BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Becoming A CAS Organization: The Art Of Maintaining A Living Center

Forbes Human Resources Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Pravir Malik

Perhaps one of the greatest secrets of complex adaptive systems (CAS) is that there are many potential centers. Effectively, this means that any part can become the center, and further, that this happens spontaneously as the need for it arises.

Horizontal And Vertical Possibility

Having many different centers depends on the ability of an organization to exercise both horizontal and vertical flexibility. HR will play a central role in making this happen.

Imagine an e-commerce organization that participates in a portfolio of markets, appealing to a range of different customers through a range of specialized e-commerce channels with slightly varying value propositions. In this case, various “centers” may equate to various market-channel-customer-value combinations. Horizontal flexibility would mean being able to focus more on one set of combinations relative to another, as circumstance demanded it.

Our operationalization of horizontal flexibility at Zappos has necessitated the layering of a couple of different approaches spaced out over a few years. The first layer had to do with instituting a system of self-management, within a framework of accountabilities, at the individual and team levels. Having operationally embodied this now allows for the layering of an even more dynamic market-based system. The market-based focus frees teams to both seek funding from multiple sources and offer services to multiple customers, hence operating more like a market.

While achieving horizontal flexibility may be relatively more straightforward because it has to do more with following external process and structure, vertical flexibility may be more difficult to achieve because it necessitates changing internal process relating to fundamental assumptions, attitudes and behavior. Possibilities along the vertical dimension may include:

• Remaining in the status quo.

• Effectively experimenting with different scenarios to initiate tangible differences from the status quo.

• Following a deeper urge that may result in a radically different and foundational reality that is the starting point for a range of new possibilities.

An organization having vertical flexibility equates to achieving a more fundamental psychological shift. At Zappos, our system of deeply lived core values facilitates vertical flexibility. Such core values can provide workers with the ability to transcend business logic and do what feels right as per a deeper urge.

To facilitate such flexibility, HR must be involved in the potential redesign and ongoing management of several areas across the employee life cycle. At the outset, talent acquisition should allow for such flexibility in mindset and resonance with foundational cultural values. Employee engagement needs to facilitate potentially fluid movement from one area of focus to another. Interaction between employees and management should aim to better integrate short-term and longer-term market signals. Continuous training and development to enhance market understanding on one end, and facilitating individual and team flexibility on the other, needs to take place. Workforce planning needs to account for the meaningful filling of natural buffers in potential growth areas. To facilitate real-time assessments and action, cycles for performance and compensation review should shorten. The right organizational data, along both internal and external dimensions, needs to exist to facilitate the need for shifting centers.

Becoming A Living Center

But even such horizontal and vertical flexibility in itself is not enough. To become a living center, flexibility has to be such that an organization is able to latch onto a deep trend.

Becoming a center means that organizational and market dynamics are compelled to anchor to it. But as I’ve suggested, this will only happen if that part opens to an underlying and inevitable trend in the larger system or market. It is this opening and aligning to such an inevitable trend that will make it a compelling center for an organization. This means that an organization needs to be able to move freely along the horizontal and vertical dimensions to naturally focus on some center that is aligned with a deeper direction in a market system. The resulting change in organizational and market dynamics is what allows that organization a fresh lease on life and the ability to continue to shape the future.

Hence, if a market signals a systematic slow-down of sales and customer acquisition, then vertical flexibility will need to be exercised to begin to see the same market differently. More than likely a different view is going to allow the perception of deeper trends to emerge. A conscious choice on the organizational area of focus — or center — will then need to be made, so that the organization can morph in real time. Necessarily, this will involve all the areas mentioned in the previous section.

A Journey Often Made

Becoming a living center is so important from the perspective of sustainability that a CAS will in fact ensure that the journey to become one can happen often and everywhere. Hence, each of us, each team, the small parts that constitute an organization, are given the opportunity to make a shift to a deeper psychological center every single day.

Negative emotions of anger or fear or frustration, among others, arise often because we have to learn to overcome these states. The system is offering us a chance to assert a deeper psychology, that is, move along the vertical dimension, so that a different operative reality that will ensure its own sustainability is put into place. Some work conducted at Stanford University Medical Center illustrates how such a path at the individual and team levels can result in different levels of organizational innovation.

Lao Tzu’s advice to do the difficult things while they are easy and the great things while they are small is what will facilitate movement along the horizontal and vertical dimensions. In other words, HR's action to ingrain self-reflection at both the individual and team levels, attention to detail and quick action facilitated by real-time and relevant organizational data is critical. This strengthens the ability to more easily maintain a living center. This in turn can lead to extraordinary adaptability and perdurability, which at the end of the day is the often unexpressed goal that every organization seeks.

Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?