Notes for Course Project

The Nimble Challenge

With new technology, globalization of markets, and increased pressure for shareholder value, the tempo and thrust of change have been forever altered.

Change is a process triggered by an event.

In a world filled with unending organizational transition, the critical challenge after key decisions are reached is how they can be efficiently and effectively implemented.

Survival depends on successfully accommodating change.

The response to change can be self-destructive or self-nurturing.

The very core of success is in the midst of transition.

A success formula only remains viable if the following conditions prevail:

The loss of durability of an organization's success formulas demands that you recraft corporate formulas that you believe in and are committed to while remaining prepared to significantly alter or completely abandon them if conditions shift.

The more volatile the environment, the more important the changes become.

The mechanics of the realignment process:

"What Steps"

1. You must RECOGNIZE when a significant shift in external or internal pressures has impacted or will impact any of your organization's key success factors.
2. IDENTIFY which factor (s)) are in need of adjustment.
3. DETERMINE specifically what changes are necessary in each factor (if necessary, add new ones or eliminate existing ones).
4. FORMALIZE our decision to proceed with the changes.

"How Steps"

5. It is vital that you EXECUTE these changes in a manner that achieves their full intent.

Nimble businesses and agencies undertake important initiatives by completing all five steps with precision (faster and more efficiently than their competitors).

Unless Steps 1 through 4 are accomplished, there is no hope for maintaining a competitive position in highly turbulent markets.

The ability to execute important change decisions is what ultimately separates winners from losers in volatile and uncertain markets.

When leaders take on vital, expensive, and risky initiatives, they should be as vigilant about ROC (return on change) as they are about ROI (return on investment).

Consistently strong ROC has become a prerequisite for attaining expected ROI.

Execution costs comprises four factors:

1. The expense involved in determining what to do
2. The cost associated with how the human dynamics of change will be addressed.
3. The lost efficiency that typically occurs because attention is shifted from day-to-day duties to the implementation process
4. The price of any new infrastructure necessary to support the effort.

Most leaders fail to sufficiently prepare employees for transitions that are essential to the future survival and prosperity of their organizations.

At the heart of the struggle within most organizations is "execution deficiency."

Formula for return on change (ROC):

Nimbleness is the ability for an organization to consistently succeed in unpredictable, contested environments by implementing important changes more efficiently and effectively than its competitors, and thereby maintaining its desired ROC.

There are eight aspects of change that make it such a formidable experience:

1. Fear of change--Leaders' fear of major disruption inhibits their learning about it.
2. Demand versus capacity--The current amount of disruption may exceed an organization's capacity for absorbing it.
3. The entangled labyrinth--Transition can create a maze that complicates leaders' efforts to change things.
4. The layered texture of change--The many layers of the change phenomenon increase its challenge.
5. The learning organization and transition management literacy--Because most people have dangerously low levels of transition management literacy, their ability to succeed within ambiguity is reduced.
6. Nimble Expectations--Leaders' lack of understanding about the impact of expectations on human behavior lowers their chances of success with new initiatives.
7. Control and disorder--Success rates drop when leaders lack appreciation for how control and disorder affect people's lives.
8. Dynamic balance--Failures increase when the paradox of dynamic balance is not understood.

Fear of change:

Demand Versus Capacity:

The Entangled Labyrinth

The Layered Texture of Change

The learning Organization and Transition Management Literacy

Nimble Expectations:

Control and Disorder:

Dynamic Balance

ROC Revisited:

ROC must become a strategic concern for leaders who wish to create a nimble operation.

These chance encounters with overwhelming change are occurring more frequently and with more severe consequences today because our species is maturing.

We struggle with change because we are alive.

The Contained Slide--Creating the Nimble Organization

Like exceptional athletic performance, organizational nimbleness doesn't just happen.  Its the product of deliberate effort and unremitting hard labor.

The Nimble Organization is Always in Flux

Nimbleness is the ability for an organization to consistently succeed in unpredictable, contested environments by implementing important changes more efficiently and effectively than its competitors.

Threefold leadership required to become truly nimble:

1. Ensure that the enterprise is an "open system"
   keeping people and things in an unending growth and renewal mode
2. Take steps to increase its absorption limits
3. constantly press the envelope of these boundaries by introducing as many important changes as possible without overextending available adaptation resources.

The relationship between nimbleness and market success is firmly grounded.

Nimble organizations:

Nimbleness means being flexible, having speed, grace, dexterity, and resourcefulness.

Nimbleness is a distinction that is relative to the circumstances in which an organization finds itself.

Constrained Organizations-  operations that are unable to carry out decisions intended to deal with shifting demands for success.

Benefits of being a Nimble organization:

Nimble companies and agencies believe they must operate within a sphere of incessant novelty, and they treat their ability to manage the unexpected as a strategic asset.

Nimble organizations:

What distinguishes the nimble organization from its constrained counterpart?

The critical role of staffing

How control affects nimble capacities

The value of tolerating ambiguity

The importance of maintaining a health tension throughout the organization

The role  self-organization plays in an organization's future.

The shift from an event to a process mentality

The value of orchestrating both trips and journeys

How resilience is manifested in a nimble organization

Why conscious competence is so essential to a nimble legacy

The Nimble Provider
At any single point in time, there can be only one company that is able to recalibrate itself to the shifting needs of its customers the fastest and more effective than the competition.
Although being the nimble provider carries with it some implications, all businesses that advance their ability to absorb change will benefit from doing so.

Working in the Nimble Zone

To understand the true nature of change requires a view that all existence is constantly engaged in a struggle between order and chaos

Each of these forces represents a separate and powerful influence that acts to balance the impact of the other.

At the point where order and chaos most closely resemble one another, there exists the greatest possibility for broadening the human capacity to adapt to instability and uncertainty.

The environment within an organization can be characterized by one of six degrees of pressure from transition demands:

1. Complacency-  Few major initiatives
2. Continuous improvement-  Value for improving the status quo begins to emerge.
3. Intermediate movement-  Significant number of initiatives occurring that represent relatively modest movement.
4. Dramatic movement-  Many powerful, yet incremental movement.
5. Paradigm shifts-  Demands for change intensify beyond the boundaries of incremental movement.
6. Chaos-  An intensity of change with demands that are too massive for an organization's digestive system to absorb.

Within these six degrees, the amount of challenge and resources required to adequately accommodate disruption steadily advances from relative stability of complacency to the ultimate uncertainty and confusion of chaos.  In the first four order resides, the last two chaos.

Among the first four levels of change load is a common denominator that makes it possible for organizations to regain their equilibrium within the existing paradigm (adaptation reflex)

The four steps in the adaptation reflex:

1. Recognize the presence of unfamiliar data that can jeopardize previously established balance.
2. Render an interpretation of judgment as to the meaning of the new element.
3. Respond to the situation by determining a strategy for restoring equilibrium.
4. Realign expectations and perceptions by applying the correct strategy.

A primary system's state of health is a function of how many subsystems regain their balance after being disrupted and how crucial these subsystems are to the system's operation.

Once control is lost, it cannot be regained.  The dynamics of chaos then take over.

Chaos doesn't explode on the scene, it unfolds.

The early phases of chaos, is called formative future shock in which there exists the potential for greatest flexibility.

Although future shock is when people begin to display significant levels of dysfunctional behavior, it precedes full-scale chaos and creates a zone where nimbleness can thrive.

Formative future shock is that part of the realm between order and chaos where the factors that contribute to dysfunction are just forming and are only beginning to have an adverse impact on productivity and quality.

Bifurcation zone- when something that was whole and consistent splits and goes in two different and unpredictable directions.

What has been learned about bifurcation zones is that the period just before a system goes out of control is perilous, but is also when a system can squeeze the optimum agility from its resources (Like ice skaters pushing the limits in a turn)

When pressing the limits to find the edge of any envelope, there are tow kinds of systems:  Fixed and open.

Fixed-  various components have not been developed or in any way functionally advanced.

Open-  Due to internally and/or externally driven modifications, it is always in some stage of development.

The organizational envelope most important is the amount of disruption humans can absorb before displaying unacceptable dysfunctional symptoms (adaptation envelope)

Leaders are always pushing their organization beyond previous change boundaries but they do so with the belief that their company is an open system and that something they have done has increased its capacity to absorb disruption.

They only exceed change limits after they have taken some action that was designed to extent the limits.

Leaders must keep their organizations in a never-ending contained slide, pushing the limits of the adaptation envelope without losing control and falling into full chaos.

Tenacity and detachment are required.

What is required is an unwavering commitment to the pursuit of extending the limits of transition capability.

Most of us can adjust far better than our tears, pleas, and threats would suggest.

Human concerns must be responded to with sincerity and respect without leaders feeling compelled to withdraw the initiatives.

All our games have certain characteristics in common:

Managing organizational change is but one of the games we play; all of the above characteristics apply.

Games with a long history tend to mature over time making them much different than in years past.

Paradigms eventually outlive their viability;  they have a definitive shelf life.

Paradigms don't just materialize but are a response to people trying to make sense of their world.  When the range of responses suitable for one set of circumstances gives way to a completely different level of options, a new paradigm is born.

Old Paradigm-  The contiguous era of change is characterized by a belief that organizational transitions should unfold in an incremental fashion, where innovation is relatively sequential in nature.

New Paradigm-  Characteristics of the new paradigm of perpetual unrest:

The shifts required in the way change must be addressed as we move from the contiguous era to the perpetual unrest era are so dramatic that little else will be recognizable in the new paradigm.

Human Due Diligence assumes people have an elastic but at any pint in time finite reservoir of adaptation resources.

A nimble workplace is one that consistently succeeds in unpredictable, competitive environments though fast and effective modifications of its operations.  Human Due Diligence is the means by which a nimble work environment can be achieved.

The sole purpose for Human Due Diligence is to help create a nimble work setting in which changes critical to prosperity in the marketplace can be successfully implemented.

Human Due Diligence

Change is a process.  the process is unfamiliar to most leaders and there is a tendency to fall back on precedent.

Change is not just another process that can be treated as business as usual; it requires structure and discipline as never before.

Human due diligence -- dedication to structures and discipline around "people" issues clearly distinguishes masters from players who operate in a more constrained fashion.

Commitment to a serious, rigorous approach to the human side of change forms the basis for Human Due Diligence.

The term "due diligence" refers to the investigation done before taking important actions.

The term implies not a cursory review but an extensive investigation of the issues and implications surrounding vitally important decisions.

Because most senior officers relate to the due diligence process as a serious matter, Human Due Diligence it the term I use with leaders who are serious about orchestrating the people aspects of implementation architecture.

The magnitude of turbulence now prevalent in the workplace and the cost incurred when initiatives are not implemented correctly have both advanced to previously unheard-of levels.

In a relatively brief period of time this orientation toward organizational transitions rose and is now in the process of being discarded.

Human Due Diligence reflects the kind of paradigm leap we must take if we are to deal with the level of uncertainty.

An organization must remain vigilant in its efforts to maintain market alignment.

Once an organization's leadership has decided to pursue a particularly important change initiative, one question becomes critical:  "How will people be managed during the transition?"  The "how" of change has to do with orchestrating the human variables that influence an organizations success during change.

The defining feature of strategies that deal successfully with the "how" of change is the proper application of Human Due Diligence.

Human Due Diligence is applied whenever it is important to generate an adequate Return on Change from critical initiatives that are pursued.

When successful organizations are preparing for turbulent times and the stakes are high if change is not managed appropriately, Nimbleness becomes a nonnegotiable factor in the formula for success, and Human Due Diligence is the vehicle for its delivery.

If leaders fail to apply Human Due Diligence it is unlikely that the Nimbleness they need to execute their critical change initiatives will be available.

Human Due Diligence is simply a structured and disciplined way to bring about the nimble quality.

Although Human Due Diligence is vital to guiding the transition process, it should never be thought of as a terminal objective.

Market success is based on the appropriate deployment of Human Due Diligence, resulting in a Nimbleness that enables an organization to efficiently and effectively execute changes and attain its strategic objectives.

The level of ongoing change now occurring in and around most organizations requires a Nimbleness that can best be accomplished by applying structure and discipline to the human side of implementation (this is called Human Due Diligence).

Discipline is applied when the decision to proceed with the initiative is based on the findings rather than someone's ego or impatience.  Achieving discipline means applying guidelines, proceedings, and recommendations even when it's not easy or pleasant to do so.

Human Due Diligence demands a specific flow of events:

The primary purpose for applying Human Due Diligence is to help create and maintain a nimble environment throughout an organization.

Human Due Diligence will help deliver the two prime objectives necessary for the nimble organization:

1. Increasing its adaptation capacity
2. Reducing the unnecessary burdens it faces when implementing new initiatives

Human Due Diligence has three primary components:

1. Collection-  information is gathered about an organization's overall capacity to prosper during prolonged ambiguity
2. Planning-  Once proper due diligence information has been collected, it forms the basis for planning whatever actions are necessary
3. Action-  Based on the plans developed, the activities engaged in are intended to either increase adaptation capacity and or reduce implementation demands.

Issues that arise when exploring an organization's general readiness for change:

Issues related more to the execution of specific projects or tactical implementation:

After an organization collects information and plans what to do, Human Due Diligence calls for action.  Two types of action can be taken to maximize the Nimbleness of organizations:

1. Adaptation capacity can be increased.
2. Unnecessary implementation demands can be reduced.

Winning the new change game first requires a committed choice to deal with the human side of change.

The decision to pursue managing the people side of new initiatives with the rigor and seriousness that Human Due Diligence offers is one that leaders must consider carefully.

There is a distinct pattern that is a function of two factors:

1. the magnitude of the changes the organization actually pursues
2. the consequences incurred if those initiatives are poorly implemented

Dangerous problems start to arise if an operation tries to respond to too many pressures at once.

Change-related market turbulence is a measure of the number, nature, and speed of surprise being generated by such entities as an organization's technology, customers, competition, technology, and governmental regulations.

The magnitude or amount of change taken on by an operation reflects the initiatives it has chosen to engage, not all the ones it has been exposed to.

The term market turbulence is used to describe a set of forces over which leaders have no influence.

The respective decision-maker is in control of two change-related gates that affect his or her part of the organization's overall magnitude rating:

1. Cascaded initiatives
2. Locally sponsored initiatives

Change efforts that are legitimized or sponsored at any point in the hierarchy above the individual gatekeepers are called cascaded initiatives.

The reality of organizational politics suggests that successful projects are the ones that are legitimized by each resident gatekeeper in the system.

The magnitude of change faced by an entire organization is a function of three elements:

Commitment to major change is evident when people:

The most reliable predictor of commitment is the price people believe they will pay if they fail to achieve their change.

The success of any major change effort is directly tied to the severity of the price for the status quo.

Andy's Story explains how maintaining the status quo is more expensive that taking action.

Pain management-  the conscious orchestration of information to help people understand the high price they will pay if the status quo is left in place.

There are actually four kinds burning platform conditions organizations face:

1. Current Problems-  The most prevalent motivators for major transformation in our lives.
2. Anticipated Problem-  There is a suggestion that the situation will deteriorate significantly if the current course is maintained.
3. Current Opportunities-  occurs when we leave problem-centered change
4. Anticipated Opportunities-  Situations where the benefits of leaving the status quo can only be savored later.

The burning-platform story is about resolve--the tenacity to do whatever is necessary to no longer pay for the prohibitively expensive status quo.

Human Due Diligence requires a significant investment of resources.  This expense can only be justified if the negative consequences of the status quo are so high that it is less costly to invest in preventing or minimizing the risk of failing to orchestrate the human aspects of change.

Capacity Versus Demand

Winning the new change game requires a framework with two key elements:  an overall strategy and specific tasks.

The problem being addressed in this book is how to efficiently and effectively execute critically important change initiatives.  The intensity of this challenge originates in the struggle with the inherent loss of control that occurs when familiar reference points suddenly become irrelevant, and new questions surface.  The Solution necessitates the creation of a dynamic balance within organization.  Hope for the future lies in the possibility of building nimble operations.  The Means for achieving the desired nimble state it through the application of the structured discipline approach called Human Due Diligence.  To accomplish this, dual Strategies must be pursued:  An organization must increase its capacity for absorbing disruption and reduce the unnecessary demands being placed on its existing resources to accommodate change.

Strategies:

1. Increasing Capacity
   Responsibility for accelerating an entire organization's capacity to absorb major change starts at the TOP.
   The decision to increase adaptation capacity may be based on (1) a desire to improve on or eliminate a deficient situation or (2) a wish to institute preventative measures whereby avoidable future shock is blocked from occurring.
   Reprioritization of existing resources is a vital component to any operation trying to survive but should not be confused with an increase in overall capacity.
   The intellectual, emotional, and physical energy needed to recalibrate expectations is not a resource that is quickly replenished.
   A decision to intentionality raise the organization's adaptation capacity must be made far in advance of the rising tide of change.
2. Reducing Demand
   Winning the new change game will be the result of both investments and sacrifices.
   The decision to dedicate resources is more about saying "no" than saying "yes".  It's about sacrifice more than contribution.
   When senior officers are faced with the need to introduce more change than their organization can adequately absorb, it becomes critical that they place all the various current and prospective initiatives into one of three categories:
   1. Unacceptable ideas-  Are by definition more expensive to implement than the value they would create.
   2. Good Ideas-  Are likely to generate positive results such as making a profit, delighting customers, pleasing shareholders, satisfying board members, complying with governmental regulations, being attractive to industry analysts, etc.
   3. Business Imperatives-  Are likely to generate such value that the cost for failing to implement them would be prohibitively high (burning platforms).

The Payoff-  the expense in time, money, effort, and lost opportunity is such that most leaders will be reluctant to engage in the process. Companies that enjoy a preemptive advantage don't eliminate competitors, they intimidate and embarrass them.

The nimble organization is able to adjust itself to such high levels of turbulence that:

An important part of leadership today is fashioning a work setting that is specifically structured to encourage the absorption of change.  This is best done by applying the structure and discipline of Human Due Diligence for the purpose of increasing adaptation capacity and lowering implementation demands.

Regarding the raising of adaptation capacity, there are three main points of application:

1. Strategic oversight-  Board members should formally establish nimble character.
2. Change leadership-  Once the proper senior-level executives are in place, they must, in turn, prepare employees for ongoing change
3. Enterprise-wide Envelope-  A work environment must be established that will help people adjust to change.

Regarding the ability to reduce demands there is one key point of application.  Change sponsorship-  After local decision makers are prepared for their role as sponsors, they then provide the direction and commitment necessary for specific change projects to succeed.

Nimble Leadership Capabilities

The nimble organization is as dependent on capable leaders as it is on resilient people below them.

Key players in the nimble organization fall into two categories:  (1) those outside the organization's formal boundaries who can influence the amount of attention paid to the human side of change and (2) those inside the boundaries who can influence enterprise-level preparation for change.

Analysts will soon ask not only about margins and new-product release dates, but also about the agility of the organization in question.

As analysts come to recognize how important orchestrating human capital during transitions is to the success of new initiatives, they will demand more than flippant responses from CEOs, CFOs, and COOs to their questions

If nimbleness is not included in what board members consider the essential components in their mandate to the senior officers they hire, the existence of a truly nimble culture is left either to mere chance or to the personal preferences and personalities of the senior officers.

As the cost of poor implementation starts to increase at a rate that corresponds to the advancing demands for change, it will become more and more difficult to ignore the critical importance of addressing the human side of change in a disciplined manner.

The Nimble Charter

There is always some form of charter or mandate from the board to the senior officers it hires delineating what is to be accomplished during their tenure.

Seldom do charters include any stipulations about increasing the organization's ability to absorb the escalating demands on its adaptation resources.

Matching Change Demands and Leaders' Orientation

A detailed analysis of the present and future change demands on an organization's adaptation resources should be conducted to determine whether nimbleness is truly a nonnegotiable component to long-term competitiveness or just another whimsical fad.

Such an analysis should focus on the two key forces that define the load that disruptions impose on an organization:  magnitude and consequences.

The impetus for Nimbleness should start with the board.

Board members need to understand the critical nature of their hiring and retention decisions as they relate to change readiness and the CEO and his or her direct reports.

Some degree of misgivings is inevitable because the initial eagerness to work together is usually based on a superficial understanding of (1) the strengths and weaknesses of the parties involved and (2) the potential dangers and opportunities the business situation itself might present.

"Checking-out" occurs when either party openly terminates the relationship or covertly withdraws his or her energy and investment in the other person but continues to present public display of cooperation.

Little time or energy is usually invested in examining the candidate's general views about how fundamental change occurs.

Eight factors should be part of the hiring criteria:

1. Capable of performing the basic job duties
2. Has a compatible chemistry with board members and other key senior officers
3. A keen understanding must encompass the reasons the board identified certain changes as imperative to the organization's future
4. Proper match must be made between the candidate's leadership orientation toward the execution of organizational change and the magnitude of change the organization is experiencing.
5. An ability for mastery-level competence in the dynamics of change must be demonstrated
6. A sufficient demonstration of personal resilience must be present to suggest the candidate can sustain the change-related challenges that will arise
7. Ability must exist to understand and operationalize the knowledge and skills necessary to optimize the shelf life of the various organizational paradigms in place
8. A capacity must exist to create the proper working environment that will allow people to be hired and managed in such a way as to maximize nimbleness

Change Leadership Styles

When major organizational transitions are attempted, it is ultimately the prerogative of the top executives or senior team to determine what approach, if any, will be applied in addressing the people side of implementation.

Today's executives need to be aware of the various leadership styles available in order to decide which one would be best to apply to their organization.

Six distinct leadership styles:

Only two factors really matter when determining which style is best for an organization. The success rate of various approaches is most influenced by the magnitude of these changes and the consequences if the initiatives are poorly implemented.

Two basic types of change that leaders address within organizational settings:

the perpetual unrest era of change, just now emerging, is characterized not by step increments of advancements, but by geometric explosions in both the magnitude of disruptions being encountered and the price being paid for failing to execute key corporate initiatives.

Each of the Leadership styles has a set of assumptions and goals that when properly applied in the correct environment, can result in success.

We are in the process of moving from the contiguous era to one of perpetual unrest, and new approaches to transitioning are in order

Each perspective must be considered a legitimate point of references on a continuum of ways organizations can respond to disruption.

As you balance conflicting demands and priorities, your personal adaptation capacity is taxed to the limit.

The single most important factor for enhancing the speed of change is resilience.

Five personal characteristics that define resilient behavior:

1. Positive-  Resilient individuals effectively identify opportunities in turbulent environments and have the personal confidence to believe they can succeed.
2. Focused-  Resilient individuals have a clear vision of what they want to achieve, and they use this as a lodestar to guide them when they become disoriented.
3. Flexible-  Resilient individuals draw effectively on a wide range of internal and external resources to develop creative, pliable strategies for responding to change.
4. Organized-  Resilient individuals use structured approaches to managing ambiguity, planning, and coordinating effective in implementing their strategies.
5. Proactive-  Resilient individuals engage action in the face of uncertainty, taking calibrated risks rather than seeking comfort.

Each of these five elements of resilience is important.  Although they are interrelated to some extent, they represent separate facets of a fully formed approach to change.

We have to come to view resilience as the ability to draw effectively on whichever characteristic, or combination of characteristics, is called for in a particular situation.

High levels of change demand place a heavy strain on adaptation resources and affect physical well-being.

there is a positive relation ship between an individual's strength in the resilience characteristics and his or her level in the organization.

Optimizing Paradigm Life Spans

Organizational paradigm-  a generally accepted view of an important operational framework that supports how an organization is perceived to function and how it represents its true rules for success.

Once built and functioning, paradigms will continue to operate in a useful manner until the inescapable entropy that eventually consumes all systems overtakes the momentum toward sustainability.

All operational paradigms have two alternative trajectories:  one reflects the natural course of events and the other reflects leaderships intentional efforts to influence a paradigm's shelf life.

This model is used to describe the five phases in the life of organizational paradigms:  (1) building, (2) harvest, (3) uncertainty, (4) decay, and (5) renewal.

Paradigms must be managed.

Renewal means rebuilding from the ground up.

Paradigms are not broken by consensus

Incumbency is an inhibitor to true paradigm renewal

Crisis is a prerequisite to renewal

Paradigm renewal is either facilitated or limited by the organization's ability to learn from its experiences

New Paradigms cannot be supported by old cultures.

Fine-Tuning the Nimble Organization

Conditioning for Constant Turbulence

In any serious game, it is not the motivation to succeed that poses a problem, it's the conditioning necessary so that winning is possible.

Change leaders are like the coaching staff of an organization preparing for the big game with its arch rival, perpetual unrest.

Companies seeking to be more nimble have entered a competitive match that never ends.

People either perform well under theses kinds of on-the-job training conditions or they don't.

With so much at stake for both the players and the organization, leaders must be as vigilant as possible about recruiting only talented people who demonstrate a predisposition for the  game, and who can resonate well with the mental and emotional conditioning necessary to succeed.

Nimble companies continually reinforce for employees that the organization is competing in volatile, extremely inconsistent, risky markets.

In a nimble organization, employees and management alike know that only one response to change is considered unsuitable--Being surprised at surprises.

The watch words for a nimble organization are:  "Anticipate all you can, and then expect more."

Expanding Change Knowledge

A basic and shared knowledge about the mechanics of organizational change can serve as the foundation for a strong transition management literacy.

When associates understand this dynamic, they can better manage their own and others' reactions to unfamiliar circumstances.

Seven support patterns that compose the structure of change:

A key aspect of the enterprise-wide envelope is your employees' mastery of the transition process.

Genuine Delegation and Empowerment

The next contribution to the enterprise-wide envelope is the proper mix of delegation and empowerment.

Delegation is the act of granting someone in the lower levels of the organization responsibility and accountability for decision making.

Empowered employees are those whose input is considered valuable enough to influence the outcome of key decisions, but who are not in a position to make final decisions themselves.

Inviting participation in the decision-making process does not mean the decision maker has given up responsibility for the final determination.

Empowerment represents both employees' willingness to provide input to a decision maker and an environment in which that input is valued.

Empowerment describes a process where those who have useful contributions can influence decisions, and those responsible for making decisions are open to qualified input.

Empowerment can originate at any level and go in any direction in a hierarchy.

People are empowered only in the context of certain relationships at certain times.

An individual's empowerment is usually specific to a decision, or even several categories of decisions, but it does not usually extend to all decisions.

The antithesis of empowerment is victimization.

Victims are people with negative situations who believe they have no alternatives available to them.

Two factors encourage a decision maker to surround himself or herself with empowered people who can influence the decision(s) that must be made:  (1) the latitude allowed by the situation and (2) the other person's ability to add value to that decision.

Empowerment is not something that an organization grants to its people or can transfer to them through training.  It is a special status that is merited by building credibility through previous interactions.

Three primary aspects of a situation influence whether employees are willing to offer suggestions to their boss. (1) They must perceive the decision maker as open to input, (2) they must have faith in the decision maker's ability to make sound decisions, and (3) they must perceive the decision as important.

The responsibility for building and maintaining empowered relationships lies with both the decision makers and the participants who offer their ideas and options.

Beliefs are the foundation of empowered relationships. Motivations are the driving force behind empowerment.

Actions are the behavioral evidence of empowerment.

The Decision-making Sequence (relating to empowerment):

People represent one of the organization's greatest natural resources, yet their skills, experiences, and viewpoints are often underutilized.

Building empowerment between decision makers and employees involves several payoffs:

Involvement at all levels of an organization is key to the successful execution of a major change.

The Value of Structured Flexibility

Without unmet needs and desires to motivate us, we would tend to remain fixed and stagnant at some point on the various continua we encounter.

Navigating between these opposing destinations is not a choice we are afforded; it is intrinsic to being alive.

Nimble organizations tend to attract and retain people who have an unconscious, if not overt, appreciation for the movement they experience between the ends of their personal continua.

From a nimble perspective, each venture brings new insights and learnings.

Flexible structure-  an organization places the priority on order while leaving room for creativity and spontaneity.

Structured flexibility-  implies that the hoped-for agility can best be attained in a state of true organized flux.

Structured flexibility is an effort to practically apply the value both ends represents.

In a constrained organization, either people are taught to rigidly adhere to the directions they are given or they have too few procedures to follow and are left to reinvent the wheel each time they pursue a task.

Instead of an environment that requires people to either get their job done or follow procedures, it provides a mechanism for adhering to, as well as officially breaking from, sanctioned procedures.

Structured flexibility means: (1) employees at all levels feel encouraged to act on their creative ideas and apply their closer-to-the-customer perspective, while at the same time, (2) management can have confidence that the operation is still within their ability to influence.

Ensuring Effective Implementation

As we move into the sponsorship of specific initiatives, the activities to be outlined may or may not be done by the same leaders who set the nimble context for the organization.

Sponsors are responsible for sanctioning the actions necessary to successfully implement major change initiatives.

Sponsor characteristics critical to the success of change:

The real challenge in maintaining the course of change is the sponsor's resolve not only to initiate change but to persist in it.

Initiating sponsors are those with the power to break from the status quo and sanction a significant change.

Black holes-  management's change rhetoric is pulled, as if by gravity, into bureaucratic layers and structures wherein it forever vanishes without trace or effect.

Black holes form where there are local or sustaining sponsors who do not adequately support an announced change.

The relationship between leaders and sponsors is important to the overall success of change endeavors.

Sponsors pursue business imperatives with the determination and compulsive tenacity that come from a burning-platform mentality.

The Destination is the Journey

Building a nimble organization is the most challenging task leaders face today.

The journey toward mastery of change is at once necessary, intimidating, and alluring.  The thing to remember is that setting out on the journey means never arriving because change forever changes.

Mastering the Leadership Role

Accomplishing the full  value of the changes business leaders have promised their boards, shareholders, and analysts has become the exception.

There appear to be ten basic stops on the road to becoming a master builder of a nimble organization:

1. Ignorance
   When most new leaders or incumbents first take on a major initiative that represents more of a challenge than they have faced before, they enter the road to nimbleness at a small community called ignorance.
2. Education
   when ignorance leads to recognizing and taking responsibility for the failure of an important change, and the cost of that failure provides the motivation to seek new answers the traveler has reached Education
3. Insight
   Exploring previous change attempts, matching those experiences against what was learned and separating theory from practical application and identifying nuances
4. Intent
   At this stage of the journey, the key lessons center around focusing one's resolve toward the change objective.
5. Commitment
   Commitment to achieving something is the level of investment people make when they encounter not a good idea for change but a business imperative.
6. Structure
   Tools and mechanisms used to promote growth.
7. Discipline
   The value of compulsive tenacity--unrelenting resolve to persevere in the face of resistance
8. Antabuse
   learn how to solicit input from others regarding how well the leadership behavior is being perceived as aligning with what is needed to achieve the stated change objectives.
9. Tough Love
   Being forced to face the realities even if you don't want to face them.
10. Mastery
    Mastery comes from using one's knowledge and proficiency to not only profit from the game as it has been played but to use the success that has been achieved as a foundation for pursuing the more advanced levels of the game's complexity.

Model that describes how one moves from one level of proficiency to the next in the change game:

The journey to mastery

People will develop at their own pace and with varying degrees of learning mastery.

View advancement toward mastery as a wave moving through the critical levels or lessons to be learned.

The road from ignorance to mastery is measured at least in years.

Minimally, you must stay ahead of the competition on your journey if you plan to be or remain the nimble provider in your chosen market.

The Journey:  A Route Finder:

Where from Here?

Guidelines for beginning the path forward:

1. Focus on nimbleness as a key to market success
   Execution is undertaking the successful implementation of the changes in such a way that you not only achieve the desired results, but you preserve as much human adaptation capacity as possible.  The primary reason for pursuing nimbleness is: When you are able to move through this sequence of change identification and implementation more effectively than your competitors, you will have achieved a decisive competitive advantage for your organization.
2. Focus on Human Due Diligence as a means for achieving the desired nimbleness.
3. focus on raising capacity and reducing demand
   To keep an organization functioning in a nimble fashion requires tow simultaneously applied strategies:  increasing adaptation capacity and reducing the unnecessary demands on an organization's existing adaptation resources.
4. Focus on who does what
   HDD activities begin at the board of directors level.  HDD responsibilities continue with the senior leaders chosen by the board.

Implications for leaders

Your organization cannot afford to implement any nonessential changes.  Creating an environment that is receptive to your efforts is another challenge.

You also need to ensure that you will receive honest feedback.

For each critical initiative that is undertaken, you need to clearly articulate the alignment between the goals of the project and the achievement of critical business imperatives.

You must ensure that the success of the all-important change projects is defined, tracked, and measured not only in terms of financial and technical objectives but also in terms of human and opportunity costs so that the ROC on the initiative is evaluated accurately.

It may seem strange that most of your challenges are about standing your ground and giving honest feedback rather than overcommitting yourself, but that's what you must do.

When leaders don't receive accurate information about resources they can easily overdraw the change bank account.

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