State of Readiness by Joseph F. Paris Jr

Author:Joseph F. Paris Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626343122
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Published: 2017-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

CREDIBLE INTERNAL DISRUPTERS

A business and its culture will not change without a credible disrupter. And a credible external disrupter thrust on a business will necessarily be traumatic, perhaps fatal, in its form and response. It is best avoided. In the face of such peril, might a business under threat be able to engineer and introduce a credible disrupter from within the business?

Unfortunately, the Nash Equilibrium asserts that this is impossible. A credible disrupter cannot be found and grown from within the business.

However, if the leadership of the business is wise and acts early enough, a credible external disrupter can possibly be identified and introduced into the business—in effect engineering a credible internal disrupter. As such, the likelihood of the business perpetuating increases, most likely in a dramatically different form, but under terms and conditions that would be more favorable than the alternative.

Such credible external disrupters turned credible internal disrupters might take the form of a new C-level executive, the merger of two businesses, the introduction of new financial partners, the hiring of consultants or other subject-matter experts from outside the company, and so on.

Take IBM, for example. Thomas Watson founded and grew the company largely along the lines of his vision and created an unimpeachable corporate culture. This served the company well, until the internally grown leadership was faced with external threats for which they were ill prepared and untrained. These threats resulted in the near collapse of the company in the early 1990s, which was averted when Lou Gerstner, an outsider to IBM and former CEO of RJR Nabisco, was called on to turn the fortunes of the company around.

Gerstner spent a considerable amount of time examining the present state of IBM, its various business units, offerings, and structure. He had the leadership make pitches about their value propositions and how they functioned. Then, he percolated this information to formulate a strategy for IBM’s future and a path to get there.

The many reforms and restructuring introduced by Gerstner were possible only because he had no past at IBM; the fact that he had previously made Oreos and had no history in the technology industry at all was a strategic and tactical advantage. He was able to evaluate the many problems at IBM objectively, pragmatically, and without emotion. His outsider status gave him the opportunity to redefine and then realign the entire company. But, most importantly, he had the freedom and authority to put new strategies into place without being beholden to the past.

The key to successful change on the most favorable terms is to purposefully design, engineer, and introduce the disrupter. Start with a small cadre of specifically selected participants to create the beginnings of an insurgency. Then methodically, continuously, and deliberately convert and add additional members so that the process of transformational change begins to gain momentum. In effect, you must get members to defect from their old culture and adopt the new culture. You must be able to target the disrupter (to be most effective) and to

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