Adaptability

4.Adaptability

Primary link:
Culture Management

Managing Culture to Achieve Greater Adaptability

Core Practices:

  • Encourage a more competitive organizational environment to increase watchfulness and reduce resistance to change.
  • Implement results-oriented, decentralized management practices to support creativity and initiative.

Secondary link:
Stakeholder Engagement

Engaging Stakeholders to Achieve Greater Adaptability

Synergies:

  • Engage stakeholders in devising a coherent shared value system.
  • Use stakeholder choice as an adaptability mechanism.
  • Use a distributed approach that support grassroots innovation.

Tensions:

  • Be mindful not to create a culture in which traditional social work is seen as a dead-end, undermining social staff morale.

Tertiary link:
Knowledge Development

Developing Knowledge to Achieve Greater Adaptability

Synergies:

  • Conduct ongoing market research to inform responses to emerging trends and opportunities.
  • Use business performance monitoring and information management practices to improve risk analysis and implementation strategies.

Tensions:

  • Be aware that temporary setbacks and risks inherent to the “trial and error” process central to research and innovation will trigger pressure to come back to a low-risk, more predicable charity mindset.

Quaternary link:
Resource Mobilization

Mobilizing Resources to Achieve Greater Adaptability

Synergies:

  • Take into consideration the inherently restricted nature of particular resources.
  • Increase your focus on client needs instead of funder needs.

Tensions:

  • Be aware that increased requirements for financial returns might have a counter-effect on building a more flexible culture.

Go back to Table 1: Performance criteria across the four lenses or Table 2: Four lenses across the performance criteria

Managing Culture to Achieve Greater Adaptability

4.Culture Management
4.Adaptability
1

Core Practices:

  • Encourage a more competitive organizational environment to increase watchfulness and reduce resistance to change, especially when change creates opportunities for increased performance and impact in line with a changing environment.
  • Implement results-oriented, decentralized management practices to support creativity and initiative.
More on...

Engaging Stakeholders to Achieve Greater Adaptability

1.Stakeholder Engagement
4.Adaptability
2

Synergies:

  • Engage stakeholders in devising a coherent value system that works for all and reduces exclusion.
  • Use stakeholder choice as an adaptability mechanism, similar to how consumer choice plays an important role in setting market trends.
  • Instead of a top-down approach to addressing a social problem, use a distributed approach that seeks to provide products and services that support additional grassroots innovation (e.g. providing modular solutions that can be customized at the local level).

Tensions:

  • Be mindful not to engage some stakeholders while overlooking others, creating a culture in which the social enterprise activity is seen as “the place to be” while traditional social work is seen as a dead-end, undermining social staff morale.
More on...

Developing Knowledge to Achieve Greater Adaptability

3.Knowledge Development
4.Adaptability
3

Synergies:

  • Conduct ongoing market research to inform responses to emerging trends and opportunities.
  • Use business performance monitoring and information management practices to improve risk analysis and implementation strategies.

Tensions:

  • Be aware that temporary setbacks and risks inherent to the “trial and error” process central to research and innovation will trigger pressure to come back to a low-risk, more predicable charity mindset.
More on...

Mobilizing Resources to Achieve Greater Adaptability

2.Resource Mobilization
4.Adaptability
4

Synergies:

  • Devise a resource mobilization strategy that takes into consideration the inherently restricted nature of particular resources (e.g. restrictions from grant funding vs. earned income).
  • Leverage your reduced focus on traditional fundraising to increase your focus on client needs instead of funder needs.

Tensions:

  • Be aware that increased requirements for financial returns might have a counter-effect on building a more flexible culture; replacing one set of inflexible requirements (expected changes in social indicators) by another one (expected changes in financial criteria ) will do nothing to solve flexibility problems.
More on...