The Four readiness drivers I have mentioned in previous posts [1] are:
- Rapid Reaction and Reconfiguration (RRR)
- Focus on your ‘social algorithms’ (non-negotiable behaviours)
- Built-in reboot systems
- Renounce adaptation and robustness. It means scary reinvention
I reintroduced the Lego-Jigsaw/RRR dilemma. Next: all things being equal, I focus on behaviours.
It is so simple that it gets overlooked. Conscious leaders, when confronted by occasionally infuriating people like me, acknowledge: yes, we’ve done this, we’ve done that, but we have never looked seriously at behaviours. And yet, there is always a plethora of terms and semantic hooks: empowerment, ownership, openness, entrepreneurship or customer-centrism. Trouble is, none of these are behaviours. That is, these are not operational because they have dozens of meanings. They are the equivalent of trying to build a house and declaring that you need ‘materials’.
Behaviours (clear units of action within unequivocal meaning) may come in all sorts of forms and shapes but you need to be clear what they are. Behaviours are your ‘social algorithms’: if this happens, we do that; we would always do this, we will never do that; if X, then go to Y and solve, etc.
If these behaviours are clear, they should inform all processes and systems, not the other way around.
In the new state of readiness, the behavioural fabric is the competitive advantage. The more digitalised we become, the more analogue the social algorithms are. They are called human behaviours. The ‘master algorithm’ is behavioural.