Failure to Adapt - The Challenge of Modern Leadership

Failure to Adapt

An Internet search of “What is the most pressing issue in leadership today?” will yield just over 600 million results. In reading the top 15 to 20 articles and reports, a variety of common themes appear. Issues such as attracting and retaining top talent, a lack of understanding/alignment with the company vision, and managerial effectiveness appear in virtually every article on the subject. When reading and researching such a topic, one must ask, are these actually the problems or are these the visible symptoms of a deeper underlying issue? By utilizing the three previous example issues in a thorough comparison from asynchronous perspectives, it can be concluded that the answer to this question is absolutely. All of these issues can be distilled down to a single underlying issue: the failure to adapt to an ever-changing business environment and workforce.

The first issue of attracting and retaining top talent is an extremely apropos example. Viewed from an employee’s opportunity perspective, as stated by Dana Manciagli (2016), “in-demand professionals have more opportunities today, [and] it’s harder to recruit and retain top performers.” From a human resources perspective as it relates to benefits, compensation, and company culture, an employee’s decision to join or leave an organization is rooted in the company’s adaptation to changes in the marketplace, which influences said decision (Manciagli, 2016). Rigorous structure is an organization’s worst enemy in this case because it limits the company’s ability to adapt. It is not employees’ current compensation that causes them to begin looking for alternatives. It is how that compensation compares to changes in the market as a whole.

To press on in the face of difficulty, organizations and leaders must have a “North Star” (i.e., a core purpose they strongly believe in that anchors a given organizational initiative and guides their decision-making; (Dallas, 2015). This “star” is typically embedded in the company’s vision and mission. Sadly, a company’s vision is often used as a marketing and public relations tool rather than a guiding principle for management. Just as organizations are constantly evolving, an organization’s vision should also be evolving. Organizations, especially large ones, have a natural tendency to follow established patterns of behavior—even in response to dramatic environmental shifts. Stuck in the antiquated modes of thinking and working that brought success in the past, market leaders simply accelerate all their tried-and-true activities. In trying to dig themselves out of a hole, they just deepen it (Sull, 1999). The primary failure here is that the organization does not alter its vision, and therefore its course, based on those dramatic shifts in the business environment. The most powerful visions are end-user focused and simple for everyone to understand. An unfortunate paradox is that the simpler the vision is, the more complicated it is to implement. Making things easy for your end customers means that leaders have to cross many turfs and break down silo walls within and outside the organization (Dallas, 2015).

Organizational or initiative success is largely rooted in the managerial effectiveness of the leader. To survive and thrive, every organization must know how to navigate change. Sadly, 75% of change initiatives fail, according to a recent study by McKinsey & Co (Dallas, 2015). Although the actual change is often blamed, this failure is not the result of the change itself, but the leader’s ability to understand, implement, and adapt to the change. A 2007 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management showed that three of the top four obstacles and challenges during major organizational changes are directly impacted and led by the leadership and managers of the organization (Benedict, 2007). In addition to a leader’s impact on managing change, today’s business environment is witnessing the beginning of a dramatic shift in the mind-set and mentality of leaders. Most people, including many leaders, think of leaders as the people in charge—the decision makers, the authority. Yet, another approach is to view the leader as performing a service for the group or team—in other words, they act as servant leaders. This is actually an old concept with roots in Confucian philosophy. The modern version of servant leadership was conceptualized by Robert Greenleaf, who worked for almost 40 years at AT&T. Greenleaf argued that, to develop a successful, high-functioning team or organization, leaders are obliged to make followers’ welfare and well-being priorities and to serve followers by providing for their needs and responding to their concerns (as cited in Riggio, 2018). This philosophy is best communicated in Greenleaf’s quote, “The organization exists for the person as much as the person exists for the organization” (as cited in Riggio, 2018). Although Robert Greenleaf’s ideas were presented almost 50 years ago, it is the “millennial” mind-set and personality of today’s young professionals that have highlighted the need to adapt to (or at least have an understanding of) a servant style of leadership.

There are myriad issues and challenges facing today’s leaders. Some are extremely specific to a given organization or situation, whereas others affect virtually all organizations. In today’s business environment, the vast majority of these issues can be distilled down to a single challenge: the need to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Although the failure to adapt to market shifts manifests itself in a variety of ways, depending on the respective industry and adaptation that is needed, adaptation remains the single greatest challenge facing today’s leaders.

References

Benedict, A. (2007). 2007 change management survey report. Alexandria, VA: Society for Human Resource Management.

Dallas, H. J. (2015, October 22). Here are 4 ways leaders can deal with change. Fortune. Retrieved from https://fortune.com/2015/10/22/change-leaders-managers/

Manciagli, D. (2016, April 13). 4 biggest challenges facing business leaders today. Biz Journals. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/growth-strategies/2016/04/4-biggest-challenges-facing-business-leaders-today.html

Riggio, R. E. (2018, December 9). What is servant leadership and why does it matter? [web log]. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201812/what-is-servant-leadership-and-why-does-it-matter

Sull, D. (1999, July-August). Why good companies go bad. Harvard Business Review, 42–55. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/1999/07/why-good-companies-go-badFailure to Adapt