SUCCESS FACTORS IN LEARNING & CHANGE? Dr David Spicer Senior Lecturer in Organisational Change

Accelerating Corporate Transformations (Miles, 2010) Changes must be bold and rapid to succeed Organizational ‘speed brakes’: 1.Cautious Management Culture 2.Business-as-Usual Management Process 3.Initiative Gridlock 4.Recalcitrant Executives 5.Disengaged Employees 6.Loss of Focus During Execution

How to Thrive in Turbulent Markets (Sull 2009) Agility to spot and exploit market changes: 1.Operational : Identify and seize opportunities more quickly than rivals 2.Portfolio: Shift resources into attractive opportunities 3.Strategic: Identify and seize game changing opportunities Absorption to withstand market shifts: 1.Low fixed costs 2.War chest of cash 3.Diversified cash flows 4.Vast size 5.Tangible resources 6.Intangible resources 7.Customer lock-in 8.Protected core market 9.Powerful patron 10.Excess staff

Champ or Chump? Low High AGILITY ABSORPTION Dancers Champs Chumps Power- houses

The Ambidextrous Organisation (Birkinshaw & Gibson, 2005) Low High Social Support Context Performance Management Context Country- Club High- Performance Low- Performance Burn- out

Adaptive & Generative Learning (Senge, 1990) Adaptive Learning: –coping and dealing with the environment in new and better ways –propensity to work with know quantities Generative Learning: –the development of new skills and new ways of working –propensity to innovate

SME Learning & Performance SalesProfitEfficiencyImageQuality Leadership – change Leadership – people Leadership – task Learning – adaptive Learning – generative Strategy – innovation Strategy – cost min HRM – employee HRM – control

Implications Innovative, change oriented, people focused and learning enabled approaches are likely to be beneficial, but not at the expense of efficiency and cost and control oriented practices. The challenge for firms in maintaining and combining the strengths of the different perspectives and avoiding the pitfalls of focussing entirely upon a single approach. But raises more questions ?

Dynamic Capabilities “the capacity of an organization to purposefully create, extend or modify its resource base” (Helfat et al. 2007: 4) 1.Sense and shape opportunities and threats 2.Seize opportunities 3.Enhance, combine, protect and reconfigure assets (Teece 2007)

Stages of Organizational Transformation (after Dixon et al. 2010) Stage I Stage II Stage III Leadership Organizational Learning Dynamic Capabilities Performance Transactional Exploration Search & Innovation Sustainable Competitive Advantage Contingent Transformational Exploitation Deployment Short-term Survival Awareness of Need to Change Institutional Imprinting

A Question... What capabilities are needed to sustain (your) organizations over the next 10 years?

References Birkenshaw J. & C. Gibson (2005) The ambidextrous organization, AIM Executive Briefing, London: Advanced Institute of Management Research. Dixon, S.E.A., K.E. Meyer & M. Day (2010) Stages of organizational transformation in transition economies: A dynamic capabilities approach, Journal of Management Studies 47: Helfat, C., S. Finkelstein, W.Michell, M.A. Peteraf, H. Singh, D. Teece & S. Winter (2007) Dynamic Capabilities: Understanding Strategic Change in Organizations. Malden MA: Blackwell. Miles, R.H. (2010) Accelerating corporate transformations (don’t lose tour nerve), Harvard Business Review, January. Senge P. (1990) The Fifth Discipline: New York: Doubleday. Sull, D. (2009) How to thrive in Turbulent markets, Harvard Business Review, February. Teece, D.J. (2007) Explicating dynamic capabilities: The nature and microfoundations of (sustainable) enterprise and performance, Strategic Management Journal 18: