By Kim Curley, Practice Lead, Business Readiness, NTT DATA Consulting
It's been about 50 years since the digital revolution began changing our world
at an increasingly rapid pace. I still remember visiting the local library,
which was the magical keeper of all knowledge in my childhood. A few families
in the neighborhood were lucky enough to own a set of encyclopedias, the 1970s equivalent
to having anytime access to information. In our house, it was the Funk and
Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (circa 1976), and, boy, did I have a leg up on my
classmates in completing homework.
Today, we carry more computing power on our wrists or in our pockets than
used to fit in thousands of libraries and millions of pages of reference books.
The pace of change continues to accelerate, and the once predictable cycle of
whitewater rapids followed by periods of calm are gone for good - creating huge
challenges for organizations.
Accelerating Change Slows Down Organizations
As tools change faster than organizations can assess, select and
implement them, many organizations experience "analysis paralysis." Historically,
leaders of large organizations have made decisions by gathering all the facts,
assessing them against a rubric, planning for implementation and moving
forward.
In our ever-accelerating world, this model no longer works. Instead of
rapidly deploying advanced capabilities to improve their operating and/or
competitive position, they grind the gears of analysis and evaluation, with
little to no ROI to show for the effort. My colleague Emily Lewis-Pinnell highlighted
this issue in her recent article for VMblog, "Cloud
Adoption Across the Enterprise."
Emily and I agree that it is people and company culture - not the tools
selected - that determine a company's success in today's whitewater rapids of
change. Success also heavily depends on how well you implement and use whatever
tools you have chosen and, perhaps most importantly, how well prepared your
people are to handle change.
Organizations must adopt a growth mindset - a belief that whatever we are
doing, we can get better at it. This must be true at the organization level and
at the individual level. People and organizations with a growth mindset see the
value of constant improvement. They recognize the best work we do today is the
best work, until it's not anymore. We can then do even better work because we
know we can do better and be better. Technology selection and adoption, in a
growth mindset culture, are all about constant evolution versus stepwise
movement from one steady state to the next.
Do You Have a Growth Mindset?
Cultures with growth mindsets organize to support and celebrate evolution.
An expectation to stretch - and to fail - exists at every organizational layer.
Recruiting looks for potential versus narrow technical certifications and capabilities.
Since the half-life of any given technology skill is only about two years, the
best candidates are those who are curious, adaptable and quick learners.
Organizational structures become more flexible, networked and
lattice-like, moving away from traditional hierarchical ladders. Learning and
development changes from formal, static classes delivered by a centralized team
to shorter, less formal and ubiquitous learning opportunities that are as
likely to be created by a colleague as the HR department. How employees are
evaluated and rewarded changes, too. Instead of exclusively focusing on "what"
is achieved, growth mindset cultures increasingly focus on "how" things are
achieved. An example of this would be measuring employee engagement or the
number of prototypes built rather than just on how many products were launched.
Five Steps to Adopt a Growth Mindset in Your Organization
- Lead by example. Recognize that a growth
mindset culture starts with leadership behavior at all levels. Leaders must
work on themselves to help their organizations change. Shift from being the
expert in every room to being the one who draws out, inspires and motivates
others to become experts by focusing on changing your language from declarative
sentences such as "We're going to do it this way," to questions such as, "I'm
not sure, but I know Sue knows this area well. Sue, what do you think?"
- Implement rewards and celebrations for trying
new things. Separate the outcome from the process to encourage people to
take chances and try new things. Only celebrating outcomes handcuffs people to
incremental changes based on the "way we've always done things."
- Seek out alternate approaches and views. General
George Patton said, "If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't
thinking." One way to do this is to appoint a member of the team to challenge
each idea or decision. This can be a rotational assignment or could be a set
time period in a regular team meeting.
- Swap out "fail" for the phrase "not yet."
Carol Dweck, whose
research led to the concept of a growth mindset, says "not yet" has become
one of her favorite phrases. Individuals and organizations with a growth
mindset recognize setbacks and failures as opportunities for learning. The
phrase "not yet" anchors everyone to the possibility for growth.
- Create space for reflection. A growth
mindset requires that individuals and teams make time to understand what has
happened, what is happening now, and what we want to happen in the future. This
goes beyond giving lip-service to "lessons learned." Asking someone from
another team to participate in a project review following implementation is one
way of doing this. Another method is to
ask your team to carve out time in their calendars for reflection. Perhaps you
declare the 8 a.m. hour of Monday, Wednesday and Friday as reflection time, and
create an agreement that meetings will not be scheduled during those
times.
If you want to win in the every-changing digital world, create a
growth-mindset culture. After all, as the late great Peter Drucker said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."
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About
the Author
Kim
Curley serves as the Business Readiness Practice Lead for the Consulting
division of NTT DATA, a top 10 global IT services provider.
Kim
has spent her career focused on the human side of business, enabling leaders and
their organizations to do more, do better, and to thrive through change. In her
current role, Kim leads consultants focused
on solving clients' most complex challenges by designing and implementing
programs to address the people, process, and technology aspects of business.
Kim is also responsible for defining strategic offerings and related thought
leadership efforts. Named an NTT DATA Game Changer for her dedication to client
and team success, Kim is also one of the founders of NTT DATA's Women Inspire
NTT DATA (WIN), an employee resource group.