Companies, like People, when they face Failure they have three options.
Fight, Flight or Freeze.
Who would chose what and what would you chose.
Nowadays everybody want to be the next big Disruption in the Market. They want to be the ones that will come and change the way we see and do things. Still most are so reluctant to disrupt the way they do
things and this is even more strong in some “Big” Companies that get so attached to their past success that convert their own achievements to their own burden that keeps them back and eventually are left behind. As an Organization grows they start to become too rigid and they face any drastic change as a Risk rather than as an Opportunity to Innovate.
Since my early days as an Analyst I was very focused in understanding the product and map its mechanics to the Behavior of the Customer. At the end of one Presentation I gave on Product Improvements, someone came back to me saying that the Company has the same Product for 5 Years and it was working fine. With his statement he was trying to defend the lack of need for change, but in my eyes the person that was disregarding the most my Ideas was the one that gave the most powerful justification in my favor and he did not even know.
Analysts are from their nature Disruptors or they ought to be. Analysts have to Analyse the past in order to understand, foresee and if possible to shape the future. They are the ones that work with the old trying to give birth to the new. This is how they have to be treated also from any Organisation that wants to apply Analytics and they have to be given the space to challenge the Status Quo and provide a different perspective. Analytics can be the strongest cure against all illness that an Organisation may face or a mere painkiller that just treats the symptom. The way it will be used is in the Culture of each Organisation. If Analytics are treated in a sterile way that they just are the depiction of performance into numbers it will never be anything more than the painkiller.
The fact is that the resistance in Disruption is even more intense in many Under-performing Organisations, that in reality they are the ones needing it the most. This is because they cultivate a Culture where the Fear of Failure outweighs the Excitement of Success. This initiates a vicious circle that results in being left behind and failing to drive or even adapt to change. When they are under-performing the Fear Culture becomes even stronger, so everyone starts being even more reluctant to Lead or even Manage Change. This way the route to failure is steady and people tend to confuse stability with safety. So they hide behind this illusion of safety and avoid to stand out. This is the way that our brains are wired. One of the reactions of our brain when it is under a lot of Stress is Inertia, where the “fight or flight” mode turns into our body freezing and Fear overtakes with the sense of Threat becoming so strong that we give up.
Culture is the Collective Mindset of the Employees within an Organization and it Interacts both ways. The Individual Mindset contributes into shaping the Culture and at the same time the Culture is reinforcing compatible Mindsets or shutting down different Mindsets. In the Organisations that have entered the Inertia phase there is strong resistance to any disruption as their priority is not to evade the Threat, but to keep their current status, failing to realise that “Business-as-Usual” in a fast paced Industry is the guarantee for failure. Like the Ostrich that in the presence of a Threat it will just dig a hole to hide its head in, confusing the fact that the Threat is not visible anymore with the lack of it.
Now the ones that refuse to enter in the Inertia State and chose to fight against the Threat, they have to face a great resistance and their efforts result in Confusion, both for them and the Organisation, as their efforts to bring change hit a wall and instead of generating Synergies they result into Internal Competition. The Forces trying to maintain Current Practices against the Change that they try to introduce. This provides a negative disruption, as it is not Productive and the only thing coming out of this is an increase in the Fatigue of the Organisation. This will result in those who had been in fight mode to either adapt to the Organisation and switch to Inertia or they will chose the flight mode and leave. This way the Organisation is allowing Natural Selection to weaken itself.
So it is vital to leave space into the Analysts to Disrupt the way that things are done and give them the chance to bring something new on the Table. The only way to feel threatened from those that want to bring Change, is if we identify our selves with the “Old” and it is a given that sooner or later it will have to give its place to the “New”.
Change is inevitable and it is beyond our choice if it will happen. The only choice we can make is if we will lead the Change or if we will be dragged from it. More specifically the Question we are called to answer is if we will trust the people that they come to Question the way things were done or not.