The systemic survival approach is a crucial part of being in HR today

Agility and innovation are the key components of business success in today’s hypercompetitive world. To achieve a high level of agility and innovation, organisations need to adopt the systemic survival approach, writes Dr Mostafa Sayyadi.

The sad reality is that as organisations grow in their business environment, they move away from agility and innovation. This growth sometimes brings inertia and less agility. Innovative and creative ideas in this bureaucratic environment are quickly suppressed, and efforts of the organisation are focused only on achieving a high level of efficiency. A handful of companies, like Apple, are still focused on the original idea of helping society through technological breakthroughs.

The systemic survival approach can play a very important role in achieving agility and innovation, and reducing the gap between external changes and the proper response to these changes. Taking the systemic survival approach that strengthens a dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and people should become the task of innovative and transformational leaders in today’s business environment.

To achieve a high level of agility and innovation, the systemic survival approach factors into this complex equation by strengthening a dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and people. This approach increases the exchange of innovative ideas among employees and leads to the growth of knowledge flow and causes the realisation of organisational innovation. Some organisations must redesign their organisational processes to maximise the interaction of these processes with organisational strategies to achieve a systemic approach.

Redesigning organisational processes to further align with strategies is necessary to help organisations become more compatible with their business environment, through more effective, timelier, and more innovative responses to the external changes in the business environment. While many organisations do not suffer from a lack of ideas, they do not have an effective and applied approach for sharing these ideas and using them.

The systemic survival approach is the missing link for realising this potential. The systemic survival approach is a vital and necessary factor in achieving agility and reducing the gap between changes and the response time to them. And it is the organisation that uses this approach and ultimately improves agility and innovation.

The systemic survival approach

The organisations in which we work can help us, as individuals, fulfil our desires and meet our aspirations. This combination enhances the American Dream and provides exciting collective results from careers.

An example of this comes from the CEO of Mercedes-Benz, Dieter Zetsche, who asked himself why cars crash. This question has led to the growing use of intelligent sensors that bring sleepy drivers to the required level of alertness with successive alarms, video camera technology, and sensitivity settings through automation. Many drivers have heart attacks behind the wheel, drivers lose consciousness, and inventors are attempting to create cars that can intelligently take control of themselves and park themselves automatically in a safe place, and contact the proper authorities.

Questions posed and answered like this one example of how to prevent car accidents led to an amazing result and a sustainable model for future cars that eventually prevented many car accidents across the world.

With a dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and people, which, from now on, we call the systemic survival approach, companies can provide a showcase of camaraderie between our individual aspirations and exciting collective results.

For example, Cristiano Ronaldo, in football, posturing with the most goals and assists, eventually improves the position of the Portuguese national team and his club team in the international rankings. This successful systematic survival for the future can be captured across industries.

In the systemic survival approach, organisations are seen as a set of processes, strategies, and individuals that form the identity of an organisation as a thriving mechanism, aligning the organisation towards the right goals. Processes activate strategies that matter for organisations, and strategies enhance the capabilities of the individuals and the organisations to respond to the situations they face in a timely fashion. Building a solid foundation of systematic success, and from this point on, the organisation is capable of withstanding turbulence and hypercompetitive pressures from rivals.

Executives at the highest levels of the organisation are responsible for developing the systemic survival approach and growing a dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and individuals to increase its agility in innovative response to environmental changes. Placing strong precedence on innovation will win new and more practical ideas and keep organisations safe.

Organisations that rely on a hierarchical and pyramidal approach, like dinosaurs, will disappear and will be replaced by organisations based on a systemic survival approach.

Successful examples of such organisations can be seen in companies such as Tesla, Apple, and Toyota. These three leading companies are riding the market trends. Processes, strategies, and people interact so dynamically that all market opportunities are exploited to the best of their ability at these three organisations.

Taking the systemic survival approach and increasing the dynamic interaction between processes, strategies, and people to grow innovation and agility for the organisation will also help prevent a tragic event such as what happened to the prestigious company Nokia.

Conclusion

Now that you know the essential step for enduring survival, take the systematic survival approach and increase organisational agility and innovation. Adapt to the changing environment. Increase innovation and be as agile as possible. This is your next step to become systematically successful, improve customer and stakeholder satisfaction, and help you become a thriving company in the business environment.

Dr Mostafa Sayyadi is a management thinker and theorist.

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