The era of hyper-innovation requires multi-change management

The COVID-19 pandemic made businesses realize the need to reevaluate their priorities and strategies to emerge from the crisis stronger, more competitive, and better prepared for a volatile future. Digital technology has emerged as the main driver for post-pandemic competitiveness. Therefore, simultaneously businesses must strive to become more resilient, efficient, flexible, sustainable and – most of all – more digital. 

In the early days of the pandemic, organizations had to focus on business continuity by empowering employees to work from home. Then, once these initial resilience challenges were resolved, businesses quickly shifted their focus to efficiency and productivity. Some business leaders felt that in times of uncertainty and volatility they needed to put a moratorium on innovation initiatives, However, many quickly realized that technology – most of all, the cloud technology that powers flexible work – was the main driving force for their ability to remain operational and successful. This is why numerous companies have accelerated their digitization and cloud transformation projects – and have designed strategies to extend cloud-first approaches to additional business processes and workflows.

According to The Era of Hyper-Innovation, a new research report commissioned by Citrix, investments in new technology and flexible work models over the last year fueled a staggering $678 billion global revenue increase. In other words: while on-premise, in-person work and collaboration were once considered prerequisites for business success and innovation, this perception has fundamentally changed. During the pandemic, remote work has proven to be just as effective, often even more so. Almost nine in ten business leaders who participated in the survey stated that the rollout of new work tools due to the pandemic has substantially improved the way workers and teams interact. Equally impressive: four out of five participants expect their organization to enter a phase of hyper-innovation over the next twelve months.

What does hyper-innovation mean in this context? It means that businesses deploy cutting-edge technologies to become more resilient, productive, flexible, sustainable, and competitive – all at the same time. For example, while in recent quarters work from home was an important pillar of business resilience and productivity, today work is being transformed again, aimed at increased flexibility. The future of work lies in a hybrid model, with employees sometimes engaging at the office, sometimes from the home office, and sometimes on the go – in accordance with individual business requirements as well as personal preferences. 

In this new world of hybrid work, businesses need to prepare for the role of the office to be drastically different. Thanks to cloud services and digital workspaces, employees are now able to fulfill routine tasks anywhere they want. So the office will morph from an old-fashioned location of work into a place of interactivity, creativity, and the exchange of ideas. Business leaders will have to define the parameters for a respective cultural change within their companies: they need to enable a smooth transition from a presence-based culture to an outcome- and achievement-based one. This cultural transformation must go hand in hand with the digitization of work, or else a company would run the risk of lagging behind its competition, and of being unattractive to high potentials in the global war for talent. 

It may seem that business leaders already have enough on their plates with managing the technological and cultural transformation projects in parallel. However, one more area requires immediate attention: sustainability. In recent years, it has become increasingly obvious that companies of all sizes must achieve a more ecologically friendly way of doing business. At the same time, sustainability also has a social dimension: businesses must increase their efforts to become an empowering, inclusive, and healthy work environment for current and future employees. For example, in recent job interviews with many applicants, I have noticed a trend among skilled workers to favor a supportive work environment and a healthy work-life balance rather than a higher salary and other financial benefits. Businesses will have to shift towards becoming a more sustainable workplace in both dimensions of this term – environmentally and socially. 

This is why the era of hyper-innovation that we are about to enter will require multiple, simultaneous dimensions of change management. Of course, business management has always been about change management: there have always been new product lines to be launched, new supply chains to be negotiated, new processes to be introduced, and new areas of business to be tested. But today, numerous changes need to be managed at the same time, with aspects ranging from resilience, productivity, and business strategy to ecological and social sustainability. So, for the foreseeable future, business management will be about dynamic change management: being able to manage multiple dimensions of change at the same time is a key skill to prepare a company for the upcoming, fast-moving times of hyper-innovation.

These multiple changes have a common foundation: the digitization of work processes and a flexible workforce. This means that the post-pandemic recovery plans that are being rolled out across European countries will be much more successful if they focus on investments in digital transformation and on a flexible work environment that optimizes the employee experience. The era of hyper-innovation will be digital, and it must also be centered on employees.