How do you feel about leading organizations and people in a world full of unpredictable changes? Honestly, are you more stressed – sometimes overwhelmed – or do you focus on all of the big opportunities? There is something new emerging in our organizational VUCA world, where digitalization, new social phenomena and political uncertainty rule. Everybody can feel it but only few can name it. One thing is clear, though: Old patterns of success don’t work anymore and nearly everybody is looking for new recipes. No wonder 100,000 people visit Silicon Valley every year to learn from this innovative hot spot, and thousands of books, blog posts and articles are published about how to become more agile, responsive or resilient. Buzzwords are defi nitely booming. With all this in mind, as a leader, you should ask yourself three key questions:
- What could agile mean for our organization in this environment of exponential change?
- How can we transform our organization and leverage the potential of our employees to become more agile and responsive players?
- As leaders, experts and consultants, how can we become role models for new ways of working?
In this issue of Change Magazine, we tried to provide you with a lot of information that will hopefully help you answer the questions above. We also visited Silicon Valley to gain some insights we want to share with you. On the following pages, you will find articles that explore many of the current concepts like self-organization, Design Thinking, the Lean Startup, disruption, exponential organizations and agile transformation. In our consultancy work, we incorporate all of these developments because they contain a great deal of valuable thoughts. However, we have to be humble: Knowing about some principles does not instantly create solutions for every challenge. For us this is a path – you might also call it a learning journey – to find new ways of working and new patterns to develop the organizations of the future. Our ambition is to co-create developments toward more agile, responsive and impactful organizations where people can unfold their full potential.
