Organization 4.0 instead of workplace cosmetics

Prof. Dr. Arnold Weissman In the "Office of the Future," employees are supposed to develop innovations together at mobile workstations and in chic lounges, work with start-up methods, and network. Many companies have realized that they need to change if they want to remain among the best in the accelerated world of globalization and digitalization in five or ten years. There is uncertainty about how to do this. Investing in a new office environment is not enough. We can no longer make progress with the successful structures, processes, and management methods of the past. On the contrary, they prevent us from seizing the opportunities of the new world. We try to solve today's problems with yesterday's tools and do not get to the core of the problem: complexity. Internal Complexity Slows Down In my opinion, complexity is a good thing because complex problems and tasks offer the opportunity for differentiation. Solving complex, challenging, burning customer problems better than others has always been the lever for sustainable success. However, the complicated structures and processes that prevail in our companies make this difficult to impossible. In some companies, the process of creating an offer involves more than 25 steps and multiple departments. Multiple processing loops make the process even more complicated, and ultimately, not only the company suffers, but also the customer who has to wait unreasonably long for their offer. Simplicity is also a matter of corporate culture, but this cannot be changed by a new office environment. What is needed are leaders who lead authentically, fairly, and openly so that employees will follow them into an uncertain future. Simplicity Leads to Superiority Neither the purely quantitative increase in the number of products nor strict cost management alone bring the prosperity and security that a company needs for stable development. Focusing inward and differentiating outward means creating a variety of products from a few modules or creating the broadest possible range of services from a few processes. This is not new: McKinsey identified simplicity in processes and structures as the basis for convincing business success in a study of 39 medium-sized companies in the 1990s. Nevertheless, there are still large and small companies that undermine themselves with self-initiated bureaucracy and complexity. Managing Complexity Companies should strive to create Organization 4.0 before designing Workplace 4.0. For me, Organization 4.0 is a connected organization determined by the customer and their needs. In this organization, the customer becomes a partner in a joint problem-solving process, and the entire value chain is interconnected with all partners. Such companies use modern technologies to provide individual customer solutions. Networked thinking is the pragmatic ability to consider different factors of a situation simultaneously and integrate them into action concepts. Complexity ultimately means that we are dealing with a variety of aspects that are interconnected, unclear in their interactions, trigger undesirable effects, and are difficult to calculate. We can only manage this by changing the principles of our organization: autonomy, delegation, standardization, separation of functions, transparency, creating small, manageable units, initiative, trust. The organization that best manages complexity resembles a tree, whose numerous branches and leaves – self-organized, customer-oriented teams – form a large, differentiated surface and thus establish important surface contact with the market and the customer. It is this effect that promotes a learning organization and creates companies that develop sophisticated solutions for complex problems. Then, an adapted office environment could be meaningful. For more information on the topic of Organization 4.0, please visit: https://www.speakers-excellence.de/redner/arnold-weissman-agenda-2020.html