A633.3.3.RB_Complex Adaptive Systems_Reece_Wathen_Sandra

A633.3.3.RB_Complex Adaptive Systems_Reece_Wathen_Sandra

Find a company which reflects Morning Star and St Luke’s image of a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) and reflect in your blog what the implications are for you and your present organization (or any organization you are familiar with). Add your insights from your interview of the company executive responsible for strategy formulation in your company. Identify what you believe are appropriate actions to move your organization forward.

 

First, let's take a quick look at two Complex Adaptive System (CAS) type companies; St. Luke and Morning Star.  Both of these companies share very similar business strategies.

St. Luke which is a 115 employee strong company in the United Kingdom (UK) is based on open information sharing; informal hierarchy for the most part, and what is formal is rather decentralized , very dynamic with focus on meeting the stakeholder needs than focusing on running the company

St. Luke has a corporate culture that is focused on personal responsibility and accountable; extremely important with high performance expectations.   This is a company that has no bosses and owned by the employees, as well as, a low turnover rate.  They work hard to find talent and are often seen as a very hard company to get employed with. There corporate goals were to be revolutionized and strategies for employee ownership, innovation and collaboration and have the competitive advantage.  They are very determined not to be a stove piped organization, but more diverse with the company skill base and encourage workers to be cross-functional.     St. Luke's puts extra emphasis on importance of recording successes as well as failures as it is an important tool for envisioning the future.  They have a name brand of their own that has fostered a creative company.

More specifically in the Harvard Business Reviews it is one of the fastest growing companies in the UK.  Diane Coutu describes  the success of St. Luke's as being "driven by the firm's determination to continuously reinvent itself in a world populated by dotcoms and mega-ad agencies".  Their goal is to revolutionize the way business is done.  St. Luke's pursues its goal by carefully managing a paradox and does this by encouraging employees to take risks, yet it still provides a safe feeling environment for employees.  In summary, this company is taking full advantage of living in a time that allows for open creativity.

In comparison, Morning Star, Inc. is one of the world's largest tomato processing companies in the United States and the company is very profitable in that it funds its own internal sources.  It is considered a very unusual company because of how it is managed.    

Morning Star, Inc. recognizes that there is a high cost to the business as a result of unnecessary hierarchy at the management level.  Their strategy is to allow the employees to be empowered, self-managed and have their own personal mission statement that defines what they will do for the company to help meet its goals.  They believe in allowing their people freedom in seeking challenges and accepting increased roles and responsibilities, as well as encourage people to do what they do good.

In summarization of Morning Star, Inc., it is a global market company that has become a global market leader where the people manage themselves.  Pretty much the working people do it all themselves; initiating their own procurements, hiring, etc.  This is an example of success by freedom versus control.  They are about reducing hierarchy in the organization and promoting freedom of management to the working level.    They feel that those that are not in the front line really don't understand the underlying problem, they also think that layers of management impede on the process.  In addition, they also allow the employee to have freedom with requisitions - the thinking is that if they can purchase something at that level at home and be responsible then why couldn't that apply at work. 

So as to compare Google to St. Luke's and Morning Star, Inc. to that of the style of leadership that has brought Google to the top.  As a comparison - Google operates using a smart, innovative and somewhat risky business model that has worked well.   Although the type of business is much different that the other two mentioned earlier, Google is a CAS.  They worked hard at brand building and built their brand in such a way that seemed to most almost unbelievable.  Google believed in unlocking company potential and allowing freedom for workers to be creative and forward thinkers. 

Their corporate leadership had the ability to think outside-the-box. As described on http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/ - there are ten things about Google to be true:  (1)  Focus on the user and all else will follow; (2) It is best to do one thing really, really well; (3) Fast is better than slow; (4) Democracy on the Web works; (5) You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer; (6) You can make money without doing evil; (7) There's always more info out there; (8) The need for information crosses all borders; (9) You can be serious without a suit; and (10) Great just isn't good enough. 

Google's mission statement "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" and their corporate culture is that the people make the company.  They are known to hire people who are smart and determined and the characteristics they look for in people is not always experience but instead their abilities.  They have an open culture and everyone's ideas are welcomed - and the people are comfortable providing their ideas.  Their infrastructure offers and encourages interaction at all levels.

First of all, I cannot say that I have been affiliated with any organizations like that of that to Morning Star and St. Luke’s, nor of Google.  Most of my career was working as a civil servant, supporting the Department of the Navy (Don) then retired and now working as a contractor, for a small business company still supporting DoN.

As a civil servant supporting DoN,  I basically supporting “a system”; a very “complex system” composed of much hierarchy, oligarchy, and centralized.  There was not much opportunity of CAS while I was employed at DoN.  You see, when you work for the government, it is governed by many rules, policies, authorities, etc.  Right before I retired, they were moving to high-performance teams, Lean Six Sigma, etc.  However, were still functional under the more moderate, traditional method of leadership; hierarchical.

I am now a contractor, 12 years after retiring from the government and still supporting DoN.  One thing that I have noticed as I reflect, the government is also starting to transition – but it takes a long time for such a complex system known as the “government” to transition to anything; typically being behind the curve in any complete change.  It is like moving an elephant.  Unfortunately, by the time they can convert to something they are already behind the curve.

To focus on where I am today, I support a small business, minority, female owned company that is in its 14^th year of existence; still supporting DoN. 

From the time I started here, I continually talk with the regional Vice President (VP) with respect to ideas.  I have learned from my career past that you have to find ways to try to get your ideas across and also across to the right person(s).  So, in my recent journey of finding an individual that I could acquire a mutual professional relationship was VP, Steve.  It was quite obvious that he was a person that had great insight to the company, also has a report with CEO and a most noteworthy modern day approach to leadership.

I also knew that he also recently pursued additional Master’s in Leadership and was very savvy on the modern day approach to leadership.  I recently spoke with him for a few minutes to talk about the company and also see his perspective for strategy formulation from our company perspective, and as to compare and contrast.

 
VP Steve has been with the company for eight of the 14 years of its existence.  He has been a tremendous asset to the CEO in that he has been successful at influencing CEO and more Senior VPs to trust in him and have adopted many of his ideas for changes to the company.  Unfortunately, our company is very hierarchical and still hiring middle managers.

Our current CEO was a local female “home girl” that decided to start-up a contracting business predominantly supporting the government business.   She is very savvy, business smart; but has limited formal education on leadership.  However, we have been slowly moving to a more cross functional way in which we do business. 

I scheduled a meeting with VP Steve.  He really is a people person; genuine and cares both about the company and about the people.  One of the inherent problems that plagues our company is that all the leadership and managers have been forced to engage and devote a large percentage of their time on new business and future work captures; leaving little time to make qualitative/quantitative changes for the people or current organizational changes.  VP, Steve has just recently been diagnosed with Lymphoma cancer and going through treatments.  So this is my lead in on how my discussions went with him:

First, I never go in to meet with him without some ideas written down that I have had in mind that I would like to share; never want to miss an opportunity to get in some of those while I have a few minutes with him.

As usual, always cordial and open-door policy.  He provided me his thoughts on how he has tried on numerous occasions to promote ideas of change to the CEO with no prevail.  Most of these ideas are to instill a corporate culture that fosters a working environment that promotes productivity, creativity, freedom, innovation, etc.  He has also been trying to find ways to develop career-tracks, mentoring and shadowing programs.  He too has seen a low morale and dysfunctional areas in our organization; including stove-pipe functional areas that need changed to the more modern approach; polyarchy.  As a result of our meeting, he has asked me to put a brief to together that he can present to the CEO.   

In summary, it is obvious that most of the current companies that are on the top or are on the leading edge of technology, are those that have grasped and embraced CAS.  This is another reason as to why it is so critical for all current and future leaders of the world to also embrace the modern approach to leadership and to clearly understand the implications by not adopting the newly proven approach.  It also has made me realize that the system in which I am integrated called the "government" has lesser chances of really adopting this methodology.  This is very concerning when you really think deep into the implications of the government over time.  Especially when current scholars in the field make the comments that you need to "adapt or die".