Faced with questions regarding how to change the obsolete organizational paradigms? How to overcome the mental models of the past? How to develop sustainable projects? In short, how to prepare for the unforeseen?
The answers are varied and come from innovative management recipes that come to the aid of organizations, facing the constant and increasing problems caused by globalization, uncertainty and increasing complexity. Most of these management models have the same metaphysical vision, the same map, to face new realities that, due to their characteristics, make them structurally and functionally insufficient. It is for this reason that when we succeed in the “what to do”, the “how to do it” fails us, and when the daily intuitive practice (how to do) results in surprising successes, we fail to integrate it into a strategic plan (what to do) that facilitate sustained growth (Druker, 1996).
Almost without noticing it, we permanently pigeonhole creative and innovative thinking, limiting ourselves to thinking about already existing situations and patching them with known solutions trying to decrease our cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), at the same time that we block our ability to observe the world as a whole. dynamic; instead of overcoming unconscious resistance to change (Peter Senge, 2009), seek unconventional solutions based on giving freedom to creativity and imagination and being able to prevent the consequences of the "impact of the highly improbable" (Taleb, 2008).
This presentation provides some ideas for " Innovating the Future of the Organization"; considering the organization in its concept of living organism, as "entities with collective intelligence", which possess many of the properties common to living systems, as a group of people who seek to fulfill a vision through a strategy, interrelated with a environment and subject to permanent participation in the creation, conscious or not, of the reality that surrounds them.
Trata de ver como el “yo, el nosotros y el ello circundante” se entrecruzan y entretejen en el espacio y el tiempo. Parafraseando las sabias palabras de Aldous Huxley, cuando expresaba: “La experiencia no es lo que te sucede, sino lo que haces con lo que te sucede”, podemos decir que la experiencia no es lo que nos pasa sino la interpretación que hacemos de lo que nos pasa.
This doing is an interpretation of reality in which we are totally involved in one way or another regarding how we perceive the present, how much we long for the past and how we imagine the future. Do we perceive the present, the past and the future as three separate and successive moments in time; Or are we experiencing a single present reality whose extremes we call past and future? This distinction is very important, since in the first perception-interpretation we are talking about three different situations-objects, while in the second, reality and our consequent perception-interpretation is one, in which our consciousness in its continuous flow he experiences much more than he interprets.
If our attitude towards experience is the first, we live a fleeting present in permanent waiting for the immediate future, which once arrived becomes a fleeting present again, permanently fragmenting reality.
If our attitude, on the other hand, is the second perception, we are referring to a constant work to expand the consciousness of the Present to encompass, in some way difficult to explain but not for that reason unreal, what we call Future; which totally changes our relationship with the Future, moving this to integrate our ever-present experience.
Undoubtedly, it is necessary to exercise our brain and mind in different ways than we are used to in order to acquire a new way of thinking that facilitates expanding the perception of reality. It is required to put into practice our spiritual intelligence, develop new cognitive skills and practice techniques such as Otto Scharmer's modern Theory U (2008), as a process of problem solving and decision making from the emerging future.
This continuous "teaching-learning" situation begins in our Self, then it extends to our social life - family, work, studies, etc.-. seeking to imbue all our circumstances with a holistic and comprehensive perception that allows us to understand and interpret reality in a much more complete and comprehensive way.
The first attitude tells us about the Future of the Organization, that is, it sees the future as something foreign to ourselves that happens to us and that we must suffer, face and, in the best of cases, try to contribute to creating it. But its position is the future of the current organization, as we perceive it today, with our “reduced” paradigm or mental model, immersed in “the bubble of the Industrial era” (Senge, 2009), trying to extrapolate or visualize the transition between the present organization and the future organization.
The second "more comprehensive" attitude tells us about the Sustainable Organization of the Future; He invents, innovates, transforms the organization into a new organization, which although it may or may not formally resemble the current one, its action strategy, leadership and alignment arises from the emerging future.
The first attitude tries to push the present until reaching the future, the second "designs and generates the future" and makes it emerge in the present. Let us not forget that, for this attitude, the future is the Present, it is the "zone of the present" that we "experience" but that we cannot "interpret" in its entirety.
Therefore Innovating the Future of the Organization requires, first of all, to mobilize our thinking and our will towards a freer, more spiritual Attitude, towards an Autotransforming Action of ourselves, that makes us little by little more conscious of our life experience.
The Sustainable Organization of the Future, which is Today, requires transforming Human Resources into Human Resources; to go from talking about the importance of Human Capital to firmly recognizing that the Human is Capital. Sustainable organizational development is not just a new concept, it is "seeing" things "differently". It is an organizational attitude that demands today to expand contexts, exercise intuition, paradoxes, promote creativity, spiritual intelligence, self-organizing dynamics; overcome narrow "mechanistic" models and "see" reality with more comprehensive, reticular, systemic eyes. Incorporate in our organizations maps and mental models that process the problem from more comprehensive perspectives, that optimize "collective intelligence" in action.
- Parallel Structure of Innovation and Learning.
Innovating the Future of the Organization involves promoting the creation of Innovation and Learning Teams -EIA-, made up of people who represent the entire organization, who undertake a process of change and organizational leadership that in its path determines and in a way possible Morphogenic fields characteristic of the organization of the future (Sheldrake, 1990/2007). These morphogenic fields as they develop are implemented in parallel with the organization, giving rise to a Parallel Structure of Innovation and Learning -EPIA-, which tendentially continues to work alongside the development model of the “future of the current organization”, until the “innovation” becomes mature enough to integrate into the organization and transform it into the Sustainable Organization of the Future.
The EPIA follows a process similar to that established by Christensen (1997) in his Disruptive Innovation Theory, when he says that disruptive innovation incorporates technological improvements in its operation, until it progressively displaces the products or services offered by leading companies; In our case, it manages to “transform” the future of the current organization into the sustainable organization of the future with totally innovative characteristics with respect to the current strategic model.
- Prospect the Sustainable Organization of the Future
The passage from a Future object of our "best" current projection, to that of an "emerging" future, product of the recognition of the Future that is already Present, opens new horizons of investigation and experimentation to the Prospective, giving it a more comprehensive dimension, Deeper and above all more creative. It allows you not only to highlight the future-bearing facts, but to perceive the future by acting in the present and to extract solutions from the emerging future.
The fragmented, separatist, mechanistic attitude that has prevailed in our minds and societies for hundreds of years has led us to see and behave in an individualistic and selfish way, with the usual results of increasing environmental deterioration that we suffer today and its negative impact on framework that surrounds and connects people, organizations and societies.
The self-transforming attitude, the spiritual intelligence put into action (Zohar, Marshall, 2001), does not conceive of any activity, personal or group, that is not considered intimately integrated into the environment and that is not sustainable. Perceiving ourselves personally, socially and environmentally integrated highlights the systemic vision that must prevail in the vital objectives of individuals and organizations. In this sense, Ken Wilber's (2000) Integral model with its four quadrants is very applicable: the inner self, the outer self, the inner us, the outer id. The alignment of the four quadrants places us in an unbeatable position to develop all our human potential in order to understand from a more holistic perspective the organization of the future and especially the humanity of the future and our "future" planet.
If, as Michel Godet (1987) defines it, the prospective is "anticipation at the service of action", what is important from our point of view is to work on the quality of such anticipation, to obtain the best possible interpretation of anticipated reality. The level of depth, complexity and uncertainty that we are in a position to perceive-witness-interpret in our present reality, will condition, frame, contextualize the result that we obtain from the application of the toolbox in the prospective process (especially second generation scenarios)., following Pierre Wack (1985); and the subsequent future strategy of the organization.
The Innovation and Learning Team designs, organizes and conducts the prospective process in its phases: pre-prospective (preparation and targeting), prospective (consulting futures) and post-prospective (promotion and monitoring) (Miles, Keenan, 2004); repeating the cycle, making the corresponding readjustments and enriching the Parallel Structure of Innovation and Learning (Medina, Ortegon, 2004).
Prospecting the Sustainable Organization of the Future is to create the conditions of possibility to presently “uncover”, remove the veil, illuminate the dark areas of our experience, and see the systemic, caordic, reticular and sustainable future “involved” in the Present. It is not the same to imagine a future alien to our present as a distant place to reach; than "witness", as theory U says, the Future acting in our Present.
- Organizational Metaphors
Organizational Metaphors can be useful inputs for the creative work of the Innovation and Learning Exercises since they allow, from a collective reflection, to perceive the structure, culture and organizational strategy from a different perspective than the current one, to facilitate learning of new modes of organizational behavior and therefore generate new avenues for achieving objectives and meeting expectations.
Why not think of new ways to organize work, people, interpersonal relationships, communication. Why not develop new types of learning, new creative processes, different styles of leadership and leadership. Why not turn information into the creative force, and notice how the organizational space is structured by invisible forces that relate complexity. In short, why not generate a vision and a culture that, as a whole and in its correct actions, transform the organization, granting each “part-everything” (holon) increasing margins of autonomy, as well as in the midst of apparent chaos order is maintained.
The transformation of the organization must come from within each of its members (Dee Hock, 2001), so that with their acceptance of the new understanding and their personal commitment, they can establish the conditions of possibility of, first, a change of vision, and then a process of cultural transformation of interrelation and dynamism with the creative elements of organizational energy (people, time, resources, learning, information, strategies, etc.).
The comprehensive vision proposed by metaphors is essential to advance on a large part of current organizational problems, since these, due to their complexity and breadth, are incomprehensible to the mental structure of most people, in whom a model of thought prevails. Cartesian, fundamentally reductionist and fragmentary. A comprehensive approach would allow us to introduce a bit of order into the current conceptual chaos, providing a perspective that does not dissociate the economy from the “ecological fabric” in which it is inserted (Capra, 1992, p. 459), and allows us to move towards the perspective of a regenerative society and economy (Senge, 2009, page 71).
The traditional models of administration followed by the organizations, are presenting great deficiencies to adapt to uncertain, turbulent and changing environments. It is necessary to evolve towards more prospective, dissipative, dynamic and flexible structures capable of assimilating organizational metaphors and making organizations more competitive and successful.
Among the Organizational Metaphors to work for the EIA we can highlight the following:
- Crisis of perception: overcoming the mechanistic model.
Conscious or not, the vision we apply to our organizations and with which we conduct them is a direct heir to seventeenth-century Newtonian physics; and therefore insufficient to encompass the problems and complexities that companies face within a few years of starting the twenty-first century.
In Newtonian organizations we have built borders everywhere, to represent solidity, the structures that guarantee things, the forms that give security. We have created roles and established lines of authority and limits of responsibilities. In business, the information is recorded in diagrams of all kinds, whose segments indicate proportions of elemental analysis, and inform us of market participation, employee opinions, customer levels, etc.
It is the holistic, systemic and holistic thinking that prevails at the dawn of the third millennium, emphasizing the interrelationships between the parties, as the determining key of a world characterized by Heisenberg (1959) as “a complicated fabric of facts, in which Connections of different types alternate or overlap or combine and thus determine the texture of the whole. " Becoming connections and processes, and not "things or parts", the fundamental elements of reality.
- Reticular vision of the company. A relational universe.
Talking about a new organization means radically modifying both our way of thinking and acting. Currently it is common to use terms such as interrelation, networks, integration, etc. However, what is already emerging as a model for thinking is not yet a model for acting; what is in thought is not in action. It is interesting to imagine a company in its multiple interrelationships, the difficult thing is to institutionalize a reticular vision of the company and even more difficult to behave accordingly. What one does not have integrated in oneself cannot be translated into reality as a continuity of thought, word and deed.
- New organizational forms. Organizations without borders.
Suddenly, we notice that by modifying our worldview, by overcoming a mechanistic perception, by incorporating systemic thinking based on new scientific theories, reality is structured in a network of interrelationships, processes, holons, and invisible fields that they determine behavior and space, etc., making the fixed and “cosistic” structure of our organizations disappear, and making us participants and active members of an intelligent organization, open to continuous learning, without borders, with a great capacity for self-organization and self-renewal.
- Disorder as the source of a new order. The Chaordic Era.
Why not see the organization in a totally different way, why not see it in its apparent disorder, in its operational instability, but looking for systemic structures that somehow intimately explain to us "the order" that reigns in "chaos", but that our narrow mental patterns not only impede seeing, but constantly hinder the natural development of activities (Hock, 2001).
The great challenge before us is, first, to understand that any organization or company behaves as a dissipative structure, or rather, that naturally tends to conform as a self-organizing or self-renewing system (Prigogine, 1993). And second, to warn that it is our narrow mental model that tries to fix the volatile, preserve our precious stability, and die trying, isolating ourselves from the environment.
- The organizational space in terms of the field. Morphogenic fields.
Organizations in general and companies in particular are structures shaped as "morphogenic fields" (Sheldrake 1990/2007). The people that make them up behave like “energy waves” that when interacting with each other and with the environment (suppliers, customers, etc.) manifest certain behaviors in an organizational space that makes learning and adapting to complex and changing environments easier.
When we talk about vision, culture, ethics in organizations, what we are talking about is "fields" that are explained in organizational behavior modes that translate the actions of a company. Beyond the terms we use, these concepts clearly reflect the experience and maturity achieved by the organization, as well as the successes or failures achieved in its history. The fields metaphor is highly illustrative and applicable in organizational leadership. Those charged with leading others recognize the importance of creating a field of leadership that nurtures everyone's participation, responsibility, and commitment; even favoring the extension of the field to customers, shareholders, suppliers, competitors, etc.
- Strategic Shortcuts
"Many real-world systems rely on networks. The brain is a network of neurons, organizations are networks of people, and the global economy is a network of national economies. ” Duncan Watts expressed. Duncan Watts (2003) and Steven Strogatz, two mathematicians from Cornell University, in the United States, concentrated their studies on so-called small-world networks: those in which - as in the game - each member has a direct link with others. These networks support the theory of the six degrees of separation that Stanley Milgran proposed in 1960.
In organizations there are multiple visible and invisible paths that unite the entire organization in various ways. However, it seems that we only see what the structure and the organizational chart show us and that is manifested in the way we behave following patterns of behavior clearly defined by our inherited culture. Unfortunately, by doing so we stop appreciating and using the "strategic shortcuts". The model argues that introducing a moderate number of specially chosen "shortcuts" dramatically reduces the number of intermediaries that must be traveled between a given position in the network and any other position. The idea is simple, it avoids going through all the intermediate steps, maintaining the "local" cohesion of the network;at the same time that communication and management of organizational knowledge are enhanced.
We have presented some of the organizational metaphors, within a broad spectrum of organizational forms, that are beginning to apply to companies and organizations around the world. In each case they acquire the particularity of the environment and the type of institution in which they operate.
- Hart and Milstein's Model of Sustainable Value Creation.
Godet tells us: "Prospective reflection on the future of a company or a territory constitutes a unique opportunity to overcome short-term difficulties and contradictions and to initiate in all minds and at all levels the indispensable awareness of the need to change habits and behaviors to deal with mutations. For this, it is necessary to start from the internal diagnostic capacities and take advantage of the prospective exercise to order competencies that are often dispersed ”(Godet, 2000, 10, page 37).
Taking into account the phrase of Michel Godet, we consider that it is very convenient that prospective reflection guides all strategies and all decision-making towards a sustainable future, the bases of which must be properly established in the present. The concept of sustainable development as one that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED Report, 1987), has evolved to say that sustainability is characterized, initially by the harmony of three elements: economy, environment and social equality; to which is added to take into account the “complexity” of sustainability in the decision process, the consideration of global trends and prospective reflection."Leaders want to learn how to ride the wave of sustainable innovation into the future while still maintaining a healthy and viable business in the present" (Senge, 2009, p. 124 ff.).
Identifying strategies and practices that contribute to a sustainable world and, at the same time, mean creating value for the shareholder, is the objective of the “Sustainable Value Creation” model for the company developed by Stuart Hart and Mark Milstein (Hart & Milstein, 2003). They argue that tomorrow's businesses will be born from among the new clean technologies that reduce the company's ecological footprint, increase its eco-efficiency and avoid pollution, thus reducing costs and risks, while satisfying the most pressing needs for reduce poverty and the widening gap between those who have a lot and those who do not.
The Argentine Business Council for Sustainable Development published a document called “Sustainable Development: The Argentine Business Case - An academic analysis of 10 years of good business practices” (CEADS, 2008), in which it used Hart's model as a conceptual framework and Milstein. The evolution of 326 companies was analyzed, in the period 1998-2007, regarding the good practices of strategies implemented in the field of eco-efficiency, environmental management systems, design for the environment and life cycle, communication with stakeholders, responsibility corporate social, comprehensive management of (social) impacts, base of the pyramid.The result demonstrated that the challenges associated with sustainability help identify strategies and practices that proactively contribute to sustainable development and at the same time create shareholder value. They constitute organizational learning processes that favor the progressive internalization of environmental and social responsibilities in a business strategy, which will generate benefits for current and future generations.
7.1. Conceptual framework.
The shareholder value structure is a multidimensional structure, in which the four-dimensional basic components that are a source of creative tension are considered, between the “vision”, future scenarios, and the “daily reality” of the organization.
Figure 2 illustrates the basic components of the shareholder value structure. The vertical axis reflects the needs of the company in terms of managing the business of "today", while simultaneously creating the technologies and markets of "tomorrow" The horizontal axis reflects the needs of the organization to develop and protect skills "Internal", while simultaneously, is infused with new perspectives and knowledge from "outside".
Combining these two axes a matrix (2 x 2) is obtained, the result of which is the creation of four different dimensions. The quadrant located on the lower left focuses on those aspects of performance whose nature is primarily "internal" and of the "short term": reduction of costs and risks. Clearly, it can be seen that unless the company can operate efficiently and reduce its risk, there will be a decrease in shareholder value.
The lower right quadrant focuses on the "short term" and includes "external" stakeholders. An appropriate and creative inclusion of external stakeholders can provide a differentiated position, creating the necessary leadership and legitimacy to sustain and grow shareholder value.
In the upper left quadrant, the company must not only efficiently manage today's business, but also generate products and services for the future. Finally, the upper right quadrant focuses on the "external" dimensions associated with "future" performance. Prospective work turns out to be very important to make credible the future growth of the organization, key to the generation of value for the shareholder.
Organizations must act efficiently and simultaneously in all four quadrants to maximize shareholder value and be sustainable over time.
- Global drivers for sustainability.
There are four groups of “drivers” related to global sustainability (Hart and Milstein, 2003). The first group corresponds to the growth of industrialization and its associated impacts such as consumption of materials, pollution, and generation of waste and effluents. In this way, the efficiency in the use of resources and the prevention of contamination are crucial for sustainable development.
The second group of "drivers" is associated with the proliferation of stakeholders (mainly those that make up civil society), assuming leading roles in control and, in some cases, even "forcing" social and environmental standards. To achieve sustainable development, companies have the challenge of operating in a transparent, responsible and informed manner.
The third group of “drivers” related to global sustainability, is related to emerging technologies that would provide “disturbing” solutions and that could make several industries of today obsolete (thinking especially of those of intensive use of material and energy). Innovation and technological change are the "keys" to achieve sustainable development.
Finally, the fourth group of drivers is related to the increase in population, poverty and inequity associated with globalization. The combination of population growth and injustice is recognized as the cause of the creation of social decay and the political crisis. The globalization of the economy degrades local autonomy, culture and the environment, causing an increasing setback in developing countries (Hart and Milstein, 2003).
Sustainability drivers present opportunities for organizations to improve the four dimensions that make shareholder value.
- Leading from the emerging future: Otto Scharmer's Theory U.
As we saw previously, the prevailing paradigm in our organizations is that inherited from educational models based on a Western, Cartesian, mechanistic worldview and on “maintenance” learning (Botkin, Elmandjra, Malitza, 1979) based fundamentally on reflection. analytical and rational about past experiences. We plan and "build" the future from what we thought and did before, and insofar as we assume that situations similar to the above will arise, it is from this hypothetical situation that we develop new scenarios.
Otto Scharmer (2008) proposes a new way of learning, complementary to the previous one, through the presence in emerging futures. He considers that the practice of being present (presence), intensifying the here and now in a space of stillness and openness, enables the arrival of the so-called insight (discovery) and the possibility of the future arises.
Most of the great discoveries (Einstein's theory of relativity, Handel's Messiah, Archimedes' Eureka, etc.) have been, according to their authors, the result of an insight, an intuition, a heuristic vision, a sudden discovery (serendipity), a vision of the future with immediate clarity about what to do next. This insight is like a seed that needs to be grown to its full potential. Process U gives us the possibility of regenerating ourselves, that is, changing our way of thinking and seeing; to achieve the insights necessary to face highly complex problems in times of high uncertainty.
Process U formulates a methodology that consists of three phases: perceiving, witnessing and realizing. Each of these phases requires specific conditions to facilitate learning.
- Perceive: The Perceive phase invites us to overcome our own mental models and open ourselves, to discover reality and see the entire system of which we are part. In order to get in touch with Real reality, two capacities are necessary to develop:
1.1. Suspend the judgment: be aware that our gaze on things affects reality and that we are always mediating and conditioning it. We must be aware of our limits and therefore be able to overcome the gaze that arises from our judgments.
1.2. Redirect: it is about developing the ability to listen and see from different positions, extending our sense of place and space. Think from the place of the other. See from another angle. Discover reality as a whole. Overcome the fragmented world view.
- Witness: It is about discovering our deep knowledge of what is happening in the system-organization. The role we have in it and what we personally and collectively do. It is the ability to connect to the highest possibility of the future that wants to emerge. Presence requires not only the opening of the mind, but also more subtle aspects such as the heart and the will, to access the deep knowledge of the being. The way to deal with difficult situations is to connect with the three levels of attention: open mind, open heart and open will.
Witnessing embodies intentionality. It is a space for spontaneity and intuition, underestimated by rationalizing thought and the Cartesian mind. But it is a natural ability of the human being. It is connecting with a source of natural creativity, without hindrance, without deliberation, it is the future that emerges. It is the opposite of action that seeks an end. The spontaneous act lacks purpose: the important thing is not to search, but to find. Scharmer proposes that the following two capacities should be developed in this phase:
2.1. Let go. Abandon what we believe: concepts, instruments and ideas. Give in and surrender to whatever has to come up. For them it is necessary to have courage and lose fear of the emptiness that this entails. It is about entering a state of deep receptivity. Navigate the mysterious and uncertain, abandoning certainties. Recipes no longer serve us. Do not put mind, do not choose and let things flow.
2.2. Letting go: This is a very difficult point, as it represents a change of action, a new commitment. A new understanding of our assessment. It is about letting a new vision about an aspect enter us, a new vision about a certain problem. In this phase a calm environment is required, leaving ourselves and seeing ourselves as part of the whole, listening to our inner, more intimate voices, so that clarity emerges on the way forward.
- Realize: It is the phase of multiple conclusions that unfold over time. This phase is reached knowing clearly what needs to be done. You have the vision. We have made a discovery about how to deal with the problem, now we have to build the solution. The capabilities of this phase are:
3.1. Crystallize: It is not well known where it will take us, but if what steps we must follow, we have the idea of the painting we want to paint but not the details. This capacity requires putting intention into what is being done: translating the emerging solution into a concrete solution.
3.2. Prototyping: involves taking ideas to physical creations, experimenting, spinning, testing, changing, making mistakes, redoing. This is a process of cultivation, of exploring the future through action, integrating body, mind, heart and the will to make designs.
3.3. To materialize: it is to spread the innovation, the way how we face the adaptive problem, so that it is incorporated into the organization. It requires trusting what is coming and people. It is creating ecosystems, spaces that self-regulate in the sustainability of their solutions, which are, after all, dynamic responses to complex problems.
The greatest crisis of our time is that of the thinking model, how we face problems. These are uncertain, complex and changing times, which makes it necessary to cultivate the subtle, the return to the original source of knowledge. The progressive rationalization that human and organizational action has had has paradoxically made the human being much more vulnerable and irrational.
Theory U proposes a new synthesis of the understanding of human action and the way of knowing and doing. This is a learning model open to innovation, to the new, and is done by recognizing and reconciling, through criticality, with the past, with what exists. Companies like HP, Shell, Google, Daimler, among others, have understood this and promote leadership based on the U process.
The work of high-performance teams, the Innovation and Learning Teams, by qualitatively transforming human relationships, according to Otto Scharmer, modify or complement traditional management with three innovations:
“The first is to be more precise in how we connect with a larger environment than what we were used to managing. Management is not just a cognitive science: it is a practice that requires us to slow down and move to the place of maximum potential. The second innovation in management has to do with connecting with our deepest sources of knowledge. The third concerns rapid prototyping, and is concerned with learning by doing and using prototypes as a practical means of exploring the future through action. So these three aspects: observation and deep immersion, connection with the inner self and source of knowledge, and rapid prototypes, must change or complement the theoretical framework of management and leadership ”(Alonso, 2009).
- The Strategic Alignment: pillar of the success of the organizational strategy.
Regarding human capital, Godet (2000,10) warns that:
The main limitation of business development is the human factor for the time it takes to train men and motivate them with a project.
Evolutions are not inevitable; it all depends on men and their ability to incorporate possible futures to act and walk together towards a different future. The evolutions of the environment demand great flexibility and rapid response capacity from the company, which depends considerably on the structures.
Structures must not only adapt to the evolution of the environment, but foresee it, since their inertias generate delay in that adaptation (Godet, 2000,10).
If the Prospective gives us the future scenarios and sustainability gives us the framework of responsibility and commitment to future generations; Innovation and strategic alignment are essential components to develop the organizational competencies at the highest possible level that allow the organization to obtain the expected results. Alignment is generally considered as the process that links the various units and areas with the organization's strategy, reaching in this process, down to the level of the employee, in order to ensure that work, activities, decisions and daily behavior of all people, of all levels, every day, are directly linked to supporting the organization's strategy.
The Parallel Structure of Innovation and Learning, which in this work is suggested as an instrument of organizational innovation, has the strategic objective of preparing and implementing proactive and sustainable plans and lines of action through a human capital linked to each other and aligned with achievements. expected by the organization.
The "human is capital" in the process of aligning with the strategy the objectives, goals, indicators, measurements, projects, resources, culture, structure, processes, competencies, information systems, etc., using tools for continuous monitoring modern as the Balance Scorecard (Kaplan, Norton, 1996).
Both the prospective techniques and the model of giving sustainable value collaborate and facilitate internal-external, individual-collective, horizontal-vertical and present-future alignment. The effort to synchronize the key processes of the organization along the value chain (horizontal alignment) must be accompanied by the integrated work of each and every one from their particular and important location in the organizational structure (vertical alignment).
Strategic alignment produces results when all the people who work in the organization participate and are actively involved in the definition and implementation of the strategy, both horizontally and vertically.
- Conclusion.
Forward-looking, says Tomás Miklos, planning focuses from the future to the present, as opposed to more traditional approaches, in which perspectives anchored in the past or present are adopted and superimposed as constants to a future that is not but its forced reflection ”(Baena Paz, 2005).
Our old paradigms must not impede or hinder access to a universe full of potentialities, which if not “discovered” will be imposed chaotically and randomly negatively impacting people and organizations. Any analysis that we make of our organizations inevitably ends in the “human factor”, in the true capital that institutions have and that they urgently need to rediscover. It is useless to consider the importance of human resources if we do not notice the “deep crisis of perception” as a result of the acceleration and magnitude of the changes that have been taking place in the modern world and that it requires to overcome the “human gap” (Botkin, Elmandjra, Malitza, 1979), a new way of interpreting reality in all of us. A way,which implies a new attitude to face not only the urgent but also the important, and even the transcendent, giving a more integrative vision to the way of organizing institutions and companies.
Exercising in organizational metaphors and in the U process will facilitate a change in our mental models in use, in order to achieve a thought whose objective is to control the expected change (be preactive) and bring about a desired change (be proactive). This is nothing more than strengthening the ideas of Gastón Berger when he expressed that:
The future is based on six fundamental virtues. The first of these qualities is calm, necessary to take the distance that allows self-control. The imagination, useful complement of reason, which paves the way for innovation and grants, show him who have it, a different and original look of the world. The team spirit is essential to act efficiently, as well as the enthusiasm, pushing the same action and makes man capable of creating. The value is essential to get out of the aforementioned ways, to innovate, to undertake and assume the inherent risks. Finally, the sense of the humanit is the primary virtue; To be aware of its future, a society must put man before everything. Culture plays an essential role in this, since it allows us to apprehend the thought of the other; it gives the possibility of understanding before judging; it shows, through its various forms, how man can take charge of his destiny ”(Godet, 2000,10).
In conclusion, to Innovate the Sustainable Organization of the Future we allow ourselves to propose some suggestions:
- Establish an EIA, Innovation and Learning Team, made up of "experts" from the different areas of the organization who work continuously in a "Parallel Structure of Innovation and Learning" aimed at developing and monitoring the "strategic variables of the Organization Sustainable of the Future. Conduct workshops, prior to any prospective exercise, that work on personal image and vision promoting Personal Self-Transformation, with the aim of generating in each participant a holistic and spiritual attitude that makes them feel the "proactive organization we ” Linked and interrelated with others, with society and with the environment.Creative Organizational Innovation exercises using the example of Metaphors Organizational mentioned in this trabajo.Prospectar future scenarios take as a basis the results established by the expert team EIA.Utilizar the Model to Create Sustainable Value Stuart Hart and Mark Milstein four quadrants to align organizational objectives and strategies in time and space, and create long-term sustainable value. Implement Theory U to lead the organization from the emerging future. Implement Strategic Alignment as an ideal process to carry out a successful organizational strategy.
In summary, the present work argues that the prospective exercise is important, facing the times of increasing complexity, high uncertainty and marked mechanistic paradigm, enriching and complementing it with an organizational model that creates sustainable value and fundamentally with a constant practice of the Teams of Innovation and Learning aimed at shaping a Parallel Structure of Innovation and Learning that promotes the strategic alignment of human capital, exercising leadership from the emerging future.
- Bibliographic references.
Alonso, V. (2009). Interview with Otto Scharmer. Praxis al Día, 2 (8), Spain.
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