Into the teenies: All change

As we move from the noughties into what’s already being dubbed ‘the teenies’, the future of our institutions - political, commercial and social - is looking decidedly shaky. The pressure on costs is likely to remain on businesses (and indeed governments and consumers) for some time as the shocks of the financial crisis its knock-on effects continue to work their way through the system. Many economists are predicting further pain to come.

But I don’t believe the pain will be spread evenly. Organisations that can free their people, processes and information from the institutional shackles that are increasingly hampering their ability to be agile and efficient will be those that survive and thrive through the next decade and beyond. Those that remain wedded to old models and behaviours will wither and - in the end - die.

Indeed, continued recession and possible further shocks to the market are likely to accelerate this shift. Why do I say this? Because with far less money sloshing around the system, the successful organisations of the teenies will be those that can capture a bigger slice of a shrinking market, not those that try to cling to their sacred cash cows and traditionally successful strategies. And that means those who can deliver the goods and services people really want in the most cost-effective and efficient way possible.

Fortunately, technology - coupled with effective change management - can offer a lifeline. Organisations will increasingly need to use flexible cloud computing services to ensure IT systems, services and storage are as cost-efficient and flexible as possible. They will need to employ technologies like social networking and open, linked data to allow customers to become true co-creators of goods, services and strategies. They will need to embrace the open, web technologies and service-based architectures that let them form both ad-hoc and longer-term collaborations, with systems and data that can hook into, and interoperate with, those of partner organisations, suppliers and customers.

Most fundamentally, though, they will need to transform the way they organise themselves - truly flattening management hierarchies, sourcing talent from as diverse a pool as possible and giving their employees the freedom to work in ways that allow them to be as fulfilled and productive as they can be, as well as the means to contribute in a meaningful way to organisational innovation and strategy (which again implies increased use of social networking and online collaboration technologies, as well as determined leadership).

While these tectonic shifts will lead to considerable political and organisational conflict in the coming decade, as vested interests fight to prevent change, they are - I believe - unstoppable. The genie is out of the bottle and as organisations employing these strategies (wherever in the world they may be) begin to see results at the expense of the laggards, the transformation of businesses will accelerate. Service providers have a key role to play in ensuring their customers respond in a way that gives them the best chance of seeing these changes through successfully.