|
Adaptive Enterprise
Definition
"A sense-and-respond organization does not attempt to
predict future demand for its offerings. Instead, it identifies changing
customer needs and new business challenges as they happen, responding to them
quickly and appropriately."
Adaptive Business Designs
Stephen Haeckel - President
The definition was first coined
by Stephen Haeckel around 1992. Haeckel published his landmark book in 1999
"Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense-and-Respond Organizations"
which first brought attention to this subject.
Originally adaptive enterprise described a desirable type of
organizational behavior, it evolved into an adaptive managerial framework,
incorporating a set of concepts, principles, prescriptions and tools for
creating and managing an adaptive enterprise.
Small organizations have always
been more nimble without the inhibition of organizational hierarchies and
complex infrastructures. Today larger organizations can exhibit the same
characteristics by aligning business and IT. They need to create
infrastructures that are flexible. Likewise a family run business can be a
global competitor.
Background
to Churchill
The Churchill Centre
Churchill was in the middle of much controversy throughout his
long life continuing into the historical interpretations
of his life and achievements.
Some
notable debates:
The Case Against Going to War
The
Case For Going to War
Churchill
and Europe
Betrayal
at Pearl Harbour
Dunkirk
High level
synopsis
More than 300,000 troops were evacuated from Dunkirk and the surrounding beaches in May
and June 1940. At the time the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said
it was "a miracle of deliverance."
The four principal elements of Churchill's Adaptive
Enterprise consisted of:
Storeys Gate
Cabinet
War Rooms
Bentley Prior
RAF
Fighter Command
Bletchley
Park
Code Breakers
Whitehall
Supply
Chain
Characters
Churchill's
team and his foes
Churchill trusted his lieutenants and let them
get on with it, although he was in touch with them regularly.
British War Production
Comprehensive
research papers from 1952
This set of papers was probably one of the most significant
sources for the book. Written by M. M. Postan a Professor of Economic
History in the University of Cambridge they cover in glorious detail they build
up the economic realities of the UK up to 1940 and beyond.
Churchill
Archive Center
Home to the papers of
Sir Winston Churchill including 570 personal papers and archives documenting
the history of the Churchill era.
World War II
History
and timelines
The
modern world is still living with the consequences of World War 2, the most
titanic conflict in history. The war did not start with Pearl Harbour
but two years prior.
Churchill
Voted
Greatest Briton
In a nationwide poll attracting more than a million votes
Churchill came ahead of Darwin, Shakespeare, Newton, Nelson and
Elizabeth I.
Churchill
Quotes
taken from his career
|
Introduction
The following information is provided to further enhance concepts listed in
the book.
Adaptive
Enterprise
What is an
Adaptive Enterprise? Organizations that adapt to market conditions so that
they can respond to and address changes in their market, their environment,
and/or their industry to better position themselves for survival and
profitability (also called: Adaptive Organization). As business velocity
has increased the time to market is driving business forcing product and
market cycles times to shrink. For example, HP reduced laptop development
cycle from 9 ms to 4 weeks to respond to changing technologies and product
obsolescence. A car manufacturer moved from 2 model introductions per year
to 6. An online mortgage is approved in 20 minutes, what previously took
days or weeks.
Organizations are faced with a new requirement of business agility, the
ability to react instantaneously to changing market or customer conditions,
and customer requests before the competition can. Today there are
competitive threats everywhere. The traditional business models of
efficiency and economies of scale limit the agility of an organization.
The
unprecedented levels of change have been driven by technology, IT, or the
way it can be leveraged, and APPLIED. This has had a massive impact on
organizations. Companies can really leverage IT if they integrate it into
their strategic plans, transform their business processes and organization
in lock step. WalMart is a good example leveraging IT in B2C, understanding
the consumer base, and B2B in dealing with its suppliers.
 
The Churchill Analogy
The period May 1940 was selected
for the book as it was a time of calamitous change. The situation for the UK
could not have been darker, facing an onslaught and an invasion
from the air and the sea.
The eve to the battle was only a
couple of months. In this window Churchill had to transform the UK and ready it for battle. He had
to deal with change in much the same way
we would deal with it today. By becoming more agile and responsive.
Churchill had to transform his organization from a nation grounded into the
mentality of First World War, static defenses, and slow methodical progress
to the modern-day equivalent of an Adaptive Enterprise. Agility and
responsiveness were the foundation to this and he drove his nation to this.
His stewardship in this 4 month period was significant.
The Churchill Centre has several white papers that
describe this period well including the case for going to war as well as
against, his relationship with Roosevelt and what Churchill knew about
Japanese intent for Pearl Harbor prior to
the attack.
Churchill’s
Ascendancy
Winston Churchill was swept into
power on May 10th, 1940. It was not a forgone conclusion in fact Neville
Chamberlain offered the premiership to Lord Halifax first who refused it.
Prior to Churchill’s premiership Chamberlain had followed a policy of
appeasement in which British interest were accomplished without entanglement
in war. This had been misguided and had played Czechoslovakia into
Hitler’s hands, and a Nazi-Soviet non-Aggression pact (read about the build up to the Second
World War).
The
Reality of the Situation
Although 350,000 Allied forces had been evacuated Dunkirk had been a disaster as 90% of the
heavy fighting equipment was left behind which included field, heavy,
anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, anti-tank rifles, machine
guns, motor vehicles, every tank, and large dumps of ammunition. Over
200 ships were lost in the evacuation as were many fighters trying to protect
the beaches (read about what Churchill did). All this equipment would
have to be replaced in the short term with an invasion imminent of the UK
mainland.
Churchill’s Adaptive Enterprise
Churchill faced a dismal situation
and his Adaptive Enterprise was created in very dire circumstances.
Churchill's determination and his consistent stance against appeasement gave
him credibility with the British people when he became Prime Minister.
Churchill not only had to stave
off an imminent enemy invasion but also quickly move the peacetime economy to
one that could support a war. This meant focusing slender resources on the
immediate threat, unifying a disparate economy, and directing its output into
immediate military use.
Transformation
With very little time Churchill
had to transform his organization to an Adaptive Enterprise so it could adapt
to this unexpected situation. Of course he had to get it right the first time
and make the investments count. With many organizations from the public,
military and civilian sectors to accommodate into the Adaptive Enterprise (as
shown below) Churchill needed a governance framework. This required a
collection of people and resources that had the legitimacy and authority to
provide direction and to take actions needed to ensure the transformation was
swift and managed effectively. For example,
Churchill elected Lord Beaverbrook to the
Minister of Aircraft Production in May 1940. Beaverbrook brought energy and
new methods to the department and, substantially increased the output of
aircraft.
Churchill and his
architects created an Adaptive Enterprise using the emerging
technologies of the time. The principal elements of the solution consisted of
the following:
- Storey’s Gate where Churchill and his
staff, cabinet ministers, and chiefs of staff stayed in touch with the
entire business-process map. This was a principal community that made
the overriding decisions for everything. Storey’s Gate mapped out
various scenarios, defined strategies, and managed multiple projects,
resources, risks, and costs.
- Bentley Prior where the air chief and staff
needed a view of enemy activity and forthcoming attacks, their RAF
reserve, the production of fighters, and those fighters available.
Bentley Prior responded to real-time threats like in-coming raids, based
on Bletchley
Park intelligence,
taking appropriate actions and repelling these within a time critical
window.
- Bletchley Park where the intelligence
chiefs and staff required a flow of Enigma information related to enemy
activities, and the ability to decode, interpret, and distribute it. Bletchley Park intercepted and decoded
enemy communications and harvesting critical enemy intelligence into a
knowledge repository.
- Whitehall where the Ministry of Air Production
required horizontal views of the supply chain, fighter production, and
arms manufacturing, labor force, raw materials, as well as the armed
forces’ needs. Whitehall
managed the military supply chain, optimized the critical fighter production
through a variable cost structure encompassing everything from
factories, to garages, to repair shops.
The
transformation was extensive restructuring large parts of the UK
economy and moving it from a civilian based one to one on a war footing (read about British War Production).
This required
creation of arms production facilities, and a civilian workforce that was
largely composed of women, a first in British manufacturing.
Churchill’s
Legacy
Churchill
is revered today as one of the greatest leaders any nation has seen. This is
understandable considering the situation in the UK in May 1940. He was the man of
the moment and even sensed this was going to be his destiny. In 2002 the BBC
held a nationwide poll to determine the greatest Briton which Churchill won.
"He was the greatest Briton
because he showed the determination and courage to protect Britain from invasion and without
his inspiring leadership the outcome of World War II may have been very
different. He was the choice of the people." - Mo Mowlam, who championed
Churchill (read about Churchill the ‘greatest
Briton’).
Credits and
Sources
The following
provided information for the book.
Churchill's
Adaptive Enterprise
Leonard Mosley. Battle of Britain. World War II –
Time Life Books, 1977.
Briggs, Susan. The
home front: War years in Britain
1939-45, American Heritage, 1975.
Budianski, Stephen. Battle of Wits, Simon
and Schuster, 2000.
Collier, Basil.
Leader of the Few: The Authorized Biography of Air Chief Marshal
Dowding.
Deighton, Len. Blood,
tears and folly, HarperCollins; (December 1993)
Deighton, Len. Battle of Britain. Jonathon Cape,
1980
Deighton, Len.
Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain,
Castle; (May 2000)
Hodges, Andrew. Alan
Turing the enigma. Simon and Schuster, 1983.
Mason, Francis. Battle Over Britain. McWhirter Twins, 1969.
Milward, Alan S. War,
Economy and Society 1939-1945. Penguin Books Ltd, 1977.
Mosley, Leonard. The Battle Of Britain. Time-Life Books, 1977.
Pawle, Gerald. The
War and Colonel Warden. George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1963.
Wintherbottom, FW.
The Ultra Secret. Orion, 1974.
Illustrations were
used courtesy of the Imperial War Museum London
|
