Organizations that will win the future in my opinion are those that will build a combinatorial culture of innovation and execution whiles seeing technology as an enabler.

According to Wikipedia, Culture is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities and habits of the individuals in these groups. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies.

Livescience.com describes Culture as the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, encompassing language, – (the how and even the kinds of words used), social habits- (norms). For example, at Amazon, they have the ”builder’s culture” as a leadership principle.

Winning the future requires that individuals, companies and even nations would have to build unique characteristics that will help them succeed. For example being able to absolve and make meaning of information faster than others. The application of knowledge; that is taking action with insights that ensure positive changes with meaningful impact.

Organizations will also have to leverage on the combinatorial power of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, cloud computing, blockchain, 3D printing, virtual & augmented reality, quantum computing etc to be innovative.

More importantly, an organization with a culture of innovation is one with an environment that allows the cultivation and the nurturing of “outside the box thinking” and yet allows the applications of outcomes within the box. For organizations that have environments where creativity is part of every member of staff’s DNA, organizational growth is in default mode. For example, at Amazon they have the ”invent and simplify” principle as part of their leadership innovation fundamental. Organizations where innovative failure is accepted and leadership is open, growth is eminent.

Innovation cultures are characterized by rapid change, maintaining the status quo is just not good enough. “Business as usual” is dead and “business unusual” is the norm. At Amazon, they have the ”day one(1)” innovation norm, where every employee is supposed to pioneer and invent to satisfy the customer because on day 2, you will be late.

“Without execution, the breakthrough thinking breaks down, learning in a “learning organization” adds no value, people don’t meet their stretch goals, and the revolution stops dead in its tracks. What you get is a change for the worse, because failure drains the energy from your organization. Repeated failure destroys it.” These are some quotes from the book “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Lawrence Bossidy and Ram Charan”.

In the book, Lawrence Bossidy and Ram Charan make the argument that, when thinking about execution, 3 main point needs to be considered;
1. Execution is a discipline, it’s a critical component of an organization’s strategy.
2. The business leader is responsible for encouraging and promoting execution.
3. Execution needs to be at the core of an organization’s culture.


They further explained that, companies often focus on changing their strategy and structures but they fail to work on the people, the beliefs, and behaviors of those that they work with. They emphasize that cultural change is just as important (if not more) as strategy and structure.

They identify that companies that make an effort to change their culture often fail because, they don’t find the direct link between culture and business outcomes. Hence there is a risk of haphazard change of culture. For example, where the change is disconnected, the organization is not likely to succeed. In other-words, business needs to understand the deep connections between company culture and business outcomes.

Quote- “To change a business’s culture, you need a set of processes – social operating mechanisms. These will change the beliefs and behavior of people in ways that are directly linked to bottom-line results.”

It is crystal clear that organization that will win the future will need to build an organizational culture that allows, encourages and flusters innovation, while ensuring that execution is a critical component of the strategy first, before they innovate in areas such as;

1. Ensuring customer inclusion
2. Leveraging on combinatorial power of exponential technology to digitize
3. Staff engagements and continuous communication that allows feedback
4. Simplifying the strategy not necessarily simplistic, with focus on execution
5. Aligning the interest of stakeholders
6. Competing alternative (value of ideas)

In conclusion, culture is key, there is also the need to focus on execution as discipline, that gets things done in an innovative way.

Credit
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