Consistency of rigid management processes decreases flexibility
The very things that make a management process effective—consistency, control, resistance to change—reduce the strategic agility of the organization as a whole. When change is needed in order to survive, to the degree that the organization has optimized itself into an unchanging system, they are at existential risk.
One of the dilemmas of management is that, by their very nature, processes are established so that employees perform recurrent tasks in a consistent way, time after time. To ensure consistency, they are meant not to change—or if they must change, to change through tightly controlled procedures. This means that the very mechanisms through which organizations create value are intrinsically inimical to change.[1]
See also:
- Efficiency is purchased by a loss in flexibility
- Resilience is the key to overcoming the innovator’s dilemma
- Flexibility, simplicity and adaptability are simple rules of movements
The Innovator’s Dilemma – Christensen (1997), ch. 8, 163. ↩︎