Tag Archives: protean corporation

Posted on

The Secret of Organizational Change Management

In the 2014 summer version of Strategy + Business magazine, there was an article entitled “10 Principles of Leading Change Management.”  This article ties nicely into one of my previous blog posts “The Protean Corporation” that was focused on what corporations need to do to deal with the continuous and explosive change that they are faced with everyday. That blog post was focused on the organizational structure and culture required for our changing environment while this post is focused on rolling out change within the organization itself.

The 10 guiding principles for change as described in the article are summarized below (with some of my commentary added);

1) Lead with the culture – when building your strategy for rolling out the change, take into account your organizations vision, mission, values and overall culture. Does the change align with the vision, mission, values and culture? How can you structure or position the change to leverage these things and make it easier for the organization to accept and embrace the change?

Posted on

Protean Corporation

In his book The Future Arrived Yesterday: The Rise of the Protean Corporation and What It Means for You, Michael S. Malone defines a new phenomenon in the corporate world which he calls the Protean Corporation (Protean means the ability to change into many different forms or to do many different things). The Protean Corporation is a new form of organization that is structured to handle the stresses and strains we see emerging in our marketplace today. Stresses ranging from the retiring baby boomers being replaced by Gen Xer’s, Gen Y’s and millennials to the rising Asian workforce, continuous Internet connectivity, the pace of technological change, dramatic increases in new consumers, the emerging nations and the rise in entrepreneurialism. These stresses and strains are unleashing an unprecedented rate of change into the marketplace, a rate of change that has never before been experienced and one that the organizations today struggle to handle successfully.

According to Malone, the Protean Corporation “must find a way to continuously and rapidly change almost everyone of their attributes – products, services, finances, physical plant, markets, customers, and both tactical and strategic goals – yet at the same time retain a core of values, customs, legends, and philosophy that will be little affected by the continuous and explosive changes taking place just beyond its edges.”

How can the Protean Corporation do this? By structuring itself into three distinct groups;