The waves of crisis are increasingly overlapping: Covid waves, climate crisis, supply bottlenecks, energy supply, embargo consequences and a new looming financial crisis. And the ‚old‘ challenges are still there too: digital transformation, demographic change, skills shortages, decarbonization and electrification.
How do you make an organization strategically fit and resilient? How can employees be emotionally stabilized?
Transformations move in waves and curves – driven by innovations, companies and societies develop out of crises.
In change management, we are familiar with similar curves in the emotional processing of change. Shock, sadness, hope, reorientation are followed by trial and error, initial successes and possibly euphoria again. Here, too, ‚trying out the new‘ (innovations) is what generates self-efficacy experiences in us, makes us capable of acting again and thus pulls us out of the crisis.
Charles Darwin once wrote: ‚It’s not the strongest of all species nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change‘. This requiresa bang at the beginning that creates a ‚sense of urgency‚ – which is now there – and that is a great opportunity for many organizations.
If you look at human history or nature (after forest fires, for example), the vast majority of crises result in a higher level of development in the long term than before. Systemic laws seem to apply here. And in the economy, too: many old companies often disappear in crises, while new ones emerge – but some of the old companies also transform themselves and even become stronger than before the crisis.
How does this work in practice?
How can you actively shape your entrepreneurial ‚U‘ and be among those who are ‚most responsive to change‘? As change managers, we have been dealing with such phenomena for many years and have learned from supporting many companies.
The most important factor is innovation.
The survivors or ‚first movers‘ of a crisis are usually those who innovate quickly. And this is not always necessarily about technical innovations!
In addition to all digital technology, it is important to understand new customer needs precisely and react to them quickly, interpret new regulatory standards, recognize opportunities in supply and value chains and form alliances. In other words, you have to be able to recognize the drivers of your own business beyond your own contribution to value creation and interpret them in relation to the future. There are proven methods and tools for this.
You can hire a consulting firm and have them work out the systemic effects of the massive changes and solution options for your own business model, your own industry. That’s good, and of course I’m happy as a consultant, but it usually costs a lot of money.
Innovate with your own talents
Another way would be to systematically mobilize the talent in your own organization. Nobody knows their own business better than their own employees. There are always untapped skills lying dormant in your own organization. Employees often have a keener eye for weaknesses in an organization than you might think. You just have to know how to ask them the right questions to overcome operational blindness. That’s a bit of an art.
And you have to give your own employees freedom and provide them with the appropriate methodology – such as design thinking. Then a completely underestimated innovation potential can be discovered in almost every organization – a ’seed‘ of the new after the crisis.
Employees who find and help to leverage innovation potential gain visibility, gain project experience and learn methodically. Being able to help shape things creates a sense of self-efficacy and self-confidence. And it is precisely this self-confidence that an organization needs in order to develop the necessary energy for action in a crisis.
And: self-developed innovations have a much higher probability of implementation than consultant-induced ones!
You just have to get it right!
Now comes the advertising block:
We have developed and implemented very successful ‚Talents meet Innovations‚ projects for a large number of companies.
Talents from within the company can find weak points and cost-cutting potential, but also drive forward new product ideas or process innovations.
This should be driven and supported by top management.
We help to organize this: In the selection of talent, in the kick-off, in writing up the innovation projects or analyses, in the creative development of solutions, in the perfect presentation. What the talents learn in the process is much more than any traditional training program – we incorporate our training units into the talent projects. And we help the managers to mentor the talents.
At the end, there is often a large event with all stakeholders and managers, which is usually organized by the talents themselves and in which the innovation ideas are evaluated and implementation is initiated. The economic effects of such innovation projects almost always outweigh the costs of the project.
Our customers have already initiated and implemented major transformations in this way. With their own resources!
Nothing creates more energy for change than feeling your own strength!
