Ambidextrous Organizations

Introduction

             Ambidextrous Organizations are, true to the definition, organizations that are very versatile and skilful in the execution of a single goal.  This includes mixed strategies in one mission.  Employees know how to switch from one task to another and activities are always constant in motion and changes.  These organizations especially exist in constantly moving markets.

These organizations are risky businesses and far from being traditional.  It indeed takes a certain degree of gambling and intelligence to be able to take on swift choices that will be beneficial in the long run.  They embark on radical moves and most often than not they are disorderly and troublesome in the pursuit of increased profits.  Organizations such as this require the flexibility and adaptive attitude to meet any challenge presented at any time at a rapid rate.  At the same time, ambidextrous organizations are confronted by the need to be perceptive in seeing to whatever task and businesses. These businesses are constantly refreshing and renewing in order to meet greater demands (Tushman and O’Reilly 1996). 

The paper will examine three approaches executed by an ambidextrous organization in order to survive their turbulent and dynamic markets.  All of these approaches involve immediate changes and alterations performed at the business structure or strategy in order to pursue growth opportunities before rivals will.  The approaches all require speed, agility, movement, flexibility and an adaptive behavior in order to be executed with success since the changes occur during the business run and will be urgent.  The Quest of Resilience suggests how markets today are turbulent and how the survival of the most stable organizations is put at risk.  Patching consists of small scale alterations to businesses to further optimize them or fulfill their potentials through the meeting of growth opportunities.  Coevolution involves the mixing of collaboration and competition in multi-businesses in order to attain synergies.      

The Quest of Resilience by Gary Hamel Liisa Välikangas

Hamel and Välikangas provide a picture of today’s market as utterly turbulent.  This suggests how it is important for organizations to be ambidextrous in order to survive these markets, and indeed, find resilience.  How is it to find resilience in a turbulent world?  “Today, getting different is the imperative. “ The authors declare.  It is no longer proper for an organization to rest on its laurels.  It must constantly anticipate and search out for frequent opportunities and threats and shaping itself accordingly to the demands.  In fact, it is impossible to sustain success.  To Hamel and Välikangas, constant renewal is the key towards a resilient organization.  They proceed to recommend organizations to constantly transform it in what Hamel and Välikangas would say as “lightning quick evolutionary steps”.  

The Challenges that each organization needed to meet in order to be resilient all sum up to the necessity to be willing and open enough to confront changes are the following: Cognitive, Strategic, Political and Ideological.  With regards to Cognitive, each organization must be humble enough to accept changes and be eager to adapt to them.  Oftentimes, the organization becomes comfortable with the belief that they have attained success but this perception often tells otherwise.  This thinking will not certainly do in these turbulent times where everything proceeds in a state of flux.  According to Hamal and Välikangas, “An accelerating pace of change demands an accelerating pace of strategic “ In Strategic, an organization must be prepared to form new measures in the expense of old ones.  In Political, the organization must focus itself to the future and thus, be opened to a variety of new ideas (which is different from risky ideas): new breakthroughs, new experiments and new talents.  Lastly, in Ideological, an organization’s renewal must not only be limited to some segments that needed renovation, but rather, it must be accepted and adopted by the entirety of the firm in order to be effective.  Such as what Hamel and Välikangas would enumerate: reinforcement for strategic variety, wide-scale experimentation, rapid resource redeployment” as initiated in “employee training, performance metrics, and management processes” Hamel and Välikangas likened resilience with a battlefield commander’s ability to acquire intelligence reports and act upon them before rivals will.  After one would have executed the proper actions, it never stops there and the commander will just continue in retrieving reports and renewing strategies all the time.  Such will only be the proper method of surviving a turbulent battlefield. 

Patching by Kathleen Eisenhardt and Shona Brown

Patching requires the swift flexibility to alter businesses in a small scale manner.    Definition wise, it involves mending, covering up a hole, in Eisenhardt and Brown’s case, this is covering up problems that will have to be dealt by a plan after the very execution of the patching.  By Eisenhardt and Brown’s definition, “It can take the form of adding, splitting, transferring, exiting, or combining chunks of businesses.”  The authors recognize patching as “…a series of frequent, usually small, realignments that are part of the organizational routine. Small and routine they may be, but they drive the arithmetic of shareholder value.” The process is highly unstable as it involves radically reconfiguring the business in such a way that it would meet market opportunities.  Patching cannot be large in scale and should only be minor in order to be guarantee efficiency.  These swift small changes however, if made properly, can contribute to a long term growth.  The keyword to patching is optimization through the small alterations.  In this manner, firms may meet growth opportunities and fulfill the potentials of its businesses.  

            Patching is an extremely risky move that may be beneficial or detrimental to a firm.  It is always essential that organizations have support or a back-up plan in case it fails.  Planning should begin after the patching.  But if it does succeed, it may lead to an insurmountable improvement such that cannot be executed anytime else within the business run.  

An example cited by Eisenhardt and Brown is Dell Computer which restructured its business by splitting them to several segments in order to meet the needs of its target markets and in turn, provide high quality customer service.    

Co-Evolution by Kathleen Eisenhardt and Charles Gahmic

The Ambidextrous Organization would no doubt be best capable to manage synergies since they would be flexible enough to take on tasks, businesses including.  Kathleen Eisenhardt and Charles Gahmic introduce a concept called co-evolution based on the Biological concept.  It involves collaboration efforts between two entities that benefit each other in turn.  Because of their mutual partnership, they improve and become better entities.  Eisenhardt and Gahmic would like to propose how multi-business corporations, ambidextrous organizations in themselves, are coevolving eco systems.  

Coevolving companies, ambidextrous organizations, collaborate and compete at the same time in order to thrive.  Collaboration is concretized since the businesses are under one flag and they share background necessities such as supplies and systems, but the fact that they compete each other for customers in their own unique way, earns them profit twice-fold.  The rivalry will actually benefit the organization and it doesn’t matter who wins over what as the firm will generally win as a whole for having captured markets.  In Coevolving companies, it matters to increase the number of collaborations (“more links” so to speak) and just balancing them (loosening or tightening the links) accordingly.  The trick is to allow businesses to perform on their own unique manner when needed, never mind if there is rivalry.  Generally, these organizations need to be “dynamic” and “agile” enough to adapt to quick changes, a typical trait of ambidextrous organizations.  The idea of coevolving is just to determine the links. In ambidextrous organizations, there is no particular standard or rules to follow, no right or wrong.  They embark on businesses which each have their on case to case basis and the trick is to master these cases in order to dominate them. Firms should also allow business units, who know their businesses best, to make collaboration decisions although motivated, supported and supervised by senior executives.  It is also important to emphasize that businesses are rewarded at their own “self interest” and not because they have been collaborating well with other businesses.  It is their goal to be better than one another in their respective markets and earn in their respective businesses.  That is how they can serve their collaborations well, by benefiting the entire organization due to individual profits and markets.  By being a rival, they can be a friend to each other.

Eisenhardt and Gahmic mentions the Vail Ski Resort examples which is an example of the blurring of collaboration and competition in an organization.  The resort merges four of its resorts that compete in their own unique way, effectively capturing various markets.  Visitors are given four unique vacation experiences and even if one resort loses customers, they will only end up visiting another resort owned by the organization. Either way, they all win.      

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