I do not agree with the opening statement. I think companies need to
have a holistic approach to this problem. Focusing too much on just
organizational capabilities has the opportunity of producing a siloed
effect. Organizations that think only in terms of departments or
specific functions do not perform as well as organizations where they
think of themselves (Bititci, 2015).
Organizational culture affects capability of a company by enabling
behaviors in the company that lead them to be successful. As
mentioned in textbook, arriving at a mature place where a company
is performant requires several iterations of a maturity lifecycle,
where a huge part of the cycle is learning at different levels and
applying lessons learned to become better.
The first step is for companies to understand that principles and
ideas are not set in stone and that they can learn something new
from how things have been done previously. An example of this is my
current company, where I am witnessing firsthand that our
organization is starting to learn how to learn and apply those lessons
so firstly we don’t do the same mistakes and secondly so that we do
things differently to see different results. We are learning that doing
things the same way over and over again is giving us the same
results. Our leaders are starting to realize that we need to
understand how to break from this groupthink cycle to be able to
start moving.
After reading the memos of Company A and B I think both
companies need to reach another level of maturity. Company A
leaders need to grow in their operational and dynamic capabilities.
Company A is seeing the results of their decisions from years ago,
like in 2018 how they “overdid treats for their customers” and this
affected their bottom line, they course corrected, but this is a prime
example of how not having insights into the financial impact of their
decisions can affect their bottom line. Furthermore, they are aware
of their competitors in the space and what they are doing, they are
aware that they are losing customers to their pricing strategy, and
nothing is indicating that they are learning and changing course.
Company B also needs to focus on their operational capability with
the resources that they have on hand. They need to understand that
there are big problems that can become showstoppers for them if
they are not acted upon soon, like their aircraft becoming inoperable
if their maintenance crews do not get the training and certification to
continue doing their jobs according to regulation. Company B
leadership needs to understand all the issues they have and prioritize
accordingly based on the effect these issues can have on their
bottom line.
Resources
Bititci, U. S. (2015). Managing business performance: The science and
the art. Wiley.
