Ey Succeeding in The Vuca Paradigm Making Change Happen PDF
Ey Succeeding in The Vuca Paradigm Making Change Happen PDF
Ey Succeeding in The Vuca Paradigm Making Change Happen PDF
in the VUCA
paradigm:
Making change happen
We would like to thank our partner CII, our clients, and the participating organizations who
made this paper possible.
Jayant Kumar
Director,
People Advisory Services
On the other hand, the complexity and disruptions in the business environment
today continuously decreases the visibility of businesses beyond a quarter, impeding
organizations’ ability to build long term plans and requiring them to continually reinvent
themselves.
Gartner, in its latest report predicted that Indian businesses will spend almost $72.6
billion on IT. According to Gartner figures, IT budgets in India are growing at an average of
11.7% compared to merely a 1% worldwide. Today, innovation in technology led by SMAC
(Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) is driving innovation in business. Businesses continue
to experiment with these technologies and challenge the present established frontiers of
customer experience and cost efficiencies. Investing in technology is no more limited to
addressing a necessity or plugging a gap, but it is about building an asset which in time is
capable of regenerating further assets through the process of innovation. Case in point
is the investment in IoT. And according to a study by Vodafone, companies are spending
about 24% of their IT budget on IoT worldwide.
Chandrajit Banerjee Another critical contributor of withering the VUCA storm is the role of diversity. Diversity
Director General, CII too, plays a critical role in ensuring that organizations are able to ride well above the
storm of change through people led innovations. Bringing together skills from diverse
backgrounds, countries and cultures helps breed the type of innovation and creativity
required to compete in today’s extremely competitive environment. This is truer for
organizations now, more than ever.
We would like to thank CII leaders and participating organizations in sharing their rich
perspectives and insights for the thought leadership. I would also like to thank EY
professionals whose painstaking efforts have helped us peer into the heart of VUCA and
how leading companies thrive in this ever changing environment.
Dr. N. S. Rajan
Chairman, CII National
Committee on HR
The term VUCA was coined by the US military in the 1990s to ridership rising from a few hundreds a day in 2010 to over a
describe the increasingly convoluted and complex geo-political million today!
landscape in which it was operating. VUCA has since then found
Whether we examine the number of patents filed globally,
its ways into the cabins and discussion tables of organizations
sonic barriers breached by planes, distances travelled, altitudes
across the world. Today, we are living, breathing and navigating
reached, minerals mined or explosive power harnessed, the same
through VUCA every moment. It is quite visible in how disruptive
accelerative trend is unmistakable and evident in all walks of life.
technologies are redefining business models.
Research shows that the time span between the launch of a new
Picture this: in 2009, Usain Bolt became the 21st athlete to product and its extinction from the market is decreasing every
break the world record for the 100m sprint over the last decade. year. Shorter lifespans of companies, constant overhauling of ways
Interestingly, the 100m record was broken merely four times from of working and incomprehensible interconnectedness of causes
1900 to 1950, but the same record was shattered 17 times in the and effects across the globe — this is the essence of VUCA! But
next 50 years! what is the impact of these fast-paced changes on people’s lives?
Closer home, the taxi and cab industry is witnessing a major Alvin Toffler in his book Future Shock argues that the rising rate
overhaul. Even by the standards of India’s rapidly evolving of change in the world around us disturbs our inner equilibrium,
e-commerce ecosystem, the past five years have been an utter altering the very way in which we experience life. This shattering
whirlwind. Look closely and you will see a striking similarity with stress and disorientation caused by too much change in too little
the history of the 100m world record. The years 1940–2000 time is called “future shock”. The same theory when extended to
witnessed as few as three major innovations in the taxi industry, an employee who is being imposed with multitudes of changes
whereas the last 16 years have seen as many as eight major can perhaps explain the change fatigue and associated drop in
disruptions! The last five years have seen the combined valuations performance levels. Organizations need to be prepared for these
for the top two players in the country rise over US$5b, with shocks as they are here to not only stay but increase in intensity.
Early 1940s–1970 1970s–1990s 1995–2000 Early 2000s 2009–2010 2010–2011 2010–2015 2010–2015 2010–2015 2010–2015
When we embarked on this study, we asked organizations a simple question: how do successful organizations manage to maximize the
adoption of change initiatives despite the high pace and quantum of changes that impact employees every day? Among the myriad of
responses we received, four levers stood out distinctly and formed the bedrock of our research.
Managing and
leading change in
the VUCA world
Businesses are truly complex today, operating across multiple Responsibility 19%
markets and tax jurisdictions, supported by a web of technologies, of leading Middle management/impacted
selling a diverse set of products and services to a diverse set of change in employees
customers and constantly being challenged by disruptive business
VUCA times
models. The various change initiatives undertaken impacting
multiple departments often fall prey to organizational politics,
12%
where departments are quick to claim the benefits out of the
Subject matter experts
program but falter in collaborating to lead the change. What may
(internal)/external consultants/
be a great cost-saving initiative in the lens of the corporate finance
others
department may be perceived by the local sales department as
ill-conceived and devoid of market understanding, resulting in loss
of sales revenue. No wonder that the majority of the respondents
(69%) identified “managing complexity and contradictions” to be
a major role of the leader. Able leaders need to positively spin
64%
Unable to anticipate and
contradictions as opportunities of improvement.
respond to changes effectively
With multiple change initiatives running, employees often lose
64%
sight of the end objective of the programs and can become victims
to change fatigue. Change programs often begin with enthusiasm
among employees but become a burden with too many programs Key leadership Inability to build the right guiding
overloading the organization. Another interesting theme emerging team for managing the change
challenges in
from the data is the role of the leadership in bringing a certain level
managing
of order within the chaos.
When we asked what the top reasons were that inhibit leaders
change 48%
Lacking leadership
to successfully manage change in VUCA times, we received an commitment and support
interesting response: about 64% respondents believed that the
leader’s inability to anticipate changes along with the inability
to build the right team was preventing them from successfully 48%
managing change. What was alarming though was that 48% of Being in denial of the
respondents mentioned being in denial of the changing context. changing context
Leadership speaks
“Imagine that you are driving a car and the terrain around you is soft, with potholes,
puddles and obstacles, the horizon unknown but presumed to be bumpy. What you would
need while driving through such a terrain is a car with great sensors. Similarly, businesses
in the VUCA world need great sensors, so that they can maneuver with dexterity. They
need to have great shock absorbers, so that the ride feels less bumpy. That is where
technology is of a great help in sensing the pulse on the ground.”
A case in point
Get involved in the action on the ground: A leading media company recently acquired another player in the market in
a wave of consolidation the industry has seen. While crack teams formed under the Managing Director (MD) worked on integrating
operations and systems, the MD took the lead for integrating the organization cultures. The MD was personally responsible for
communicating, driving an open culture, being accessible to all employees, and visible taking charge of things on the ground. The HR
function provided planning and execution support to the MD. With acquisitions having a reputation for failure and often because of
people issues, what has made this integration successful was the direct involvement of the Top Leadership.
From both the survey and the interviews, four additional roles for today’s leaders emerged besides ‘Building a shared vision that
accounts for VUCA’, ‘Repeated communication and re-enforcement of the shared vision to maintain focus and motivation’, ‘Leadership
involvement in the resolution of inter-functional conflicts’, ‘Breaking organizational silos and promoting teaming and encouraging a
distributive leadership’. These four critical roles are:
6
Source: Wikipedia
Leadership speaks
“An organization that strives to be ahead of the market at all times needs to have people
that are flexible to new ways of working because in our industry, business models change
every quarter. So we are striving to build a company with the competency of change
management woven into its very fabric. Managing change, multi-tasking and living with
ambiguity should be an auto-response for our people.”
A case in point
Building a learning organization: A major auto manufacturer promotes events where-in employees reflect on weaknesses,
mistakes and missed opportunities which helps them improve their products and processes. The company also encourages employees
to look for root causes of a problem and then look to address them. And employees then share how they solved the problem with larger
groups. This helps the organization to reflect on its mistakes and these learnings are then ingrained in form of processes and changes
in the ways of working. An organization so created, which constantly learns, is adept at handling changes in the VUCA world
Leadership speaks
”Preparedness for change is a critical success factor for any organization in this highly volatile and
changing business environment. So an organization that (can) embeds the same into its culture
would be at a lesser risk of (facing) change barriers and hindrances to meet the challenges.”
— Business head at a leading Indian compliance, risk and analytics products and solutions provider
2 Use of mobile applications for launching programs, communicating with employees about the change etc.
3 Use of internal social media to engage with stakeholders and employees throughout a transformation journey
4 Use of cloud based platforms that provide centralized access to change management tools, methods and artefacts.
Leadership speaks
“Technology can play a major role in (demystifying) VUCA; It helps in (establishing) closer connect
with our employees and get true information to them quicker than rumors.”
Micro blogging
•• ► Yammer
A form of blogging where users post short updates or messages in chronological order. In enterprises, this could •• ► Jive
be done for a defined network or group, or the entire organization. Core to blogging and microblogging is the
•• ► Connections
ability to comment on and add to another’s posts, providing a richer conversation.
Polling
•• ► Poll Everywhere
Online audience polling tools show immediate results to a virtual audience. Many services now allow users to •• ► Yammer
respond to polls using text messaging and smart devices.
Communities
•• ► Jive
Social software platforms are primarily designed for building a collaborative culture using content defined by
employees. Enterprise social platforms typically allow networks and individuals to create online communities •• ► Connections
and working groups, providing a space for content or purpose-specific collaboration and social networking, e.g., •• ► SharePoint
project management communities and new-hire communities.
•• ► Wordle
Visualization tools •• ► Tagxedo
These tools provide techniques to turn content and data into meaningful graphics. •• ► Easley
•• ► Storyline
Ideation
•• ► ThinkTank
Ideation tools provide a platform for widespread idea sharing, often called crowdsourcing, and collaborative
dialogue to produce ideas better than the original one. Typically, an organizational challenge is presented •• ► IdeaJam
to provide a high-level structure for which ideas are shared. When used in a time-boxed manner, these idea •• ► Spigit
management sessions are often referred to as “sprints.
Source: Change 3.0: using social media to engage your workforce, performance, Volume 6 by EY
iv. Navigating through complexity and chaos ii. Secondly, Leaders need to conduct or sanction a thorough
change portfolio analysis to identify the employees getting
v. Execution focused
impacted by the changes, which should help them to take
c. Build a culture of change: better decisions.
In the course of the research we identified two important
iii. Thirdly, they need to set stretch goals consisting of
measures which help build the culture of change.
owning and leading initiatives to create positive stress and
i. Firstly a learning organization which is ready to reflect and improve organizational stamina.
question status quo
6% 1% 18%
4% 23%
19%
33%
4%
Program sponsor
Program manager
4% 12%
Change manager/analyst
5%
31%
Functional subject matter expert
11%
11% Change agent
7% 11%
Manufacturing Power and utility
IT/ITES Automobile
Banking FMCG
5%
8%
18% 38%
Indian multinationals
Foreign companies with operations in India
Privately held Indian companies
PSUs/government agencies
31% Other
1
and commitment toward the change
Continuous leadership support and commitment 82%
2 51%
Lack of properly defined goals
2
and objectives of the programs
Technology-led communication and learning 78%
3 47%
Lack of focus on cultural
3
alignment for change adoption
Use of local change champions and change agents 62%
4 40%
Change fatigue — too many changes happening
4
too often giving little time for people to adjust
Track and measure RoI on adoption 56%
5 Untimely and ineffective communication 38%
5 22%
Leverage transient teams like
business readiness groups
6 24%
Inadequately defined measures
of the program’s success Besides leadership support, using technology has become one
of the key drivers to increase speed of adoption
7 24%
Ineffective transition planning and
inadequate transition support
32%
Set up a strong change
governance board
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