Con­stant change — Sum­mer day dream or real life reality?

”Great ideas cre­ate great companies”

One out­stand­ing idea and a pre­cise busi­ness plan. These lead com­pa­nies to a suc­cess. Sounds logical.

In real life, it’s sel­dom­ly this straight­for­ward. The most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies are not the ones that start with one out­stand­ing idea and keep it unchanged till the end. Instead, most com­pa­nies have defi­cient busi­ness plans. Most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies are the ones, which learn to change and to adjust over time.

If you want your com­pa­ny to grow, to flour­ish and final­ly to be suc­cess­ful, the only way is to con­tin­u­ous­ly adopt change. I list­ed to this blog some of the most impor­tant ele­ments to keep up with the speed of change.

Child­ish curiosity

Chil­dren absorb new infor­ma­tion and new skills at an aston­ish­ing speed. They are coura­geous, con­fi­dent, they trust their envi­ron­ment and peo­ple around them, they are not afraid to fail, and they are espe­cial­ly per­sis­tent. As an exam­ple, my son, when not yet reached one year, knew how to turn on my pc. As a next step he tried to change TV chan­nels by touch­ing the TV screen. As a dig­i­na­tive this was his first nat­ur­al choice to change chan­nels. Why do you need a sep­a­rate gad­get to change chan­nels, if it can be done sim­ply by touch­ing the TV?

Well, we grown-ups tend to know that chang­ing TV chan­nels is more com­fort­able when sit­ting on a couch and using a remote con­trol. At least we think we know. With­out this expe­ri­ence I would not be able to ques­tion it – or to gen­er­ate a change to it. By stick­ing to old pat­terns and doing always “in accor­dance with best prac­tice” is immense­ly dan­ger­ous for a company.

How to root into organ­i­sa­tions a sim­i­lar on-going nat­ur­al curios­i­ty, hunger for learn­ing new things and a cul­ture of exper­i­men­ta­tion? For many start-ups this is nat­ur­al. They enter the world with­out pri­or her­itage, with­out bur­den of inner pre­vi­ous cul­ture. No-one says to them “You can­not make it. We tried once, but it did not work”. The sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent in a com­pa­ny with a his­to­ry of decades. The com­pa­ny has expe­ri­enced both suc­cess­es and fail­ures and has in its mind “a sol­id recipe for success”.

It is very impor­tant for a com­pa­ny with a long his­to­ry to keep an open mind and to main­tain active cul­ture of experimentation.

Trust, safe­ty and a cul­ture of experimentation

One impor­tant fac­tor to cre­ate inno­v­a­tive atmos­phere is trust. Con­fi­dence in company’s com­mon goal, its way of work­ing and the sup­port­ive lead­er­ship cre­ates a com­mon frame­work for the whole business.

Trust enables a safe atmos­phere with­in an organ­i­sa­tion, and it is pos­si­ble to cre­ate new, to build, to try and to test. For exam­ple, accord­ing to Google’s study the most impor­tant fac­tor for the most suc­cess­ful teams was the psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty. Safe­ty increas­es co-oper­a­tion and peo­ple are not afraid to express them­selves more open­ly and gen­uine­ly. A feel­ing of trust can be increased con­scious­ly – increased by acts and com­mu­ni­cat­ed by actions.

Doing togeth­er is close­ly con­nect­ed to an atmos­phere of trust and safe­ty. A bare idea can be pre­sent­ed with­out crit­i­cism and can be fin­ished togeth­er. Chal­lenges will be mas­tered togeth­er and for prob­lems will be sought help auto­mat­i­cal­ly from sur­round­ing team. You will not try to solve sit­u­a­tions by your­self. In a safe envi­ron­ment an employ­ee will keep its flex­i­bil­i­ty and a feel­ing of self-con­trol. This way a per­son is more cre­ative, she/​he does not need to think if she/​he can express her/​his thoughts.

It is impor­tant to accept the chance of fail­ure. Every­one fail some­times and many of the suc­cess­ful solu­tions are born through tri­al and error. The trust with­in an orga­ni­za­tion and a clear space for exper­i­men­ta­tion give frames for a fail­ure. Once a fail­ure is lim­it­ed to a safe place – noth­ing shock­ing­ly big, a fail­ure which would jeop­ar­dize the whole orga­ni­za­tions oper­a­tions can­not take place. On the oth­er hand, it is pos­si­ble to find or to devel­op an inno­va­tion which will rev­o­lu­tion­ize the whole orga­ni­za­tion and the its business.

Many resources are need­ed to build a space like this, but it can also reward you gen­er­ous­ly. Tak­ing risks is nec­es­sary to unleash the change. In the same scale, there are a good and even a bet­ter alter­na­tive – lim­it­ed fail­ure and learn­ing of new or an inno­va­tion which cre­ates new busi­ness activ­i­ty and revenue.

Study, explore and ask – assure expertise

A change always calls for learn­ing new things. An orga­ni­za­tion must ensure a con­tin­u­ous devel­op­ment and the com­pe­tence of its employees.

It must be pos­si­ble for employ­ees to learn new skills and to explore new alter­na­tives. They must be autho­rized to use their cre­ativ­i­ty in a way, which pro­duces new ideas. This way the whole team is com­mit­ted to busi­ness activ­i­ties and wants to achieve the best pos­si­ble solu­tion in a com­pa­ny. This will be vis­i­ble to the cus­tomer at the end.

Skills that are need­ed are not only tech­ni­cal skills or mea­sur­able capa­bil­i­ties, they are more often soft skills, skills for coop­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, often it seems to be that these skills need­ed in coop­er­a­tion are not empha­sized enough in a busi­ness world – even the name “soft skills” make them sound rather unnec­es­sary. A sales per­son, whose knowl­edge of her/​his prod­ucts and mar­kets is in a class of its own, is not suc­cess­ful if she/​he does not have inter­per­son­al skills. Anoth­er exam­ple, an exec­u­tive must lis­ten to employ­ees, to think cre­ative­ly and he must have excel­lent emo­tion­al intel­li­gence skills.

Automa­tion and the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence change the way we work – there is less need for people’s tech­ni­cal knowl­edge. The soft skills become cen­tral in dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of teams and indi­vid­u­als. Skills like lis­ten­ing, co-oper­a­tion, pre­sent­ing ideas and com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the team mem­bers are good exam­ples of soft skills.

It is not nec­es­sar­i­ly dif­fi­cult to acquire so called hard skills and they can be com­ple­ment­ed with time. Soft skills are clear­ly more dif­fi­cult to learn and more chal­leng­ing to devel­op as they are close­ly con­nect­ed to the per­son­al­i­ty. To devel­op these asks for aware­ness, a con­tin­u­ous endeav­or and a com­mit­ment to devel­op one­self. Hard skills may look promis­ing on a CV, but soft skills sep­a­rate the experts from another.

Cus­tomers require soft skills. Mod­ern mar­ket offers a bound­less amount of dif­fer­ent choic­es through dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies. An inex­pen­sive price can be in some cas­es the deci­sive fac­tor, but often the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is at a same cri­te­ria lev­el as the price. The abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate mul­ti­di­men­sion­al­ly through the ser­vice life­cy­cle and after­wards is there­fore an impor­tant fac­tor in the organisation’s success.

To sup­port learn­ing calls for tools and train­ing. There­fore, you must take mea­sures in order to ensure the capa­bil­i­ty which is need­ed in the future. To sup­port the inner learn­ing of an orga­ni­za­tion it is easy to use the ques­tion “Why?”. It may lead to new ideas and innovations.

Espe­cial­ly new employ­ees who have just joined the orga­ni­za­tion are espe­cial­ly valu­able. They see the things for the first time with fresh eyes and can bring new unfore­seen ideas to the orga­ni­za­tion. Also, the exist­ing employ­ees should be encour­aged to make ques­tions. Why things are done as they are? Could this be done in a dif­fer­ent way – per­haps more effi­cient and better?

Agile and devel­op­ing organ­i­sa­tion in the heart of the ser­vice design

Cus­tomers want solu­tions to a prob­lem of which they are not yet aware. How can we as a com­pa­ny to rec­i­p­ro­cate to needs that are not yet loud­ly spoken?

The answer is: By open­ing eyes and by being present. Future and exist­ing cus­tomers must be observed pre­cise­ly, and their dai­ly pro­ce­dures and chal­lenges must be lis­tened to care­ful­ly. We as a com­pa­ny must help this con­ver­sa­tion, by ask­ing, by chal­leng­ing and by encour­ag­ing to new think­ing. This can be called design think­ing, ser­vice design or many oth­er terms can be used. How­ev­er, it is impor­tant to be gen­uine­ly present, to devel­op solu­tions active­ly and to see con­crete results.

The most impor­tant thing in this mod­el is the co-oper­a­tion. Vendor’s and customer’s roles have fad­ed, an even bor­der­line between them does not exit any more. In vendor’s role we can­not offer a ready solu­tion to a prob­lem from top to bot­tom – a cus­tomer must come to a jour­ney with us. The best solu­tions are not born fast-for­ward, they are born by explor­ing and devel­op­ing a solu­tion that meets the require­ments of customer’s real busi­ness case.

As an exam­ple, I would like to men­tion our insourc­ing ser­vice, which we devel­oped togeth­er with our cus­tomers to meet their needs. We care­ful­ly lis­tened the needs of our cus­tomers, their prob­lems and chal­lenges and under­stood their tar­gets. We noticed togeth­er that we can offer our exper­tise in order to sup­port the sit­u­a­tion of our cus­tomers and to help them to solve sud­den­ly born cir­cum­stances. We decid­ed to include this ser­vice to our ser­vice strat­e­gy, and we have received very good feed­back from sev­er­al cus­tomers who have used our insourc­ing service.

The facts of real life and why the change is needed?

It goes with­out say­ing that our busi­ness envi­ron­ment is chang­ing all the time. The cus­tomer needs are chang­ing unbe­liev­able fast and cause unfore­seen, new demand. Also, every organisation’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion is on a con­stant move. A com­pa­ny which is expe­ri­enc­ing a grow­ing demand, must con­sid­er of expand­ing, where­as in a weak­er sit­u­a­tion com­pa­ny is fac­ing job reduc­tions and pos­si­ble dam­ages to the strong com­pa­ny brand. Changes com­ing out­side the com­pa­ny are putting pres­sure to an ongo­ing change.

We are a 20-year-old fam­i­ly com­pa­ny, but we have kept “new born” ‑atti­tude and will­ing­ness to a con­tin­u­ous renew­al. One of the most refresh­ing com­ments was, when our cus­tomer described us “as a breath of fresh air and a refresh­ing pros­ec­co in the SAP world”. This tells us that we are on the right road. We dare to be dif­fer­ent, exper­i­men­tal and dar­ing, but at the same time we ques­tion at a con­struc­tive way. We fresh our cus­tomers way of think­ing when­ev­er necessary.

We can help your orga­ni­za­tion on the brink of a con­tin­u­ous change. Please con­tact us and make an appointment.

CON­TACT
Piia Hoff­sten
Chief Oper­at­ing Officer
piia.​hoffsten@​isletgroup.​fi
+358 40 5877 303

#change #agili­ty #pres­ence #ser­vice design