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Sunday Jul 22 2001 |
Updated 0024 hrs IST 1354 EST
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By Invitation / Prasad Kaipa
IN
today’s rapidly-shifting markets, the law of nature —learn and
adapt, or die -— has become the law of the marketplace. What,
then, would happen if we began thinking of and designing our
organizations according to the principles of living things?’’
asks Ken Baskin in his book Corporate DNA.
At
SelfCorp, we, too, have been exploring how we can develop
rules for successful businesses using living systems
approaches. We live in a world with short periods of relative
stability often followed by longer periods of chaos. Market
character often changes drastically after such chaotic periods
and new market ecology emerges. Emergent phenomena and
ecological metaphors are useful in understanding how
organizations can operate, cooperate and evolve in a complex
and highly volatile environment.
Hamel and Prahalad,
in `Competing for the Future,’ propose that companies should
pre-empt or build dominance in emerging market ecologies as
economies operate according to precisely the same rules as
nature. We can take the same analogy inside the corporation.
We can seek what it would mean for organizations to
coevolve with their competitors in `market ecologies,’ to
structure themselves for the purpose of learning and adapting.
We can make the transformation from just the mechanical model
of bureaucracy to include a more organic form to supplement
the mechanical model.
In writing this paper, we chose
to stretch business language a bit by using non-business terms
like `heart’ and `spirit,’ and to bring in the more subjective
perspective. In addition, we consciously included either/or
thinking by allowing contrasting points of view to co-exist.
It is to acknowledge the fact that nature evolves in
its own fashion irrespective of our mental models and
conceptual frameworks. What is DNA in the context of
organizations? When we consider a corporation as a living
organization, corporate and governance structures represent
the `body,’ corporate culture and values represent the
`heart,’ strategy represents the `head,’ while leadership and
purpose of the organization represent the `spirit.’
Just as human beings have polarity between head and
heart in making decisions, organizations have polarity between
the `heart’ and `head.’ Many times, organizational strategy
dictates the choices for the organization explicitly while the
culture and values may accept and/ or resist those strategic
choices.
When there is alignment between strategy and
culture, the organization makes big strides in implementing
that strategy and if culture resists the strategy,
implementation goes nowhere. Similarly when executives model
an environment of trust, openness, transparency and integrity
(values and principles) in addition to creating a larger
mission and purpose for the organization, the spirit of the
organization gets revitalized and reenergized.
This
can result in employees taking more responsibility and
accountability, reduced employee attrition, higher quality
customer service and increased creativity and innovation. When
we begin to align head, heart, spirit and body of the
organization, building of corporate identity (branding),
knowledge creation and innovation, design that communicates
company values and culture (so that it is easily identifiable
and brandable), the flow of information and development of the
`corporate nervous system’ become more effective.
The
issues of governance structures, learning processes, role of
executives and strategy become interwoven and synergies
between these four, we predict, becomes more emergent.
Whatever we say here in this paper at a conceptual,
descriptive and methodological levels has been said by other
researchers and consultants in parts without bringing in the
concepts of DNA or corporate genetics.
Why are we
evoking the DNA metaphor and why should organizations pay
attention? When you identify the genetic code of an
organization, you understand the unique and invisible essence
that distinguishes itself from every other code that is out
there. Studying, cloning, genetic engineering, predicting
future behavior and identifying becomes possible only when we
first identify and isolate the genetic code.
Just as
Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine function as the
building blocks for the human genetic code, there are elements
within the organizational system that function similarly. The
basic building blocks do not change between one organization
and another, only the sequence of base-pairs changes.
Base-pairs represent the polarity at the foundational level,
interdependent opposites which define and give life.
Without knowing the `base-pairs’ that organize in
different ways to give us the DNA sequence of an organization,
we can neither replicate success in other organizations that
are acquired, nor clone our culture in new divisions in other
countries, nor prevent `diseases’ that could wipe us out. Once
we understand the genetic code i.e. know the DNA of an
organization, then we can study, clone, replicate and repair
its defects and use it to study genes; build various cells
(divisions), organs (functions), and identity (brand) in a
conscious and purposeful way.
We must also keep in
mind that all culture is local and that its replication at
other locations may be manifest in significantly different
ways. Recognition that cultural manifestation of corporate DNA
is the combination of the base-pairs and the environment is
critical in the analysis of potential mergers and
acquisitions. Virtually all mergers are acquisitions because,
as they experience oppositional tension (their cultures on
opposite poles) it is seen as a problem to solve which leads
to a power struggle over which pole to choose.
As
these multiple power struggles occur, it ecomes clear that one
of the merged cultures is `winning’ in these struggles. As
this happens, it becomes clear, especially to the acquired
culture, that the combining of the two has been more of an
acquisition than a merger. Think of the Chrysler-Daimler
merger or the Honeywell-Allied Signal merger cases. Especially
in the Chrysler-Daimler merger, which was promoted as `merger
of equals,’ two years later it is quite clear that Daimler
acquired Chrysler.
(The author is the CEO of SelfCorp.
The second part of this research paper will appear next
Sunday) -
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