it possible to make changes to the way that a larger, established organisation operates so that it too can become more nimble, more flexible and more pro-active in response to perceived changes in the world around it?

Is the answer strategic planning?

Most organisations annually spend hundreds of person hours doing their strategic planning. Top management argues for hours to get exactly the right wording for the organisations mission statement and statement of objectives. After this, managers at lower levels are charged with choosing strategies and performance targets that are consistent with the overall mission, and which will allow measurement of performance against the stated performance objectives. Ultimately this weighty document, authored by (and thus supposedly conferring ownership upon!) all levels of the organisation, is bound together and put on the shelf and referred to as The Strategic Plan. Once a year it is dusted off, self- congratulations and recriminations are exchanged, next years targets are set (at more realistic levels) and it is duly put back on the shelf.

If this jaundiced view is reflected in your organisation, the strategic plan is not likely to be a source of relentless innovation and speed to market. Unfortunately, in too many organisations the strategic planning process is appallingly similar to the above example, culminating in an infertile document that consumes management time and energy but which has little impact on the organisations capacity to innovate and get new products and services to market quickly.

Think about it: is senior management the most likely place in the organisation to find innovative new ideas, and a willingness to throw caution to the wind and pursue new business opportunities? Senior managers have attained their positions based on years of experience in the industry and their past successes, including their willingness to conform to organisational policies and traditions. It is much more likely that new ideas will come from new employees and existing employees with a diversity of cultural and experiential backgrounds. All too often, however, the organisation does not have in place the incentive and reward systems that encourage new ideas to flow from employees to top management and into the strategic planning process.

To be successful, the strategic planning process must take place within an entrepreneurial business culture that encourages and rewards innovation and speed to market. Only then will any substantial volume of new ideas emerge from within the organisation and be incorporated into the strategic plan.

Is it visionary leadership?

The existence of a visionary leader is often cited as the source of creativity and innovation and the prime reason that particular companies have risen to prominence in their markets, expanded globally, and so on. Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Anita Roddick and a variety of other visionary leaders are cited as evidence that all we need for continued innovation and sustained success is a visionary leader! Even in the companies of these visionaries, however, the main ongoing source of innovative ideas for new products, services and ways to increase speed to market is from others. The ideas flow from employees or (in the case of Microsoft) from outsiders who have become employees through the acquisition of upstart rival firms.

Visionary leadership may sometimes have more to do with picking winners than with personally discovering or creating new business concepts. Further, being at the right place at the right time with the right idea on one occasion may not guarantee that the visionary leader will be just as visionary in a later situation when external market forces have changed substantially. Steve Jobs was a visionary leader in the creation of the Apple computer, but later was less successful in leading the firm in a more competitive environment. Many other examples may occur to you, where the previously visionary leader is all out of visions when they are most needed. Often a new leader is needed to choose new strategies that will redirect the organisation in the new external environment. Alternatively, the new ideas will come from within the organisation. The key is to unlock the source of them and have new ideas come to the notice of top management so that they can be discussed and possibly implemented.

Could it be serendipity ?

Is it simply luck? Can an organisation be lucky enough to discover a new idea for a new product or a new production process that allows it to innovate and gain sustained and superior profitability?

Maybe once or twice such luck will visit, but by and large people and organisations make their own luck. Hard work, intelligently applied in the direction of probable new breakthroughs, puts them in the right place at the right time to be ˜lucky. Just as lightning is more likely to strike a tall metal building, we cant sit on the ground waiting for luck, we need to build a structure that will attract it.

The answer is an entrepreneurial culture!

To generate new ideas on a reliable ongoing basis we need an entrepreneurial business culture. As stated earlier, an entrepreneurial business culture is a situation in which the members of the organisation have the joint commitment that the organisation must change and continue to change pro-actively in response to market forces and market opportunities. If the members subscribe to this ethos, the organisation will have the entrepreneurial capability to generate, develop and commercialise new ideas, and will continue to create profit-making opportunities for itself.

But, how exactly do you develop and build an entrepreneurial business culture?