Culture and change, a shared experience
Strategic alignment with corporate purposes involves the decision of senior management to incorporate, in the organizational management system, all the factors necessary to ensure success in the expected and required results. In this sense, organizational change turns out to be a constant, but also, paradoxically, a variable. It is the factor that intervenes in the dynamics of business processes to drive the development of new realities that make obsolete the old practices that are dear to many but so inefficient in the new circumstances of the market.
Facing the future with decision and recognizing the skills that we must develop are part of the challenges that oblige us to be managers of new organizational histories, to recognize a future that is born from the learning obtained in the past, to build real alternatives that benefit to customers and also to take responsibility for "making things happen".
The new generations in companies cannot forget where they come from, nor evade the responsibilities of the present, they must anchor their dreams in the possible and probable futures. Technology suggests worlds that we imagine and that we want to reach; Understanding the path leads us to register that the conceptual is an aspect that entrenches and strengthens us to withstand the difficulties and turbulence of the competition that expects to see us defeated and delivered to circumstances; and, finally, the cultural aspect that forces us to recognize new management styles and design alternatives to lighten the resistance that means traveling in unknown directions but in which we have established the hope of the triumphs to come.
These three aspects, which I want to rescue in this reflection, without being the only ones, can put us in context with regard to the responsibility that we have from the management areas with our collaborators and the company in general. They are:
- Technological aspect: This aspect is an invitation that has been knocking on the doors of organizational management for several decades, however we continue to find excuses to maintain outdated work systems. Technology is an ally, it is the vehicle that will transport us to the new dimensions of an increasingly competitive and turbulent market, it will be the new hardware and software tools that will help us to have greater control over the design, production and production processes. and sale of portfolios that meet customer expectations and not just their needs. Technology has led us to leave the old ways of communicating in history, have lightened documentary burdens and have offered quick responses to what was once a longing.Business reality cannot ignore that advances in science and technology compel us to think differently and above all to act in new ways. Conceptual aspect: The role of those responsible for Organizational Development in organizations becomes relevant and requires responsible actions in the sense of interpreting reality from complexity. Competition is no longer a scary myth to generate better productivities, it is an everyday dimension that appears at the doors and windows of our companies, that learns fast, that copies even faster and that begins to sell more than us. Understanding the way of doing things to stay and not just to survive is what differentiates companies that manage to consolidate a management system that is anchored in the future and not yearn for the past.Designing a model of organizational transformation requires that those who lived through the history of past successes and those who are skeptical of the new alternatives be included in the process. It is about visualizing a route that contains the arrival point and acknowledges that there will be difficulties but that It has all the tools to solve the problems that will undoubtedly arise, this means that the path is taken with judgment and seriousness, without ingenuity or thinking that a saving messiah will appear who will bring the miraculous solution to the problems that we were not able to see for allowing us to be carried away by a daily life sown in today and that never thought about tomorrow. Cultural aspect:the “our way of proceeding” that makes the difference between the way things are done in each company make culture the foundation on which expectations will be cultivated and turned into experiences, it is about recognizing the contribution that each person does to advance safely to the new realities that we are building with our management. The corporate culture must promote the collective conviction that it is necessary to renounce models and practices that do not help to operationalize the strategy, it is about creating symbols that encourage overcoming skepticism and sharing new stories, which are born from the conviction of new ones. generations that are capable of taking on the challenge of maintaining and growing the inheritance left by us who for years were the champions of business success.The new culture fearlessly incorporates the unknown and makes it a traveling companion, uncertainty becomes a counselor and is encouraged to create experimental scenarios that allow it to consolidate the financial sustainability necessary to develop the central objective of its management.
"The successes of the past do not guarantee those of the future", is a phrase that we repeat with devotion but we are afraid to make the decisions that can change the course of the company, every day we show that it sells less, that customers are going after others more attractive portfolios and that we are keeping a fixed house that few want to visit anymore, we discovered that we are no longer as attractive as we were a long time ago, that we are not the first, nor the best, nor the only ones. We show that we are leaving the meadow and we enter a desert that we cannot avoid.
I end with the invitation to recognize that history requires managers, protagonists capable of risking and leaving the comfort zone, of being leaders of a change that can take us to new frontiers, forcing us to be pioneers of new realities and forgetting ourselves, even temporarily, of our role as settlers that took us to land that was familiar and easy to conquer.
