Marsya Aderizal

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Word count : 1655 / PIN : 10296

FIND THE NEXT WAVE TO RIDE ON – NEW BUSINESS

STRATEGIES IN CHANGING WORLD

I. Change as a “Trend” in Modern World

Human always experience many changes in life. Baby can’t walk or talk yet but then

grow bigger and able to walk, talk, and do many things. This kid later become an adult who

married, raise kids, and work for pursuing career. After that, he will be old, become weaker,

and susceptible to illness. This alteration in growth of human is not the only form of change.

There are many cases that a man who was poor but then become very rich because of their

effort. See Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. They were nothing in past years before they became

very successful in their business just like now. Today, they can be categorized as richest man

in the world. There are also cases a man who was known as a successful person but then

become futile. Bernard Madoff is one of the example. He was known as a good American

Businessman and a former chairman of NASDAQ. Who can predict that he will be charged

against many kinds of fraud, sentenced 150 years in prison and $170 billion in restitution, and

also referred to as the largest investor fraud ever committed by a single person1? Those cases

prove that human is very influenced by change whether it is from their internal or external

environment.

Companies, organizations, and countries suffer change as well because they consist of

human as the main living things. When financial turmoil hit the world economy in 2007,

Lehman Brothers bankrupted, Sony, Peugeot, and Ford suffer loss and laid off many of its

employees, and export of many countries reduced because of the decrease of purchasing

power. We can also see from that example, many changes (bankrupt of a company, laid off of

employees, decrease purchasing power) can happen as a result of one change (financial

turmoil) happens before. The existence of globalization omit countries boundary and as a

result the effect of change can be suffer globally. Expansion of technology is another factor

1Wikipedia, Bernard Madoff, 15 March 2009

Marsya Aderizal

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that create it performs rapidly. That’s why many changes can happen especially in modern

world.

Trend means the general direction in which something tends to move or a general

tendency2. Change is very common in modern world and can be said as world general

tendency because modern world tends to change. Hence, change can be referred as trend of

modern world.

II. Nature of Change

Thefreedictionary.com defines change as the act, process, or result of altering or

modifying. Change also means a transformation or transition from one state, condition, or

phase to another3. We can conclude from those definitions that if something changes then it

will differ from the earlier state or condition. That’s why people generally have negative

attitudes and perceptions toward changes. People usually worry if something turn out not to

be as usual and that they will suffer bad experience from what it results. They don’t like to

experience uncertain conditions.

In organization, change can be threatening especially if its identity is threatened.

Identity is often vested in symbols (job titles, salary, etc) and rituals (working practice).

Changing the identity may be essential but if done insensitively may feel like challenging

identity. In addition, change can also challenge existing power structure. Therefore it may be

blocked by those with power4. This phenomenon is known as resistance to change which

makes change be much more difficult.

However, change is a trend in modern world. Although most people tend to fear and

threatened by it, company have to cope it wisely or otherwise failed. Change can be a threat

and an opportunity as well depends on how to get along. Company with breakthrough

innovation will become a market leader and accomplish its sales target. In contrast, lots of

companies bankrupted in financial turmoil because they couldn’t manage change prudently.

Lehman Brothers had to declare bankruptcy because they could not survived the subprime

mortgage crisis that leads to financial turmoil. Many financial firms such as Merrill Lynch,

2Answers.com, trend

3thefreedictionary.com, change

4Seel, Richard 2008. The Nature of Organisational Change.

Find the Next Wave to Ride On - New Business Strategies in the Changing World

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HBOS, and Washington Mutual had no other choice than to be acquired by other

corporations5. Companies should do something in order to survive change. The emerged of

this phenomenon redouble the need for organization to do some action.

III.Dealing with Change in Business World

Making change is not as easy as it can be heard. There are many obstacles in doing

some transformations. Lots of issues are involved for instance resistance of change,

unexpected result takes place, unsuccessful alteration, challenging identity of organization,

and many more. That’s why we need a set of direction to implement change effectively.

Dealing with change is related to a term called change management which is the set of

processes, tools and practices that are used to manage the people side of a change. Change

management is the bridge between "implementing a solution" and an organization ultimately

realizing the benefits associated with the change6. Thus, we can use change management as a

tool to deal with change. There are three laws in change management adapted from Isaac

Newton Law of Motion which are7 :

1. overcoming the natural inertia in organizations requires constant application of the

forces for change

2. the greater the inertia or resistance to change, the greater the required forces of

change

3. the way that change agents treat resisters is the way that resisters will treat change

agents

From those principles, it can be concluded that company need forces of change to face the

resistance. The treatment to the resisters is also important.

There are ten steps to transform company quickly, face the resistance, treats all

employees carefully which are8 :

1. Address the “human side” systematically

5Wikipedia, Subprime Mortgage Crisis

6http://www.change-management.com/tutorial-change-triangle-mod2.htm

7http://www.businessperform.com/html/change_management_principles.html

8Aguirre, DeAnne. 10 Principles of Change Management. San Fransisco : Booz Company.2004

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Change management approach should be fully integrated into program design and

decision making.

2. Start at the top

The leaders themselves must embrace the new approaches first, both to challenge

and motivate the rest of organization. They should give good examples to all of

subordinates.

3. Involve every layer

Because change affects different levels of company, change efforts must include

plans for identifying leaders throughout company and pushing responsibility for

design and implementation down.

4. Make the formal case

Articulation of formal case and written vision statement are invaluable

opportunities to create leadership-team alignment.

5. Create ownership

Ownership is best created by involving people in identifying problems and crafting

solutions.

6. Communicate the message

The best change programs reinforce core messages through regular and timely

advice that is both practicable and inspirational.

7. Assess the cultural landscape

Cultural diagnostic can assess organizational readiness to change, bring major

problem to surface, identify conflicts, and define factors that recognize and

influence sources of leadership and resistance.

8. Address culture explicitly

Once a culture is understood, it must be addressed thoroughly to company in

change program.

9. Prepare for the unexpected

Effectively managing change requires continual reassessment of its impact and the

organization’s willingness and ability to adopt the next wave of transformation.

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10. Speak to the individual

People will react to what they see and hear, and need to be involved in change

process.

Thus, whatever company’s change business strategies are, they should appropriate with those

principles.

IV. New Business Strategies in Changing World

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most

responsive to change. ~Author unknown, commonly misattributed to Charles Darwin

The above quote already describes that businesses should be responsive to change if

they want to be long lasting. The most important thing is the degree of responsiveness instead

of the size of an entity. Then, company should find a best way to be always responsive to

change.

Company could not just depend on the practice of change management. It will be

better for corporation to blend the principles of change management in its operations activity.

How can a business do it? Company should formulate business strategies that suitable and

practical for it. However, not all successful strategies are planned. Many successful strategies

arise from local experimental or trial and error and succeed but many fail as well. Strategy can

be planned but it can also emerge in unexpected and unanticipated ways. That is called as

“bottom-up” or Emergent Strategy. To capture the benefit of emerging strategy, manager

must foster organizational learning. Organizational learning is the ability of organization to

monitor changes in its environment and adjust its processes, products, or services to capitalize

those changes9.

Organizational learning initiated managers by the use of performance measurement

and control system to encourage employees to constantly innovate and search for signs of

change10. By this strategy, change in organization can be done in many levels : top level by

the management doing encouragement and bottom level by employees learning to innovate

9Robert Simons, Performance Measurement and Control System for Implementing Strategy. (New Jersey :

Pearson Hall, Inc), 36.

10Ibid, page 36

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and change. In this way, company can always maintain its sustainable change which is very

important to make company survive the business.

Other important thing that should be remembered is business strategy used to deal

with change would useless if all principles of change management are not applied. If we

implement organizational learning without starting from the top, doing communication,

involving every layer in organization, or creating ownership, the strategy won’t be effective.

Good strategy with bad implementation is nothing. We have to combine organizational

learning and change management to attain sustainable change. Organizational learning is like

a sword with change management as its handle. Hence, change management and

organizational learning plays an important role in implementing business strategy and dealing

with change.