Adaptive Enterprise: : Creating and Leading Sense and Respond Organizations

Citation

Cassell, K.A. (1999), "Adaptive Enterprise: : Creating and Leading Sense and Respond Organizations", The Bottom Line, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 48-49. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.1999.12.3.48.4

The message of this book is that in order to be viable large complex organizations doing business in the increasingly unpredictable and rapidly changing Information Age must be able to adapt systematically and successfully to this dynamic business environment. The only kind of business strategy in the face of the unpredictable change engendered by the Information Age is for an organization to become adaptive. Adaptation requires not only appropriate organizational response to unpredictable change but also, unpredictable appropriate responses. Therefore, Stephen H. Haeckel, the Director of Strategic Studies at IBM′s Advanced Business Institute, outlines a new strategic model that completely transforms the way organizations do business today.

The sense and respond model that he puts forth refers to both a type of organizational behavior and to specific prescriptions for achieving that organizational behavior. Unpredictability and the rapidity of change in the Information Age implies that organizational behavior must be driven by current customer requests, regardless of whether it is tacit or articulate, rather than by firm forward plans to make and sell offerings. This means that customer backed adaptiveness means dispatching capabilities on demand, as opposed to scheduling them efficiently in advance. This requires a modular organizational structure that cannot be managed with a command and control governance system. The sense and respond model addresses these issues in the following manner. The model organizes information in a specific way to represent and support adaptiveness by key roles in the firm (adaptive loop). Second, by organizing assets and capabilities as a system of modules, it can be dynamically sent into one‐off value chains (modular organization). Third, by replacing command and control with a commitment, centric governance system propagates the purpose, bounds and essential structure of the business throughout the organization. Thus, the model manages interactions rather than actions of modular capabilities through a universal and general commitment management protocol (the technology assisted Commitment Management System). At its basic level, a sense and respond organization is a collection of capabilities and assets managed as a purposeful adaptive system ‐‐ an idea almost never practiced in large organizations. Because of its importance in the actions of the leadership in the sense and respond organization, this idea permeates this entire book. The sense and respond model is a new conceptual paradigm for producing the behavior that separates the “noise” from emerging business opportunities so as to enable an organization to transform itself into a dynamic organization that capitalizes on those opportunities to get ahead of their competitors. This prescription is revolutionary.

In order for the reader to follow the sense and respond paradigm, Stephen H. Haeckel organizes this book in this manner. The first few chapters establish the conditions under which the leadership of an organization will find it imperative to undertake the necessary transformation. This is followed by a detailed description of sense and respond behavior and some of its important underlying concepts. The later chapters discuss the elements inherent in the sense and respond model, the responsibilities of leadership, and the early experiences of some sense and respond practitioners. Examples of sense and respond as they manifest themselves in real life situations are discussed in the context of business and culture issues. This book is very well documented and contains an extensive bibliography.

Even though this book is written for large business organizations, the ideas inherent in the sense and respond model are quite applicable to our profession. Librarians in the modern library not only have to deal with rapidly changing technology but also with the demands of their customers or clients for the new information engendered by this technology. For library managers attempting to respond to the unpredictability and rapidity of change in information, its access and the demands of their customers/clients for that information, this book should be required reading not only for the librarian on the front lines, but especially for the managers who are responsible for making the hard decisions.