Whilst change is a constant for most organisations, every now and then sudden disruptive events like the COVID pandemic, floods, fires and other such situations occur unexpectedly with little or no warning. Such events are usually highly disruptive, reducing or even stopping organisational functioning.
Obviously, having emergency continuity plans is critical for any organisation. How organisations respond to such events often predicts their longevity and recovery.
Organisational resilience has become an area of increasing and critical interest both with organisations and research. As a result, a vast base of research has built up looking at how organisations respond to sudden unexpected situations. One area of particular interest has been how organisations engage in adaptive organising.
Adaptive organising
Adaptive organising refers to the process of reconfiguring and restricting resources in an organisation to deal with any situation that has or is threatening to disrupt the organisation’s operations. This often tends to entail changing roles, structures, working procedures and processes, suppliers and even systems.
Types of adaptive organising
- Predetermined adaptive organising – this occurs where an organisation moves into a form or mode of operating that is pre-planned and maybe even previously practised. The use of emergency or continuity plans tends to be the usual method of predetermined adaptive organising. The issue with predetermined plans is that they rarely match the situation exactly and can cause some rigidity in the system and the response.
- Incremental adaptive organising – occurs where the organisation adapts existing resources and protocols as they go along and as the understanding of the situation evolves. This allows for impromptu responses, decisions and changes to occur, often at a local level. The main issue with incremental adaptive organising, particularly in larger organisations, is co-ordinating change. Communication up, down and across the organisation can become a critical issue in this response mode at a time when communications are often disrupted.
In practice, many responses tend to be a mixture of both. However, few organisations engage in rapid and radical restructuring during an event. They tend to hold on to some semblance of their original structure and operating processes.
A new study
A new study looking at the process of rapid and radical restructuring to adapt to and deal with sudden large scale disruptive events has been conducted by the Faculty of Military Sciences at the Netherlands Defence Academy.
Findings
The study found that:
- Very few organisations engage in rapid and radical restructuring. These tend to be military in nature and the only two examples were found:
- Special forces, such as the SAS or US SEALS.
- Aircraft carriers that are having to constantly adapt to situational circumstances by rapid and radical restructuring.
- During rapidly changing disruptive situations, centralised control is rarely effective. As a result, the normal organisational structure usually needs to change with lower-level managers and frontline personnel being given more autonomy and discretion to make decisions.
- Lower level managers often need to be reminded to update senior management about what is happening.
- In such situations, goals and plans tend to emerge as the situation unfolds.
- Existing plans rarely work.
- Informational chaos, short time-frames and disagreements in such situations tend to mean that those on the front line need to take responsibility, collaborate and negotiate more than normal, rather than relying on the management structure to sort things out.
- Employees and managers often need to shoulder and work with significantly higher levels of risk in their decision-making. There is rarely time to push the risk up the management structure. This needs to be borne in mind by senior management.
- Usual standard operating procedures and policies are very likely not going to be fit for purpose during the event. This means adaptation and a recognition that this is likely to have occurred during the event.
- Adaptation in the moment is critical.
- Lines of communication are likely to breakdown and also need to adapt. People need to be creative.
- Senior managers also need to adapt and get creative with resources acquisition during such events. The aim is to keep the front line supplied with what they need.
- As a direct result of the need to adapt and focus on local need and issues, interorganisational ties between teams tend to become fractured. This tends to cause frustration and communication problems.
- As a result of the breakdown or fracturing of communications and the usual command / management structure, frontline staff tend to become critical of managers and leaders and organisational commitment declines.
- Interim organisational structures, changes in priorities and goals can cause friction between the leadership, management and employees. This needs to be taken into consideration.
- Temporary adaptive organisational structures are necessary in such events and the organisation, particularly the leaders and managers, need to be aware of this and allow it to occur.
Primary reference
Podcast Episode 2: Adaptive Leadership
Be impressively well informed
Get the very latest research intelligence briefings, video research briefings, infographics and more sent direct to you as they are published
Be the most impressively well-informed and up-to-date person around...