g-f(1)18 The New Normal: Organizations and community stakeholders have a unique opportunity to redefine the scope of their priorities and collective actions

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Now is the time to take action. Now is the time for leaders, public servants, and members of society to work toward improving essential systems. We currently exist within a world that is unfrozen from the constraints of routine, habits, and norms. By leveraging this moment to explore, experiment, and learn, organizations and their community stakeholders have a unique opportunity to redefine the scope of their priorities and collective actions.

Genioux knowledge fact condensed as an image.

Condensed knowledge

• We currently exist within a world that is unfrozen from the constraints of routine, habits, and norms. By leveraging this moment to explore, experiment, and learn, organizations and their community stakeholders have a unique opportunity to redefine the scope of their priorities and collective actions.
• This unfreezing process has brought with it the possibility for radical change: We are living in a moment rich with opportunities to fundamentally improve how we live, how we relate to society, how we interact with government, and how we do business.
• Four Top Areas Ripe for Change

1. Our public health system. Currently, hospitals in the U.S. are revenue-oriented businesses (even when they are tax-exempt nonprofits).
2. Our educational system. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how intertwined economic activity is to educational structures: People cannot go back to work until their kids go back to school.
3. Our supply chains. The lack of access to personal protective equipment and pharmaceuticals has made it abundantly clear how globally distributed our supply chains are — and that we lack control in those operational networks.
4. Our environmental system. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a glimpse into a possible future — one that showcases blue skies clear from smog and the reappearance of wildlife in their (restored) natural habitats.

• The Challenge of Paralysis. Each of these areas — often considered intractable barriers to change that are too complex to address — represents one tangible way through which major change might escalate to generate a future that is more equitable and sustainable than our current circumstances.
• However, the challenge of this moment — of existing within an unfrozen world — is decision-making paralysis. It can feel like too many variables are changing too quickly to be grasped and integrated into a coherent plan.

Category 1: A new, better world for everyone

[genioux fact extracted from MIT SMR]

Authors of the genioux fact 

Fernando Machuca 

References

What New Normal Should We Create? Morela Hernandez,  July 22, 2020, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2020, Vol 62, No 1.

Morela Hernandez is the Donald and Lauren Morel Associate Professor in Business Administration at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (@dardenmba). Links to Hernandez’s work are online at morelahernandez.com.

She is the Academic Director of Behavioral Research at Darden (BRAD Lab) and co-founder of the Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative (CBSI). She has courtesy appointments at both the School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science at UVA. Prof. Hernandez received her Ph.D. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Prior to academia, Professor Hernandez worked in finance at Enron in Houston, Texas - experiencing the roller-coaster ride of this now infamous business case.

Given her professional background, it might come as no surprise that her research interests and expertise focus on the ethics of leadership. She also studies the role of diversity in organizational systems and decision-making practices. She is widely published in a number of top-tier academic journals, including Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, and Psychological Science. Her work has also appeared in media outlets such as Time magazine, the New York Times, MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Washington Post, as well as featured on National Public Radio.

g-f(1)5 Managers and leaders to sustain the organization’s culture in remote work

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Managers and leaders with a firm sense of what their organizational culture is — a common tool kit that enables their employees to act, and the beliefs and commitments brought forward by acting in certain ways — can help their employees navigate the current environment in a way that is authentic to the organization’s history yet flexible to the realities we all face.

Genioux knowledge fact condensed as an image

Condensed knowledge

• Culture is the holistic and somewhat mysterious force that guides actions and interactions in the workplace.
• Sociologist Ann Swidler describes habitual practices as the core carriers of culture. She argues that people draw from a “tool kit” of cultural habits and practices. Knowing how to use a culture’s tools — that is, when and how they apply — is the real mark of belonging to a culture.
• Welcome modifications to the cultural tool kit. One benefit of thinking about culture as a tool kit is that it alerts us to the fact that we have a variety of tools at our disposal when we get things done in an organization. And, like a real tool kit, we often have more tools than we regularly use.
• Tool kits also change somewhat over time. This is because we all are exposed to various cultural tool kits through other aspects of our lives.
• Use disruption to bolster the cultural core. Not every aspect of culture is equally critical to guard.
• A time of disruption presents an opportunity to remind employees of aspects of an organization’s past — founding ideals, stories, and commitments — that have shaped both its culture (how we get work done and think about our work) and are central to its identity (who we are as a company). Building up these core elements of culture can remind employees of an organization’s strengths and help them navigate tough times.
• Disruption can also open the door to challenging outdated aspects of a culture that are nonetheless given outsize symbolic and ceremonial value but are now holding back needed transitions.

Category 1: A new, better world for everyone

[genioux fact extracted from MIT SMR]

Authors of the genioux fact

Fernando Machuca

References

How to Sustain Your Organization’s Culture When Everyone Is Remote, Jennifer Howard-Grenville, June 24, 2020, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2020, Vol 62, No 1. 

Jennifer Howard-Grenville (Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, videos)  is the Diageo Professor in Organisation Studies at the Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on how people generate and navigate change within and beyond their organizations.

g-f(1)4 The New Normal: Agile leadership matters now more than ever

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Together, you and your organization will have to experiment, execute, and learn from successes and failures to invent your organization’s future

Genioux knowledge fact condensed as an image.

Condensed knowledge

• With no road map for the marathon ahead, navigating through these times is a test of agility.
• Agile leadership matters now more than ever — it is about leveraging, not reacting to, the turbulence around you.
• How can you empower your team to solve problems nimbly and resourcefully when circumstances are in flux and reliable data is elusive? How can you create the conditions for your organization to survive? How do you create new ways of engaging with key stakeholders when they are all under pressure and resources are scarce? And how do you cultivate your capacity to cope with the imponderables that lie ahead?
• Your primary role as an agile leader is to create an environment that empowers everyone to be an innovative problem-solver. Doing so requires that you champion a shared sense of purpose and build a capacity for rapid learning.
• Being an agile leader in times of crisis requires a continued commitment to your own well-being and development.
• Innovation is hard work. It thrives on diversity and conflict. It takes candor to identify and mitigate risk, and it takes courage to accept the inevitable missteps and pivots that occur along the way.

Category 1: A new, better world for everyone

[genioux fact extracted from MIT SMR]

Authors of the genioux fact

Fernando Machuca

References

Being the Agile Boss, Linda A. Hill, August 11, 2020, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2020, Vol 62, No 1. 

Extracted from Harvard Business School

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and chair of the Leadership Initiative. Hill is regarded as one of the top experts on leadership and innovation. Hill is the co-author of Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press 2014), co-founder of Paradox Strategies, and co-creator of the Innovation Quotient and re:Route. She was named by Thinkers50 as one of the top ten management thinkers in the world in 2013 and received the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2015.

g-f(1)3: Our knowledge economy is a resilient growth engine that overcomes any shock

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Knowledge makes for a more productive and resilient economy, and leads to the kind of agility and problem-solving ability that is especially needed in the face of sudden unanticipated shocks

Genioux knowledge fact condensed as an image.

                                                                                

Condensed knowledge

• The 20th century has shown a resilience that has no equal in history.
• Major shocks cannot really undo growth when it is based on knowledge.
• Knowledge, once acquired, cannot easily be reversed. In theory, of course, knowledge can be lost when everyone who possesses it dies and there are no stored-up copies in books or models. This can happen, and it has in fact occurred in history.
• In the past, shocks to the Smithian system that made markets work could lead to devastating and permanent damage to economic performance and living standards. The best-known case was the decline of the Roman Empire.
• What modern economic growth has achieved, based on more productive technology and the science that underlies it, is a level of prosperity that is much more resilient. 
• Despite the best efforts of homicidal dictators and foolish generals, most human-made catastrophes have, on the whole, not materially slowed the rate of economic growth in the past century.
• The example that drives this home is the astonishing recovery of Germany after 1945.
• The Germans who managed the comeback called it the “economic miracle,” but in retrospect, it was not a miracle at all — just an affirmation that their prosperity rested on a solid base of knowledge.
• The pandemic is a classic unanticipated supply shock. But it will not be the next Black Death or Irish Potato Famine. In a modern economy, the advanced nations are much more resilient than ever before, even if the sharp temporary fall in output and employment seem frightening.
• Knowledge not only makes for a more productive and resilient economy but can also lead to the kind of agility and problem-solving ability that is especially needed in the face of sudden unanticipated shocks.
• Leaders of our business and technology community would be wise to keep sight of the flexibility and adaptability of our economy.

Category 1: A new, better world for everyone

[genioux fact extracted from MIT SMR]

Authors of the genioux fact

Fernando Machuca

References

Why Our Knowledge Economy Can Survive the New Age of Pestilence, Joel Mokyr, August 24, 2020, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2020, Vol 62, No 1. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joel Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history at Northwestern University, and the Sackler Professor (by special appointment) at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University.

Extracted from Wikipedia

A Culture of Growth

Mokyr presents his explanations for the Industrial Revolution in the 2016 book A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy. The book has received positive reviews. Deirdre McCloskey described it as a "brilliant book... It’s long, but consistently interesting, even witty. It sustains interest right down to page 337... The book is not beach reading. But you will finish it impressively learned about how we got to where we are in the modern world." In her review, McCloskey furthermore lauded Mokyr as a "Nobel-worthy economic scientist".

g-f(1)2 Reshaping strategies for a reimagined future in the New Normal

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The New Normal is rife with opportunity: The time to reinvent yourself, to take advantage of your moment. 

• The unfreezing — the result of COVID-19 having swept away a status quo that inhibited change — is a chance for leaders to significantly transform their organizations and society. 
• Cocreating the future with your organization may prove to be the crucible of your leadership journey. It will take imagination, persistence, and moral courage. Use your time wisely. Rethink what’s possible.
• Knowledge makes for a more productive and resilient economy, and leads to the kind of agility and problem-solving ability that is especially needed in the face of sudden unanticipated shocks.

Genioux knowledge fact condensed as an image.

Condensed knowledge

• Moving forward with confidence may be stalled by uncertainties that make it difficult to think long term.
• Being caught between the past and future is not such a bad place to be. 
• Our present moment is rife with opportunity. The unfreezing — the result of COVID-19 having swept away a status quo that inhibited change — is a chance for leaders to significantly transform their organizations and society. 
• Our past losses may still demand grieving, and the future must still be planned, but when we focus our attention on the here and now, we can see new possibilities arising. Seize your moment.
• Cocreating the future with your organization may prove to be the crucible of your leadership journey. It will take imagination, persistence, and moral courage. Use your time wisely. Rethink what’s possible.
• Companies can no longer rely on traditional forecasting exercises to spot — and capitalize on — emerging threats and opportunities. 
• Our research shows that sensemaking is, in fact, a predictor of leadership success. And yet few leaders model or implement sensemaking in their organizations. 
• By elevating cybersecurity from an operational necessity to a source of opportunity, leaders can boost resilience and business advantage. 
• How can companies strategize once they have recognized the limitations of long-term planning in an unpredictable world? By mercilessly examining their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and by gaming out their own destruction before someone — or something — does it for them. 

Category 1: A new, better world for everyone

[genioux fact extracted from MIT SMR]

Authors of the genioux fact

Fernando Machuca

References

Reboot your strategy, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2020, Vol 62, No 1. 

Seize the Moment, Elizabeth Heichler, September 08, 2020, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2020, Vol 62, No 1.

• Elizabeth Heichler (@eheichler) is the executive editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.