WHAT IS CRYING OUT FOR CHANGE?

Some of what is crying out for change within an organization is fairly obvious from the perspective of an individual employee. The same is true within an industry -- what is crying out for change may be obvious from the perspective of one of its participating companies. But it's the nature of inherited structures that they have within them elements that typically remain concealed. So from our own perspective, we see little about ourselves that is crying out for change because every entity has a relatively coherent identity or self image that has already been largely integrated with an existing environment and a world of experience.

Our quest to understand innovation, adaptability, and leadership initiates the question, "What is crying out for change?" This question naturally unfolds into questions about the prevailing conditions and processes. Prevailing conditions and processes conceal possibilities because they prevail. What prevails is taken for granted by everyone and conceals what is possible. Its ability to prevail is based in being taken for granted.

Our understanding of complex adaptive systems is very useful in trying to grasp how our organizations adapt. If you want a transformation to occur in your company, begin with questions that pertain to your industry rather than to your individual part of it. Why? Because your company is a complex adaptive system that has been adapting to the other systems that form your industry. Your industry is the immediate commercial structure to which your company has adapted. Any company adapts more to its suppliers and competitors than it does to its customers -- usually by necessity.

Despite popular rhetoric about the customer coming first, we are bound more by our industry structure than by our customers. This is because the industry, marketplace, and product development, etc. have emerged out of the continual interplay of countless elements and created an integrated adaptive system in its own right. Any customer will come in contact with numerous buying options before making a selection and their selection will be based on the choices offered by the marketplace.

As customers we typically don't stop to imagine what other type of option might actually serve us better. We may come up with ideas for small improvements but we'll buy what appeals to us most from the choices available. As producers we are in pretty much the same situation. We would have to expend far more creative thinking and development costs than most of us have considered in order to go outside the existing support structure of suppliers and general market acceptance. This applies not only to products but also to forms of delivery and to the different ways we organise for production.