Global affairs are often unstable. This month, the Japanese stock market is reeling again, capping its worst performance in a week since the 2008 global financial crisis. Japan is not alone in its underperforming markets. However, globalization has connected countries through various elements. Financial markets are no exception. This article explores issues of change in a global environment and discusses the merits of change agents in organizations today.
Change occurs in many ways for organizations. In Harvard Business Review, author Rod Ashkensas set out a framework on how to deal with change: “It’s easy to punish ourselves for failures in change management and the various studies that show we’re not getting better at it. But we really know. how to perform discrete changes “. The basic type of change in organizations can be categorized as incremental (gradual) and disruptive (radical). Incremental change can be defined as “a small adjustment made towards a final result”. Managers are aware of the change or have enough advance notice to be able to react in a predictable and controlled way.
With incremental changes, organizations can make slow and systematic improvements. If you think about Whirlpool and its appliances, a person would have a good idea of how organizations respond to incremental changes. Customers, for their appliances, wanted them to reflect social changes. Faced with this reality, appliances such as refrigerators went from the basic colors of black and white to more unique color combinations. Electronic technology was included to make smart appliances. Companies now have enough time to react to consumer demand. Disruptive change doesn’t give organizations such a generous reaction period.
Disruptive change is what causes great companies to fail and the most respected CEOs to be fired. Organizations cannot afford to misinterpret this kind of change. Unlike incremental change that can have some predictability, disruptive change can be classified as unpredictable, irrational, and unstable. All of these adjectives mean higher risks for organizations. Disruptive change speaks to the changing nature of our society. Young adults are comfortable with their technology. We live in an instant society that wants everything now. Disruptive change can provide a market advantage.
Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, author of The innovator’s dilemma, coined the term disruptive innovation to explain how an innovation transforms an existing market or sector by introducing something simple, convenient, accessible and affordable for customers. In fact, the product and service will be vastly inferior to the status quo product or service. A disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and value network and ultimately disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leaders and alliances. One of the most disruptive innovations in modern education has been distance learning. Traditional universities have tried to ignore the model with modest commitment. The University of Phoenix, a nonprofit institution of higher education with more than 100,000 students and 112 campuses worldwide, has slowly outpaced the educational market. While the university has been criticized for its business practices and lost students, no one is claiming that the innovative distance learning strategy and treating students as customers is a flawed model.
Globalization with all its wonders represents a threat due to disruptive change. Organizations need leaders who are agents of change during this time in history, not just managers. Dr. Christenson points out the failures of large companies like Sears in the face of unforeseen changes: “As we will see, the list of leading companies that failed when faced with disruptive changes in technology and market structure is long … A common theme across However, one of these failures is that the decisions that led to failure were made when the leaders in the questions were considered among the best companies in the world. “
What is an agent of change? A change agent is someone who ‘helps an organization transform by focusing on issues such as effectiveness, improvement and development of the organization. A change agent has a high internal place of change. That reality means that this person is driven from the inside out. Under adversity, that individual has enough internal drive to overcome external forces. Os Hillman, author of Change agent: make your passion become the one who makes the difference, argues that change agents are special people.
To change culture, Hillman notes that an individual must be special: “It takes less than 3-5 percent of those who operate at the top of a cultural mountain to change the values represented on that mountain.” Many organizations are stagnant and need a change agent to carry them out. In most organizations, significant change does not happen from the bottom up. The following are characteristics of an effective change agent in a global environment: (1) Courageous, (2) Morally grounded, (3) Global mindset, (4) Visionary, (5) Strategic, (6) Adaptable, (7) Relational and (8) Committed.
Therefore, leaders in power must be agents of change in their organizations. Unfortunately, many executives are unwilling to spend their time developing and promoting change agents in their organizations due to fears about their shareholders and financial experts. As change continues to be faster and more unpredictable, today’s organizations must equip themselves effectively. They must embrace the hiring and development of change agents within their organizations.
© 2016 by Daryl D. Green
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 international license.