The pursuit of sustainable business excellence: guiding transformation for effective organizational change

Like normal people living a typical life, human organizations generally operate in such a way that they alternate between periods of stability and Periods of significant change in their environment. In periods of a dramatic change, brought about by advances in technology, the deregulation of their industry, or large social and economic restructuring, the objective of survival in the presence of a threatening challenge takes precedence over the improvement of performance based on best practices or other methods applicable in periods of stability. The first step in addressing such a challenge is to become aware of what is known as a strategic inflection point. This signals a big change in the environmental conditions and the emergence of new rules and priorities for becoming and staying successful It marks the end of a previously successful mindset and of strategies that are no longer effective. The next step requires close attention to a set of key attributes that are essential to develop organizational resilience and fitness, accompanied by an often difficult internal debate that will facilitate an organization's prompt and effective transformation to cope with new conditions. To achieve the key objectives in both stable and turbulent periods, an organization needs to develop the capability for sustainable business excellence (SBE). This requires a capacity to operate in a dual management mode, which accommodates both the familiar success criteria-i.e. profitability, customer satisfaction, etc, in stable conditions that lead to conventional business excellence (CBE)-and the criteria of resilience and competitive landscape fitness during periods of environmental turbulence. A dual management approach must be embedded in a conceptually expanded framework rather than a well-defined model of business excellence, drawing on insights from modern science suitable for living organizations rather than the currently dominant mindset rooted in a 'mechanical' metaphor of organizations as giant machines.