The title of this piece is good advice for the young lad in the nursery rhyme and likely for many organizations going through change. . You’re probably familiar with the saying, “To the victor go the spoils.” Now there’s a new twist on that message—“To the nimble go the spoils”—as explained in a recent journal article.1 It’s the authors’ contention that, in the business world, the victors will indeed be those who are nimble and who adapt.
Now, at first glance, I wasn’t sure how “new” this idea really is. Don’t you and I already know this? During the last two or three decades, there are myriad examples of nimble organizations eating the lunch of their slow-footed rivals. Think of the Japanese automakers who have grabbed large chunks of the US market from their Detroit rivals. Then think about what Netflix and Redbox have done to Blockbuster (remember them?). Corporate graveyards are home to multitudes of other companies who didn’t see the signs, who didn’t move fast enough, or who resisted change. So I’m thinking, what’s new?
The authors point to several factors that are either new or increasing in scope and/or intensity. These include: new technologies, greater transparency, globalization, huge volumes of changing information, and unpredictable environments. The result? Uncertainty—and uncertainty undermines the traditional approaches to strategy, which assume “a relatively stable and predictable world.” The authors assert that it’s no longer sufficient to try to produce competitive advantages by assembling the right competencies and resources to produce desirable customer offerings. They believe that sustainable competitive advantage, which is what we’re all pursuing, is born out of rapid adaptation.
So if adaptability is the Holy Grail, how do we acquire and practice it? The authors say we need four organizational capabilities:
- Ability to read and act on signals of change. The organization needs to tune in to signals from outside the organization, figure out what the signals are saying, and then act on them quickly and appropriately. Although this sounds straightforward enough, experience tells us that this is much easier said than done.
- Ability to experiment. To gain advantages, companies need to change the way they experiment and they need to broaden their experimentation. Technology can assist here, and the authors mention Procter & Gamble’s internal open-innovation networks that are used to solve technical design problems. They also describe the importance of dealing constructively with experimentation failures, tolerating them and even celebrating them.
- Ability to manage complex multi-company systems. Our own parent company (inVentiv) organization is an example of this type of system. In the authors’ view, strategies need to be created at the broad system or network level, not at the single-company level. The strategies must consider and include the full spectrum of players, whether they reside inside or outside the organization. Nokia is cited as a company that has suffered big-time because, unlike its competitors, it failed to successfully apply the systems approach to its strategies.
- Ability to mobilize. Organizations need to create the environments that encourage all of the factors (eg, communication flows, autonomy, flexibility, and risk taking) needed to become a successful adapter. Again, this is easier said than done—not all companies are willing or able to accomplish this. The article cites examples at Cisco, Whole Foods, and Netflix to show how companies successfully mobilize.
Maybe all of this reminds you of the stark survival imperative in the real-life world of nature, “Adapt or die.” It applies to us, too. So, returning to our nursery rhyme, if Jack isn’t nimble, he’s going to get burned. Likewise, if organizations aren’t nimble, they too run the risk of getting burned. Makes sense to me.
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