Pillars Driving Strategy for a Changing Workplace

Chenista Rae Straubel

BUS 4013: Organizational Structure, Learning, and Performance
Prof. Gregory Gotches
June 2, 2005

Five pillars of high – performance strategy include leadership, knowledge,

innovation, information technology, and operational excellence and
organizational agility. Strategic renewal processes engage the pillars forcing
companies to anticipate, recognize, and constructively manage change. With an
objective of becoming a high-performing organization as its core strategy,
organizations engage the practice of continuous change into dedicated
processes, specific competencies, and management designs.

Pluralism
Multiculturalism is a broadened view of diversity that encompasses “life
experiences, religion, age, income, customs, sexual preferences, physical and
intellectual capabilities, and personal choices that are reflected in society as a
whole (…) influenced (…) by geographical origins, personal background, social
affinities, education, economic status, and the personal commitments of the
individual to his/her culture and customs” (Mische, 2001). The following table
summarizes the differences between diversity and multiculturalism.

Diversity Multiculturalism
Representative sample Pluralistic
Inclusive and representative of society and
Gender and race focused
institutions
Regulatory mandates Highly dynamic and energized
Gender, race, age, and life experience
Improves sensitivity and understanding
focused
Diverse ethnic and social construct Inclusive of cultural heritage
Medium strategic impact High strategic impact
Table 1: Mische, M.(2001). Strategic renewal: becoming a high-performance
organization. New Jersey: Prentice- Hall, Inc.

Strategic opportunities available from a multi-culturalistic perspective

include new and evolving market segments, micro-markets (micro-cultures that
identify with trends, status, etc.), and a diverse and innovative, rich talent base
that fosters creativity, critical thinking, and renewal. A multi-culturalistic strategy
realizes the confines of statutory diversification by adopting initiatives that
capture, cultivate, and harvest collective wisdom. Three forces driving change
include: 1) systematic change in the working arrangement of most Americans
affecting the global workforce and organizations; 2) shift in individual
expectations with regards to working, careers, and leadership based upon
lifestyles and living as well as longevity; 3) the influence of and strategic
implementation of education, earnings, and income for both organizations and
individuals (Ibid.).
 There is a general shift in perspectives from employment to employability.
Shaped by a mobile workforce and the rate of increase of smaller business
concerns, the number of independent contractors and temporary workers has
increased. “Workers-irrespective of organizational title, skill level, or age-must
manage their own careers as a portfolio of talents and experiences that are
constantly adjusted in anticipation of the needs of the marketplace” (Ibid.).
Career cycles affected by lifestyles, life enrichment, and social responsibility
represent a challenge for potential employers seeking longevity and loyalty.

The “glass ceiling” represents an obstacle to both women destined for

leadership roles as well as the organizations who may employ their talent.
Studies reveal that women in leadership roles tend to be more effective than
male counterparts in such areas as communication, feedback, empowerment,
decisiveness, planning, and setting standards. They tend to consistently
demonstrate higher qualities in goal setting, change facilitation and management,
and technical expertise.

Shorter tenures and job displacements have become a common

occurrence in today’s workforce. However old stigmas relating to length of
employment and the number of jobs individuals hold still remain in the minds of
today’s management people and remain consideration in HR policies,
procedures, and processes for hiring. Tenure decline presents two strategic
challenges for organizations: 1) limited tenure usually means lower benefit
relative to cost, especially for less experienced personnel, and 2) relative to
experienced personnel, when they leave, they take their knowledge with them
(Ibid.). Knowledge depletion is a major issue with tenure due to the cost related
to time and money to develop the intellectual advantages of collective wisdom.

Advanced technology creates a need for new leaders who are better able
to manage a workforce that is more knowledgeable, agile, and capable as
decision makers. The emerging workforce is “completely independent of the
traditional structures of control and centralized support” (Ibid.).

Today’s employment covenant is changed from security and loyalty to

individual satisfaction, employability, and “free agency” (Ibid.). This is causing
society as well as organizations and individuals to redefine or to reinvent
attitudes, expectations, and measurements. As people seek more meaning and
rewards in their work, they require more empowerment, recognition, respect, and
learning opportunities. These same individuals seek environments that
encourage collaboration as well as appreciation for individual and team
contributions. Today’s employees have a voice and they demand to be heard.
They want work assignments that are different, stimulating, and exciting.

Wage earners now have greater disposable income creating a shift to

customer-centric organizations. They also have less free time for family and
leisure as well as greater costs and mobility. From a strategic perspective, this
makes households more economically secure which leads to a greater
confidence. People are more inclined to change jobs or to become
entrepreneurs. Flexible work programs help individuals balance and manage
personal responsibilities with those of their employers. However, American
companies “lag behind their European counterparts in ancillary benefits and
work-life enrichment programs” (Ibid.). In response to this, organizations must
introduce innovative compensation packages that include rewards and
recognition programs. People are seeking a more human approach from the
new borderless organizations.

Individuals are extending their retirement age past 65 by remaining in the

workforce in full or part – time positions or as contractors and consultants. As a
result, today’s workforce is older, healthier, and more active (Ibid). Declining
confidence in the economy and government programs is leading individuals to
redefine retirement. This leads to an escalation in labor costs and their
associated benefit overhead expenses. Strategically companies will have to
manage costs, encourage healthy lifestyles, adopt processes and policies that
attract and retain high-performance employees, explore job enrichment programs
that will motivate, reward, and support involvement, and train leadership in
managing a new, improved, and empowered workforce.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The gap
between the wealthy, middle class, and poor has been consistently widening as
evidenced by the income comparisons among diverse workgroups such as
Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos, etc. From a strategic perspective,
these diverse communities represent a valuable resource of revenue, growth,
and talent pool. Organizations “simply must understand and cultivate and
develop these communities as sources of talent, growth, and opportunity as part
of its strategy” (Ibid.).

Executive compensation is increasing at a rate faster than the rate of

increase in compensation for the general workforce. This misalignment between
performance and compensation represents a challenge for strategist and
change. To be a high-performance organization, leaders must design and align
compensation with strategy that more accurately reflects contribution and
organizational performance. High performing organizational leaders must be
rewarded for “making organization[s] great, expanding employment, and adding
to the wealth of the stakeholders” (Ibid.). Income disparities negatively affect the
workforce and inhibit organizations from becoming high-performers.

“Education, income, and earning power have always been interrelated”

(Ibid.). The growth in self-employment and the increase in immigration bring new
wealth along with new markets and opportunities. Education and the providing
institution remains a determining factor reflecting income potential. Recognizing
the value of education, learning, and knowledge, high-performance organizations
implement “aggressive human capital development programs designed to
advance, capture, and manage knowledge, and then make knowledge
accessible to employees” (Mische, 2001). When individuals manage their own
careers, they realize the need to become lifelong learners and they naturally
seek organizations linked to a like strategy.

In summary high-performing organizations honoring pluralism:

1. Understand multiculturalism and cultivate it as a competitive
advantage within their market as well as their workforce.
2. Foster leadership that encourages, influences, and choreographs
talent within the workforce to cultivate potential, empowerment, and
lifelong learning focusing on adaptability and flexibility.
3. Implements enrichment programs that help individuals balance their
personal and professional life by providing benefits and rewards
that foster wellness, loyalty, and commitment.
4. Focus on social responsibility by implementing programs and
processes that maintain the dignity of the workforce and
marketplace garnering loyalty and esteem. Companies are held to
higher standards of “behavior and accountability (…), demand that
their organizations and leaders do the right things” (Ibid.).

Information Technology

Information technology represents a point of leverage that enables

organizations to reach many facets and segments of leadership to impart
strategy and vision consistently. By widening its territory beyond traditional
borders, organizations expand their competitive advantage. In today’s new
structures, information and knowledge are essential components required for the
implementation of processes, people, and rewards. Without these
communication channels, organizations cannot compete as high-performers in
the global marketplace. It is therefore, necessary that high-performing
organizations implement processes and policies that are supported by innovative
communication and information dissemination strategies. Information technology
represents the framework on which all of these processes are built and thus rely
upon.

New technology enables data mining as an important asset. This new

data resource helps organizations find patterns, trends, sources, and resources
that would formerly be latent within the market providing new customers,
opportunities, and profits. This information enables organizations to act
effectively and quickly to changing market demands and positions.

Integrated organizations link enterprising units independent of

organizational structure. This creates organizations that look small but act big –
as well as organizations that look big and act small as the demands within the
marketplace change. Information technology links customer service with
customers, supply chains, procurement and bidding, research and development,
etc.

Information technology enables a space and time continuum. Global time

zones and restraints are dissolved. Real time reporting and system updates
increases accuracy, proficiency, and productivity and allows everyone to be “on
the same page at the same time”. Organizations become more efficient with less
effort.

Innovation

Creativity and innovation defines core competencies and creates

competitive advantage in new logic organizations. Cultivating creativity and
innovation involves developing nurturing cultures and environments. Talent must
have information, knowledge, space, and time to seed creativity – teams must
employ strategies that encourage thinking “outside the box”.

High performing organizations foster innovation and creativity by:

1. Attracting and retaining creative people.
2. Identifying types and sources of innovation.
3. Realizing that innovation occurs spontaneously and that it also
exists within processes.
4. Disdaining from organizational arrogance.
5. Energizing innovative problem solving approaches.
6. Policies, processes, and practices that align, support, manage, and
measure sources and levels of innovation.
7. Three year product cycles generating at least 25 percent growth in
the sale of new products.
8. Leadership that supports innovation by creating challenges and
opportunities for learning and personal growth.
9. Systems that measure the impact and contribution of innovation.
10. Information technology that supports collaboration; stimulates the
minds of the creative talent base; expands knowledge; creates
collective intelligence; shares, collects, disseminates and
distributes knowledge; fosters innovative thought processes; and
encourages innovation.
11. Recognizes and rewards talent both in individuals and in team.
12. The ability to market their innovation creating real growth,
revenues, expanding core competencies, and developing a
distinctive and unique competitive advantage.
13. Innovation is a competitive advantage and core competency.

Managing innovation involves:

1. Clear goals and objectives by defining context, construct rationale,
and expectations of benefits.
 2. Apply issue identification and problem solving processes that
identifies and maps relationships, trends, and patterns to constantly
refine the focus.
3. Exploring the impact of issues on people, processes, technologies,
and strategies.
4. Engages creative strategies such as metaphoric techniques and
visualization to problem solving activities.
5. Develops and fosters associative processes to stimulate thought
processes.
6. Thinks and acts generationally.
7. Prioritizing criteria based on interdependencies, occurrences,
timing, and known and anticipated constraints / solutions balanced
with goals and objectives.
8. Develops assumptions and common themes.

Knowledge

Knowledge is an asset to cultivate, nurture, and harvest. Levels of

knowledge present within an organization define and support its core
competencies. Indeed, core competencies are built upon an organizations ability
to increase and to retain knowledge. Inherent truths regarding knowledge
include but are certainly not limited to:
1. Collective intelligence is the foundation of core competencies and is
only one component of knowledge.
2. Knowledge includes and incorporates competitive intelligence.
3. Lifelong learning as a component of knowledge fosters competitive
advantage.
4. Organizational learning is interdependent upon current talents as
well as the ability of individuals within the organization to learn.
5. Dissemination and retention of knowledge needs to be a
manageable asset.
6. Knowledge is a constant growth industry in and of itself.
7. Knowledge must be regenerated and relearned.
8. Organizational culture must provide processes and an environment
that welcomes growth and learning.
9. Information technology must support knowledge by fostering a
shared and collaborative environment.
10. Meaningful and relevant knowledge aligns strategy and operations
and leads to more knowledge, action, changes in behavior, and
better decision making.

Leadership

Today’s leaders need to demonstrate professional and personal

commitment to shared organizational ideas, vision, purpose, goals, and mission.
They need to know how to reflect moral and ethical values through their
thoughts, words, and actions. They are the role models that set the standards for
their organization as well as their subordinates. With a primary mission to
advance the organization, leaders encourage and facilitate growth and learning
personally as well as in others. Leaders provide opportunities for others to
advance; they mentor as well as allowing others to mentor, resolve conflicts, and
create cultures.

Leaders know who they are and what they can do. They can do what they
say can do and they do what they say they will do. They are consistent in their
behaviors, communications, and in their decision making. By continually
developing their own character, they impart integrity and set standards that mean
something more than profits and market shares. They have the courage of their
convictions, treat people as equals, respect others, practice civility, and exercise
good manners.

Operational Excellence and Organizational Agility

Operational excellence is a continuous process of sustaining strategic

advantage and change. Benchmarking is a process used to measure and to
compare operational excellence with competitors within a particular industry.
Factors measured using benchmarking includes processes and activities used
consistently throughout an industry or across various industries. Strategic value
is born in operational excellence and when united with organizational agility,
operational excellence becomes a strategic pillar generating competitive
advantages and financial successes.

Organizational agility is the “capacity to quickly and efficiently create,

redeploy, reconstitute, and reallocate the resources of the organization in a
manner that optimizes their use in an environment or allows them to create new
environments” (Mische, 2001). In order to be agile, individuals within the
organization must know how to read their environment, anticipate and act upon
change, function under uncertainty by maintaining personal flexibility, and know
how to learn and to adapt.

Operational excellence and organizational agility processes and

interactions evolve to comprise functions that include external factors such as
customers, suppliers, product and service design and delivery, and
manufacturing.

Integration

Design rules for creating high-performance architectures include:

1. When creating high-performance architectures, organizations
develop a living force. They are driven by the need and desire to
survive, to outlive, and to perpetuate.
 2. High-performance architectures are self-determined, directed by
economic and stakeholder value propositions that stipulate goals
and growth, and by a business vision and strategy. Vision creates
direction, determines intent, business philosophy, and the strategy
sets the context of performance.
3. Extraordinary leverage is achieved when strategy, purpose,
operational processes, technology, knowledge and human
performance converge and integrate. This creates a synergy that
extends beyond conventional boundaries to include relationships,
collaborative powers, best practices, and new ideas.
4. The advancement of core behaviors and values transcend time and
situations sustaining the company through bad times while exciting
and propelling the organization in good times.
5. Operational excellence standards dedicated to defining, redefining,
and refining the standards of measure enabling agility across
processes, functions, and organizational domains.
6. Adept to learning and to adapting knowledge and using that
knowledge as a tool to gain competitive advantage and core
competencies.
7. Calibration of competencies and growth of new competencies.

Three concepts to concentrate on when developing and maintaining high-

performance include:
1. Use the five pillars as a center theme for developing architecture.
2. Engage the five-segment approach for integration.
3. Facilitate, nurture, and cultivate high-performance competencies.

Summary and Recommendations

In the military, everyone is held to the same standards and treated equally
disrespectfully unless they are officers. The military tries to disseminate
information for the most part on a need to know basis to protect national security
and sometimes as a way of imparting power within their traditional hierarchy
structure. They are high-performing because of the discipline they impart to
personnel, the shared vision, mission, and goals, combined with the usual fear of
punishment, or driven by a reward of sort either intrinsic or extrinsic. They are
working on integrating their forces and changing strategies to respond more
rapidly to threats facing us today.

Reference
Mische, M. (2001). Strategic renewal: becoming a high-performance
organization. New Jersey: Prentice- Hall, Inc.