The future is created on the outer edge

Right now I'm working with a very insightful and brave customer. An organization that dares to throw everything up in the air to gradually create a new reality. But it doesn't happen randomly - not at all. The change is largely a conscious decision. This customer knows that "The future happens at the fringe", as management guru Gary Hamel preaches.

What management wants to achieve is customer focus and innovation. To achieve this, the entire management model is transformed from organization and roles to management processes for planning, follow-up, improvement work, business development and more. The goal picture is an organization where managers and employees take joint responsibility for leading the company into the future. A big change work that you understand.

During a process of change of this dimension, it is easy to become frustrated, to lose the energy and to fall back into the way one has always done. Then maybe it is a comfort to hear that it is completely natural. A few weeks ago, we were able to take part in Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman's research on human decision-making in SVT's World of Science. Among other things, Kahneman's research shows that intuition seems to have a greater influence on our decision-making than we think. And with the addition that our brain is lazy (preferably taking shortcuts), it is obviously much easier to act based on past experiences and habits, habits that we want to change through change work.

But if it is so hard to think new - is it really worth it? To return to our good friend Hamel and his colleagues, such as Professor Julian Birkinshaw at the London Business School, it is not about benefit calculation but about survival. To be able to compete today and in the future, we must adapt the management and governance of our organizations to what reality looks like. A reality that involves constant change, global markets, easily accessible information and knowledge, highly educated customers and employees, and so on, and so on.

So go ahead, and remember - the future is being created on the outside!

For inspiration in the subject, please visit Beyond Budgeting Institute's Youtube page where we collect interesting videos on the subject of Management Innovation.