Introduction:
Drivers of organizational change simmer down to impact the organization in three main areas, needless to say that these areas of impact are also the play field of the organization where it can instigate change or react to it. For example a change in market demand may result in actions being taken to update technology or develop new people skills. So these elements can be either triggers, action domains, or both:
1) Product (Market forces)
2) People (Human resources)
3) Systems (Technology and Processes)
The drivers for change are not the same for every organization. There are many factors that actually help determine that. Advanced analysis tools (and exercises) do exist to help measure the organization’s internal and external aptitude such as the SWOT and PEST analysis approaches for internal and external analysis respectively. These should be used to determine the best path for each organization individually. I am addressing organizational value orientation here to provide a general direction on its required agility levels.
The level of innovation provided by an organization has an impact on its agility requirements; where does change mostly apply?
For this purpose I would like to classify organizations into two main categories;
conventional and inventive. If these are the black and whites of organizations, then the grey would be a “niche” organization and the ultimate (although unattainable for practical reasons) is the absolutely “agile” organization.
For any organization, these are not mutually exclusive attributes. But generally speaking every organization will have an orientation that represents the collective outcome of its activities.
A purely 100% inventive organization would not have the means to survive without being able to add real marketable value frequently enough to keep it afloat. Also a purely conventional organization would not stay for long without some innovation to keep its products beneficial and marketable and stay ahead of the competition.
That having been said, the ensuing division of organizations into inventive and conventional should be interpreted according to the context of its application. It can be interpreted that an organization in its totality is that of an innovative (inventive) nature, or you can look and find areas of both natures within the same organization. In this case you would have sub-organizational structures of different natures.
Organizational Agility Requirements
Conventional Organizations
This is an organization that is providing a conventional products or services to the market. This product or service is already known to the public. This organization must have some sort of value added in the value chain in order to make money out of its operations.
How are conventional organizations affected by change? What are the drivers of change versus the enablers (the edge)?
The drivers of change in a conventional organization would mostly be coming from the product (market) side.
Niche Organizations
A niche organization offers specialized products or services to a limited market. It is not inventing anything; however, it is using some sort of a rare expertise, technology, or even taste in providing its own value to the market. Or it is offering a very ordinary product or service to a very limited clientele.
This type of organization is very similar to conventional organizations in terms of their positioning with change dynamics. However, it is also very susceptible to internal factors (human resources and systems) changes because of its specialization and the potential cost involved with change in these areas.
Inventive Organizations
How are Inventive organizations affected by change? What are the drivers of change versus the enablers (the edge)?
The drivers of change in the inventive arena would be coming more from the internal edge (people and systems) of the organization. There are two reasons for this; the innovation represents a fresh product introduction to the market and others are to follow and try to add value, secondly, the main asset of innovative (inventive) organizations is in its people (hence the term “human capital” is mostly used in innovative environments)
Agile Organizations
Agile organizations are the best suited to deal with change. Their existence is very limited because these organizations are developed with agility as their core value. This is a very difficult model to grasp because it deprives the decision makers of developing an area of expertise on the innovative scale; being conventional or inventive enough to add value under very dynamic circumstances.
