"In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Since the arrival of the Internet we have lived in an age of unexpected change amidst information overload. The speed of business is not letting us stay the same, especially in terms of our organizational structure. The whole world is shifting corporate governance from traditional command-and-control mode to “knowledge worker” power, at least in companies that want to grow their market share.
In other words, to innovate effectively, and we must innovate, we need to fully utilize the skills and wisdom of our people at every level of our company. Every business resource needs to be deployed to where it matters most; to continue traditional use of those assets means we continue to live in yesterday’s world. Staying the same is where our frustrations of today seem to mysteriously live on. Change we must. Business revolution is everywhere. Human and organizational evolution is occurring at an accelerating rate. Mobilizing and swarming is all about redeployment in a timely manner as new information is received.
Speed
Speed matters as it never has. "Serial entrepreneur" David Guo has explained "our strategy changes every five minutes. Our vision and goal have not changed, but the strategy changes every time there's new information". Speed is about cycling between effective preparation (ready), responsive action (fire), and regular review of progress against vision in the form of strategy, mission, and culture (aim). A “Ready, Fire, Aim” business philosophy encourages mobilizing innovation throughout an organization.
Decisive marketplace evidence must be acted on right away. Evidence does not have to be clear and unequivocal but it has to be credible. The evidence found in weak and ambiguous signals is important because they are signs of earliness. The decisiveness is not found in its strength but rather in its implications - - in what it would mean if it were true. Evidence of impending change (which should be acted on right away) most often comes in the form of these weak signals.
Weak Signals
Of all the overlooked innovation practices, the ability to anticipate is perhaps the most critical skill. Deering, Dilts & Russell in their book Alpha Leadership say anticipation is not prediction but is rather the readiness to deal with whatever the future brings; it is being on our toes.
Anticipation has three distinct qualities:
- sensory ability to detect important trends early,
- mental agility sufficient to spot opportunities & threats embedded in these emerging trends, and
- the mobility and resources with which to seize the opportunities and evade the threats in good time.
They define these emerging trends as "weak signals". Anticipation is the eagerness and ability to detect and respond to weak signals in order to "get ahead of the curve". Successful innovators demonstrate the mental agility to respond appropriately to these weak signals and ready their followers to be fluid enough to respond quickly to new and changing circumstances. Sensory ability has not only to do with personal awareness but also the ability to create an “organizational skin" through which followers can sense or detect weak signals. So we need to build an openness into our organization that enables staff to raise concerns (and potential ideas) directly, easily and quickly. We need to honor and reward these messengers.
In business the skill is in the customer-facing employees. Organizational blindness can result when decision makers and leaders are insulated from the outside world. Leaders can easily lose the habits of watching and listening - - they lose touch with what their customers, clients, and competitors are thinking and doing. This vital organizational knowledge must in part be derived from a corporate sensory system. Frontline and external staff must be able to accurately perceive and relay not only commonly used information from the outside world but also the weak signals that foreshadow emerging changes in that world.
Picture Building
Waiting for strong signals and relative certainty is a losing game in this fast-paced world. Anticipation and certainty can be considered opposites. By the time strong signals are received, critical events are upon us. Instead of anticipating in a proactive manner, we are instead forced to react and scramble to cope with the new realities. Anticipation has to do detecting signals early, before they become clear. "Everyone can hear a shout, but only those with exceptional sensory systems can hear the barely audible whisperers where most of the opportunities and timely warnings lie".
Further, it is important to build a picture from multiple signals. Weak signals need to be corroborated by other signals. An innovation sensory system can help us deduce meaning from a combination of different signals; clarity and direction comes from analyzing multiple weak signal data. One processing system utilizes multiple signal information in six ways:
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Real-time information is continuously fed to those who need it
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External rather than internal data is relied upon
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Consideration of the data fosters dialogue
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The data is utilized to generate complete pictures of the world across all dimensions
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Data and information fed directly to key decision makers results in follow-through action
- The process is rhythmic and repeats over short cycles
In this way, action follows swiftly on the heels of signal detection.
Swarming
Leadership is it not really about individuals at all, but about the relationship between leaders and the led.... in the end, it is not what the leader does that matters, but what the led do, how quickly they do it and how easy it is for them to get hold of the resources they need to do it right.
Alpha Leadership.
An interesting part of mobilization is how leaders can help followers attain a high degree of self-organization and adaptability. They create lean structures to handle routine and repetitive tasks while enabling pools of highly talented people "to swarm" around threats and opportunities in flexible and creative adaptation. Leaders can empower followers by setting up innovation guidelines in which simple rules or principles - - not commands - - are the modus operandi for distributed decision-making, in which resources are free to move, and in which the value of redundancy is appreciated for its mobility function. Redundancy rather than efficiency provides flexible adaptive freedom; it multiplies the number of creative solutions available in response to detection of weak signals. Redundancy can be conceptualized as reserves to be mobilized to help “swarm” identified inflection points of threat or opportunity. Redundancy increases the power of “multiple option” decision-making opportunities. Anticipation in combination with human and resource mobility brings the freedom to adapt to change, threat and opportunity.
Action
Effective performance has three essential components:
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Focusing on where we can add the most value, and prioritizing tasks, will eliminate stressful overload while directing our concentration
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Speed and the timely use of "in-course correction" will reduce frustration and wasted effort while overcoming reluctance to act
- Perseverance and dogged pursuit of mission and dream along with understanding the vital importance of knowing when to stop
"What we do matters... Action is, in the end, the only thing that counts"
Fire = Action! There is never the perfect moment to act, so it is best to be in the habit of acting. Innovators need to keep their followers in motion. It is a universal principal that new pathways open up when we stay in action. Opportunities open up when communication with other people is frequent. Having vision helps us be aware of opportunities and to not filter them out. In this fast-paced world we need to learn to fire first (act) and ask questions (curiously) later. When innovators have their organizations in action, speed and time is less of an enemy. It is easier to reshape, reinvent and reinvigorate our organizations when they are in motion then when we are fighting the specific gravity of inertia. Growth is found in action. When we have made our followers ready they are alert, aligned and hungry. Nothing could be more demoralizing than inaction.
Mobilizing
The Anticipate, Mobilize & Swarm model is a cycling loop of alignment, action, adjustment, and anticipation. Effective alignment operates on three levels:
- Internal
- Relational
- Organizational
Internal or self-alignment increases the innovator’s ability to embody his or her vision or goals; a high level of personal alignment yields the charisma, congruence and vision that inspire followers to act effectively. Alignment of relationships forges coalitions amongst followers to get the job done; the focus on alignment is far more powerful than just concentrating on the task itself. The power in such alignment and the key to getting people to follow is to first understand what they want and where they want to go. The wider organizational alignment links culture to mission and values. Developing and nurturing culture is what frees followers to swarm unimpeded, resulting in extraordinary and practical creativity.
As innovators our vision will differ from others who are looking at the same map - - we are moving forward beyond what people are currently familiar and comfortable with. Henry Kissinger once said "the task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been". Our clarity of purpose spreads to our followers as we ask them what their activities achieve for those whom they serve. When creativity is channeled through what they do best, amazing innovation can happen.
Just start by thinking about redundancy. The dominance of the next quarter’s numbers (and the “bottom line”) tend to drive us to efficiency, not effectiveness, and so redundancy can all too easily become targeted as a cost-cutting measure. Grab a pen and write down how redundancy can offer flexibility, mobility and great innovation power to take advantage of emerging opportunities.
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