Cultivating creativity
How do you cultivate adaptable people and unleash their capabilities on a volatile world without losing control? Philippe Masson explains.
Is there such a thing as an ideal company? Probably not. But, as in nature, some are better suited to their environments than others. And today's volatile environment is certainly not what it was even a few years ago when the new economy was booming. At Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, our recent experiences suggest that those enterprises which are most adaptable are the ones best able to cope with this volatility.
Achieving superior performance
By observing what a few high performers have achieved, we have concluded that truly adaptive enterprises exhibit three fundamental qualities which set them apart:
- Instinct: an ability to read even weak signals early, and to react quickly, such as credit card innovator Capital One which tests new products on the market every day
- Agility: coping with events such as demand fluctuations by combining and recombining capabilities within their ecosystem. Dell Computers is good example
- Intelligence: learning from past experience. After a difficult return to growth following the Gulf War, Marriott Hotels reacted to the World Trade Center disaster by mobilising their entire organisation for recovery within a few weeks - instead of slashing costs from the top.
All have mastered the art of cultivating adaptive people - individuals who share a common purpose, seek to help others, are sensitive to their environment, and stand ready to exercise initiative and take risks.
Cultivating adaptive behaviours through People Management Practices
As employee behaviour is shaped by the key events in their working lifecycles, so HR executives have a vital role to play in building people management practices - from recruitment to 'off-boarding'.
Like most consulting companies, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young recruits for skills and behaviours rather than job-specific knowledge. Combined with diverse targeting, a strong on-boarding process, and dynamic management of mobility, this makes for a richer blend of talents.
Our people work for an organisational entity such as the Finance Sector in France, but they belong to a 'profession' such as strategic and business consulting, or technology. Their choice of career tracks and their performance assessment criteria depend on their profession and their role. Our consultants have a choice between becoming content specialists or managing client engagements and evolving towards a broader account executive role.
Clearly, HR directors have a major role to play in shaping the people management practices that foster adaptive behaviours. But they need to operate in an environment that empowers people.
Empowering people through adaptive organisation models and adaptive IT
While most companies today still entertain some pockets of hierarchy, where life is controlled by job descriptions and reporting lines, many have evolved to a more modular structure with responsibilities delegated to business units and consistency achieved through transverse management processes.
The most adaptive phase in this evolution is the shift towards a networked organisation model in which teams are the most important organisational entities and people are connected through communities of interest.
Besides project teams where people spend most of their time, communities such as 'technology architects' or 'engagement managers' provide our employees with a natural family in which to share knowledge and collaborate on client work with fellow-professionals.
The technology architects community, for example, was instrumental in nurturing our approach to adaptive IT architecture, which has subsequently become a market standard. The other key ingredient in this empowerment formula is IT. Adaptive IT provides the connectivity and flexibility which employees need to operate in networks and to respond to events.
But adaptiveness is not a panacea. Empowering even talented people can result in disasters if they are not properly guided. Building a sound organisation in the adaptive world is a matter of judgement about the right balance between initiative and risk-taking, empowerment and guidance.
And adaptive enterprise is also critical once an employee decides to leave. Such enterprises also support their employees at that point by maintaining strong relationships with the alumni community.
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