Organization Profiles - getting the arrows alligned

Which description best fits your company?
Cutting-Edge - State of the art firm, leading in it's field

New Thinking - Changing the way business is done or changing the world

High Profit - Looking for lucrative opportunities

Quality Lift - Uses best practices and implements new innovations successfully tried by others

Corrective - Looking to perpetuate their success

Structural - Pillars in their "community" with many achievements

Each of these descriptions is instrumental in stimulating new directions, strategic actions or visions for the company. In their true form, organization profiles do not exist. To achieve a “perfect” profile, a company or organization would have to be made up of people; all having the same dominate foresight profile. Recruiting for such an organization would be a nightmare, and it is uncertain just how long such a grouping would be able to continue to exist. Just like individuals, organizations have different styles that impact the companies’ policy and behavior. We also know that a combination of age and success can change a company’s profile. A life insurance company that started prior to a depression with the goal of relieving the effects of economic disaster could be categorized as Cutting Edge. They perceived a future event and met the need. However, insurance is a long-range business with a time margin: the length of the longest life and the last signed policy. All things having gone well, the life insurance company matures and needs people who can maintain and develop the company. A Quality Lift profile takes over. The company grows and due to its increased size becomes more complex and centralized showing signs of Corrective profile, that is they look to perpetuate their success. As pillars in their “community” with a proud history and achievements behind them, our model company begins to slip into a Structural profile, where innovation is not advancement, but is seen as a threat to traditions and time-tested methods learned the hard way. Change threatens basic company values and jobs. Which profiles do you have pushing and pulling within your organization?

What is your companies story?

Below are six descriptions of company profiles related to Foresight Styles Assessment research. Which ones tell the story of your company or organization?

Cutting Edge: is state-of-the-art and lead in their field.
New Thinking: changing the way business is done or change the world!
High Profit: looks for lucrative opportunities.
Quality Lift: uses best practices and implements new innovations successfully tried by others.
Corrective: looks to perpetuate their success.
Structural: are pillars in their community with many achievements.

Knowing which company profile fits is a boon to strategic planning. It can help you in hiring (which doesn't mean hiring only leaders with a similar style), in decision making, in visioning and mission development and in managing.

It may be that your organization has been around so long that it has had all of the above stories at one time or another. Something or someone comes along and renewes it and it takes on a different profile and starts not only a new story, but a new book! If you feel FSA's company styles can help you to work more effectively with your clients you can write for more information to info@foresightstyles.com. Why not tip a colleague to www.foresightstyles.com?

More on Change

Take the Foresight Styles Assessment and take us up on our introductory offer.
at:http://www.foresightstyles.com/assessment.html

Find more material on change on my Squidoo lens: Consulting Change
at:http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/first_publish/consultingchange

Introductory price for Foresight Styles Assessment

Thanks to those of you who have ventured into Foresight Styles Assessment before we lifted our "almost ready" sign! You have helped us identify our weak spots and fix them. If you have never taken the assessment Foresight Styles we welcome you to take it for the introductory price of $12.75 (normal price 15.00). We hope you will learn more about yourself and how you handle change. If you would like to use it as a tool for personal growth, please feel free to contact us and we will give you a free 15 min. consultation via Skype. Make an appointment at info@foresightstyles.com and we will set it up!

This blog "The Foresight Files" is for those of you who work with people who are struggling with change. You will find insights, tips on how to get started and information on how to work with groups. We hope you will contribute with your experiences as you begin to work with the material. It is our goal to offer as much coaching as possible. We want you to be the Foresight Styles experts!

Positive group pressure as a way to change

If you want a way to show people how new ideas spread take a tip from Molly Melching, who works in Senegal. She has an interesting exercise that change consultants might find useful. She has everyone sit (someone could make sure that all participants are sitting before you enter the room). She introduces herself and explains that in her land (or in Cutting Edge companies, successful politicians or productive NGO's etc.) everyone stands when someone speaks before them (choose another behavior that fits your situation) and that it is normal to stand, people stand and listen when someone speaks. She goes around the room and spreads the message to a number of people that it is more comfortable to stand. One at a time people begin to test standing and they are encouraged to tell someone else nearby or a friend across the room. After a few have started to stand, Molly needs to speak to fewer and fewer participants. The new advocates for standing spread the word. Soon there are only a few left sitting. After a while all are standing.
This is an exercise that illustrates how an innovation (in this case a new behavior) becomes diffused throughout the group. Spend time with those who are most receptive to the innovation. Encourage them to speak to others. In this way, Molly Melching is raising the human rights of the women of Senegal beginning with those most interested and they pass it on. Her education program is presented only to volunteers. The concepts are broken into three levels with increasing sophistication and the innovating group stays in each village (department) for three years.

Opportunists Conquer Climate Change

Here we have a perfect example of opportunistic behavior. In the Swedish press, Aftonbladet, reporter Joachim Kerpner writes the story behind ethanol production. European providers of ethanol are blooming like cauliflower. Sweden, an example of counties who have put much of their environmental energy into ethanol and bio-fuels, encourage companies as part of their strategy to fight global warming. Competition is created so that the companies are looking for the cheapest prices for their customers. Governments desperate to decrease their carbon emissions (and looking for new ways of employing citizens) create markets and encourage companies. The expression “Make hay while the sun shines” apply describes this situation.
What are the consequences? Kerpner reports that Brazilian sugar cane workers work fifteen hour days chopping the cane by hand. Competition comes from Tanzania where sugar cane is also grown. By keeping salaries low, their employers ensure a cheap raw product for ethanol production in India, England and Holland. Buyers think that they are providing jobs that will lift the poor of Tanzania. The consequences are that any monetary gains will be pressed by competition from some other poor, tropical nation and what’s left lost to health issues. Another consequence is that land owned by small farmers growing a diversity of crops will be turned into industrial farming. Ownership moves from the local grower to the “industrial” grower; crops that once nourished local families are gone. A leading Swedish company calculates that 3 million Tanzanians will be lifted out of poverty and assert their desire to avoid physical burnout. Huge tracts of land, the size of the Swedish Provence of Skåne will be involved and the social structure related to small farms and communities will be broken forever. As we know from Foresight Styles, consequences are not a big part of opportunist thinking. A generalized wish not to overwork cane cutters and give them jobs satisfies the opportunists need for meaning.
Technology that will allow production of ethanol from cellulous fibers found in all plants is still under development. Between now and then companies wish to earn as much as they can from sugarcane and assure high market share for 2010 when Swedish use of ethanol is scheduled to play its role in slowing climate change. We are going to see more of this opportunism because the systemic change to renewable fuels will go in phases rather than an overnight flip flop. The trick is for companies to realize the transitional nature of their enterprise and be willing to employ foresight skills in order to maintain flexebilty and survive or move from one short term project to another. Source: http://www.aftonbladet.se/klimathotet/joachimkerpner/

Change - innovation: what is the difference?

As a consultant working with companies or as a coach working with individuals it is important to help clients understand how they move forward. Let us begin with an individual. One of today’s most discussed personal problems is obesity or overweight. There are many products on the market that promise you will loose weight before swim suit season, in two weeks or in a month. Most of these work on a few, but fail for the greater majority. Another group of weight loss writers speak about a lifestyle change. What they mean, but don't say because it is too loaded is that a lifestyle change means a change in how one uses his or her brain. The brain must be taught to think long-term instead of giving in to instant gratification. It means taking responsibility for ones self and making decisions about products. It means learning more about how the world works, spending more money on food and taking responsibility for ones self.

This is a huge "change". After commitment to the new direction there are many “innovations” that will help the individual. Information from informed people who talk about more than food, they also speak about exercise, good mental health, understanding ones own body and its peculiarities will suggest innovations in each area that can enforce the new lifestyle.

In many companies and organizations a commitment to providing customers with products and services that are sustainable and provide ones workers with fair salaries and working conditions represents a huge “change”. It is not a change because they think these goals are inherently wrong, but that they appear go against the maximization of profit. If one is mandated by law to earn a profit for the sake of shareholders, it is much harder to make the change. The two seem incompatible.

However, a number of companies are slowly trying. Of course, none of them will truly make the change until they are released from the need to maximize profit in order to pay stockholders or if they remain small and or private. The idea of local and small companies is taking hold in some areas. The large Wal-Mart’s have been denied building permits in some towns. The trend of the dying mom and pop businesses is slowly reversing itself. One of Sweden’s largest and most successful business is IKEA. It has gone international but is not listed on the stock exchange because it’s owner and founder has refused to go public.

Remaining small and private are “innovations” that will lead us to a very different business paradigm. For a long time big business (that is stockholder held international conglomerates) will continue to make profit, but in the long-run, they will fail. They already have divested themselves of large numbers of employees, an innovation that serves the dying paradigm. This is an interesting point. One can innovate within the existing world view with the idea of extending its past glories longer into the future or one can adapt the new worldview and innovate to give life to and assure success in the new one.

If you are consultant to a company do they want help extending the old world view, or do they want help with actualizing a new one? Which type of work do you prefer to do? Are they up for a large change to a new paradigm, or are they just interested in innovations which lengthen the status quo?