Ambidexterity – the Leadership Challenge (part 1)

Ambidexterity is Job One. Sustained prosperity in the 21^st century entails navigating in to very different worlds, first articulated by Aristotle. Senior leaders & the Board need to learn & practice two different mindsets and ways of working.

Why build something nobody wants?  Steve Blank

Ambidexterity entails the ability to both:

•  Protect the core business with the proven methods of OpEx/Lean, and
•    Ignite new Growth using the Digital methods of the world’s innovation hot spots 

2.     I’ve spent much of the past decade helping senior leaders & Board members navigate these two worlds.  I’ve described transformation blockers in detail in earlier blogs. In this series, I’ll discuss some of the challenges leaders face.

 Achievement in the World of Operations Can Be a Blocker

 Most senior leaders come from areas like Operations, Finance, Engineering or Technology. This is Plato’s World of Necessity – a world that follows natural laws, accepted standards, and codes of practice. This is the world of physics and chemistry, mathematics, the Toyota Production System, and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

 In this world, things cannot be ‘other than they are.’ For example, the energy in a Carbon - Carbon bond is 348 kJ/mol, whether you’re in Seoul or San Francisco. If you mix a polar salt like sodium chloride with a polar solvent like water, the salt will dissolve into its constituent ions (Na+ and Cl-). It happens every time, whether you’re in Tokyo or Toronto. I like the World of Necessity. I was trained as a chemical engineer & cut me teeth of factories around the world. I like natural laws – you can depend on them.

The past decade I’ve learned to work in the world of disruptive Innovation – Plato’s World on Contingency. This is the world of culture, opinion, style, fashion, politics and the like. It’s a place where things ‘can be other than they are’.  People say one thing - and do the opposite! Customers assure you they love your new offering and then stay away in droves.  You have a great market, and then it disappears for no discernable reason. You build the ‘better mousetrap’, and nobody cares. Though they’ll tell you they love it and will definitely buy it!  Different rules apply here.

And so, what you learn in the World of Necessity is often a blocker in the World of Contingency.  Here we face ‘complex’ problems for which there is no accepted approach, standard or code of practice. There are so many unknowns (both ‘known’ and ‘unknown’) that we have to 'Probe-Sense-Respond' our way to a remedy. In other words, remedies emerge through continuous experimentation, and a happy alchemy of data & intuition.

Imagine you’re a senior leader in a major Manufacturing, Aerospace, Healthcare, Construction or Financial Services company. You’ve grown up in the world of science, mathematics, standards and codes of practice.  Your company is rightly proud of its zero defect, high reliability, root cause problem solving culture, and of its mastery of complex technology.

Will you be comfortable in a world where 90% of your experiments fail?  All your instincts rebel against the idea, no? The difference in approach between Taiichi Ohno (father of the Toyota Production System) & Jony Ive (Steve Jobs’ Chief Design Officer) is immense. Leaders nowadays must understand both & be able to fluidly switch gears based on where they find themselves.

Best wishes,

Pascal Dennis         E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org