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Food and trade companies are making changes, technologizing. Where should the change start in order to move in the right direction?
Iwo Zmyślony: – We need to change. However, let’s automate what is possible to automate. The idea is to free up human resources, but in order to free them up, that is, so that we have experts who can do what machines can’t handle, we need to take care of systemic factors within the organization. The goal is for organizations to be agile in the sense that they are able to recognize risks, threats and opportunities in the environment and test them through new products or structural solutions, and sometimes business model changes. There is a metaphor that organizations of the future should be like amoebas. And back in the 20th century, they were supposed to be like machines, which meant that it was easy to set business goals and achieve them using resources. If someone thinks that way today, they are thinking in a way that is no longer relevant. Today, the success of a company often requires a change in the business model or even the sector in which the company operates. The goal of the organization is for the change to be functional. Therefore, every organization requires change in a slightly different way. It needs to answer several questions: what are its strategic goals, with whom does it want to compare itself in the market, from whom does it want to differentiate itself, how does it want to measure success and over what time horizon. The situation is different for startups, different for organizations that define themselves in a 2-3 year horizon, and different for family businesses focused on the long haul. In each of these cases, change can mean something completely different.
Adequate human resources are necessary for change.
– You need to have employees who are ready to cooperate in innovation processes, in situations of risk, in situations of crisis. Strongly internally motivated to cooperate. What gives intrinsic motivation to employees? It is important to have skillful management so that they will want to work with management. The change process therefore starts with working with managers so that they have skills beyond those that can be automated, such as: planning, supervising, reporting, resource allocation. Managers need to be able to work with their people in such a way that they come to them with what has gone wrong, to correct what goes wrong in processes as quickly as possible. The basic question is: in your companies, do employees come to managers and say where they went wrong and what lessons can be learned from that? Programs like “leaders development” are for managers to know how to be leaders and not just supervisors. A lot of harm is done by equating the role of a supervisor with the position of a leader. If the supervisor happens to be a leader only in the negative sense, that is, he frustrates employees and creates a sense of injustice, he does not motivate innovation, to improve the company. Not every manager is ready to work on developing the competencies of a leader or the competencies of the future.
We need to separate what can be automated from what we cannot automate. It is necessary to properly diagnose – based on current knowledge of business psychology, organizational psychology, business sociology, neuroscience and technological knowledge – what tasks and processes can be optimized with artificial intelligence. What machines can do better than us. Then ask yourself what tasks and processes machines can’t do better than humans. The list will, for example, include the skill by which humans can create commitment in other humans. The work of managers, then, is to produce capital, which is precisely commitment, which is related to intrinsic motivation: “I want to work here” rather than “I have to work here.” A person who is constantly reviewing new job offers will not contribute to innovation even as small as coming and pointing out what can be improved. He says to himself: why should I improve anything in the company, if I only work here because they pay me for it?
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Iwo Zmyślony and Edyta Kochlewska during the “Food&Retail Talks, Innovation & Tech Talk” debate, during the Food Market and Trade Forum in Warsaw (photo: PTWP)
The first important thing in the process of change is to create commitment, and the second: organizational support.
– The competencies of the future, the so-called soft competencies, such as empathy, active listening, critical thinking, paraphrasing and many others, have the ability to be practiced even with the support of machines. A manager, on the other hand, will not use them or support his employees or build relationships with them if he does not want to. If he wants to, on the other hand, it is still important whether the company supports him in doing so. Does it not prevent him from asking questions, questioning what is. Success in effecting change lies in the fact that managers are willing to spend their time, for example, to simplify processes that block the organization’s growth. But they must get organizational support. We start systemic change by working on the motivations of managers, selecting the so-called soft competencies that are needed from the point of view of strategy, i.e. how we want to develop, which processes we want to automate, because it pays off. But on the other hand, we also need to support new competencies in the organization that cannot be automated.
Is the competence of the future our craft skills?
– We already know that in areas such as sign processing, language processing, mathematical thinking or logical thinking, machines are more efficient than most of us. On the other hand, there are areas of limitation in which the human mind is nevertheless more effective, in the latter case, for example, the mathematician’s mind. In addition to these dimensions of intelligence, there is also the so-called kinesthetic intelligence, associated with crafts, for example. A plumber, a shoe designer, a jewelry designer, someone who can build a house tailored to the mental needs of his client and his family, these are competencies, areas in which – for the time being – machines are not able to compete with us. They still can’t tie their shoelaces or ties well. Finally, there is social or emotional intelligence, which makes us capable of reading between the lines, recognizing with the help of so-called mirror neurons the intentions, needs, frustrations, aspirations of our interlocutors, and ultimately producing social relationships. A trivial question arises: do you trust the human or the interface? The answer is not obvious, as there are those who prefer contact with a machine. It is very important to distinguish tasks and processes that are strategically important to the company, that are done under repeatable conditions, such as supply chains, which we can measure with indicators and optimize. On the other side are business-relevant processes that take place under highly contextual, unique or even one-off conditions, such as employee engagement or new product launches. In the latter, soft competencies are essential. It’s about distinguishing between processes that can be automated and those that can’t. Of course, there may be a company where everything can be automated, as there are business models where people are not needed at all.
How to build a culture of change and innovation in companies that produce for the mass market?
– We analyze what we can improve and what we can copy. If we produce for the mass market, we identify areas that raise costs. Simple methods from the 20th century work well here. If we’re looking to fix a process, it helps to go down to the operational level and talk to the employees who are involved in the process. They will tell us what is not working. Sometimes it’s small changes that save money right away. The condition is that people must not be afraid of managers and want to help, instead of keeping quiet because it doesn’t pay them to speak up, or as punishment that the boss is a bad supervisor.
When it comes to copying, the scamper method is useful. It involves analyzing what the competition is doing and diagnosing how we rank in the market relative to the competition, who our competitors are and what our target audience is. For the mass customer, it’s all about availability and price – they want to buy cheaply with convenient solutions. Observing what the target group is used to, and also: what is worth copying, is a very simple solution.
