Flex Or Fail

Why adaptive companies hold the advantage in digital

- Elizabeth Spaulding

Google is widely hailed as one of the most nimble and innovative companies in the world. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t confronted its share of big company organisational issues.

Its creation of Alphabet is a case in point. The company set out to compete more effectively amid constant disruption when it placed its well-established businesses (Google, Gmail, YouTube, Android, Maps) with Google and its more speculative businesses (Calico, Waymo, Nest, Google Fiber, GV, CapitalG) with Alphabet. The objective was to separate the more mature money generators from the company’s growth initiatives. The new structure would give each business the leeway to make decisions based on the contours of its specific market while discouraging the resource battles that slow down other large technology companies.

Rather than force strategic decisions about where to play in a static, function-driven organisation and team structure, Google created a more flexible organisation that could act based on the imperatives of each unique business. This mindset — namely, the aptitude to bring innergame agility to operations, planning and people management — is the hallmark of an adaptive organisation. The most adaptive companies:

•Quickly reallocate investments and resources as new threats and opportunities arise instead of waiting for the yearly planning meetings;

•Take risks and prioritise new ideas;

•Attack priorities by empowering teams to tackle problems together, giving them true ownership of decisions; and

•Focus the right talent on the right objectives, using qualitative and quantitative means.

CONTINUOUS STRATEGIC AND FINANCIAL PLANNING