In a VOCA world - a world that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous - companies face some major challenges. One is to find the right people, the so-called war for talent. After that, it comes down to keeping people on board. This can be done through meaningful work, optimal work-life balance, growth and advancement opportunities...
‘Young people don't like a highly hierarchical company. They want impact at work and to be involved in their organisation's decision-making. If companies want to keep employees, they need to allow and encourage things to change bottom-up. They need to involve people on the shop floor in changes and let them think about possible solutions.’
Here, organisational consultant Hugo Der Kinderen picks up on this. ‘Moving away from the classic top-down approach in change management is terribly difficult in the corporate world. Managers still tend to create their own narrative. They self-diagnose why the change is necessary, devise the solution and sell it to stakeholders without giving them a say. There are companies that make attempts to do things differently, but often they get no further than working groups. But actually that is a sham solution. On a small scale, you might come to a good understanding about the solution, but what about all those other stakeholders who know nothing about it?’
"If companies want to keep employees, they need to allow and encourage things to change bottom-up."— Nick Vanhalst
The biggest challenge within change management is getting everyone to participate in creating solutions. Der Kinderen sees two methods to this end. ‘As soon as people realise there is a problem, you use the funnel technique where you chase the input of all stakeholders through a funnel in stages. You continue until you find a solution that is acceptable to everyone. When fundamental choices have to be made during that process, the sociocratic decision-making model brings solace. That model gives extra attention to dissenting opinions and takes away useful elements. When no new suggestions for the solution emerge, the exception question is asked: ‘Who can't live with the idea that this is how we are trying to solve the problem?’’ Thinkers predict that sociocracy will become the successor to democracy. Instead of purely counting votes and polarising between winners and losers, within sociocracy there is much more control over the quality of the solution.
Change to an organisation's strategy, structure or systems, on the so-called hard side, succeeds with the above methods. When it comes to changing human behaviour, individually or collectively, you get a variant of the model. After all, those soft factors don't just let themselves be poured into purely rational processes in a down-to-earth manner. Awareness and acceptance are involved, and this is where the HR department has a major role to play, says Der Kinderen: ‘The HR department must ensure a good feedback culture, they must draw up a personal development plan, guide employees, and coach them in self-knowledge and in accepting challenges.’
‘In a VOCA context, long-term strategies are no longer interesting,’ says Vanhalst. ‘Companies need to be able to move quickly to seize opportunities immediately. So they need to organise themselves in an agile way, which requires flexible employees. Companies are therefore firmly committed to the internal mobility of their employees. Whereas people used to be hired for a specific function, today employees take on roles defined by themselves, managers, customers, suppliers... This is much more dynamic. With training and coaching, they can move from one role to another and companies can respond more quickly to change.’
Article published in Fokus supplement of Knack magazine
