Not just about the now, is it?

I have always been fascinated by people who could accomplish mundane chores with both hands. I still remember that eventful first day of eighth standard – our Math teacher left quite an impression on us when he solved a problem on the board while writing with both hands. As the students watched in awe, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the advantages he had in life because of his ambidexterity!

But what if I tell you that ambidexterity is not just an individual trait which comes handy in speed writing or a cricket game? It also exists in organisational set-ups and is increasingly becoming an important part of business culture. Organizational ambidexterity refers to an organization’s ability to be efficient in its management of today’s business and also adaptable for coping with tomorrow’s changing demand. Just as being ambidextrous means being able to use both the left and right hand equally, organizational ambidexterity requires them to use both exploration and exploitation techniques to be successful. This is achieved by balancing exploration and exploitation, which allows the organization to be creative and adaptable, while continuing to rely on comparitively traditional, proven methods of business. Exploration includes search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, flexibility, discovery or innovation, whereas exploitation includes refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation, and execution. Companies that focus only on exploration face the risk of wasting resources on ideas that may not prove useful or never be developed. On the other hand, companies that focus only on exploitation may become complacent with their current success and risk the possibility of becoming outdated or irrelevant in future. Thus, the whole game revolves around striking a healthy balance between the two.

Unfortunately, most businesses excel in exploitating their present levels of growth but falter in adapting to new market changes and radical shifts in innovation in their fields. Some striking examples include Kodak and Nokia. Kodak excelled at analog photography but hasn’t been able to make the leap to digital cameras. With the arrival of the Internet, other mobile companies started understanding how data, not voice, was the future of communication. Nokia didn’t grasp the concept of software and kept focusing on hardware because the management feared alienation of current users by changing too much. Nokia’s mistake was that they didn’t want to lead the drastic change in user experience. 

Organizational ambidexterity can be considered broadly from two angles. One is architectural or structural ambidexterity, which uses dual organizational structures and strategies to differentiate efforts towards exploitation and exploration. Structural ambidexterity includes dual parts, with one part focusing on exploitation and the other focusing on exploration. It’s also known as the spatial separation of the dual strategies’ concepts outlined above. The other approach is contextual ambidexterity, which uses behavioural and social means to integrate exploitation and exploration at the organizational unit level. Whichever angle the organisation chooses to focus on, the upper management and leaders play the most important role in achieving ambidexterity. A company’s senior team must be committed to operating ambidextrously even if its members themselves aren’t ambidextrous. Resistance at the top levels of an organization cannot be tolerated, which means that shifting to an ambidextrous organization model can be a wrenching experience. Wrenching, but an absolutely necessary step in todays constantly evolving business atmosphere. How to achieve organisational ambidexterity is a discussion for another day, owing to length constraints. However, the reader must be warned that this concept has had its fair share of sceptical outlooks and criticism. Some consider it to be an impossible quest, saying that organisations after reaching a certain size and success, simply lack the flexibility to adapt. Some go as far as deeming it an unnecessary venture which only wastes resources without capitalising on returns.

All things aside; I personally feel that continuous growth makes it all the more important for a business to think about the future as conversations are shifting to ‘sustainability’ in every field. You may not believe it, but then again, Yahoo didn’t either! 😛

– Atharv Dwivedi