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Let me share something my mother taught me that changed my perspective on success. I used to visit her and tell her about my achievements: "Mother, I just got another honorary doctorate, and I have another book, and I am consulting to the prime minister of..." She would look at me, take my hand in her hand, tap on it and say calmly, lovingly, "Yes, my son, but how is your health?"

As I aged and had health problems, I realized how right she was: The most important thing in life we know its value by its absence. We don't know the value of health until we're sick. We don't know the value of democracy until we live in a dictatorship, and we don't know the value of love until we don't have any.

A company should be healthy, because if it is healthy, it can have sustainable success. All its energies are available to compete and serve its clients. When sick, disintegrated, some of the energy goes to handle the disintegration and the company is in disadvantage in competing and serving.

There is a challenge though. For a company to be sustainably successful, it also needs to adjust its products, services, it needs to adapt to the changes in the marketplace.

Adapting to external change, means, however, that the company needs to make internal changes. And here is the problem: organizational subsystems do not change in unison. Marketing changes the fastest. Sales slower. Production even slower and, the slowest is the human element. That means; by leading external change to integrate with client needs, the company could suffer internal disintegration. And disintegration means not being healthy, losing energy, which could impact the effectiveness and efficiency of implementing the decision.

This is one of the major challenges for modern leadership or management: Lead change without disintegrating. Or, said differently: manage change without falling apart, change, but without becoming sick from the change.

The Finnish people in winter go rolling in the snow and then go to the hot sauna to sweat and back out again to roll in the snow. Cold-hot-cold-hot. Changes invigorate the Finnish. They are healthy. In other countries, small change in the weather and one gets a running nose. Or worse...
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Who can get energized by change by not allowing his or her subsystems to disintegrate is healthy. The ones who fall apart from change are not.

So how should we manage change for sustainable success? We should keep being “together” while changing?

How?

The Four Essential Functions of Management

Through my field research, I discovered there are four functions that must be performed in a company to be healthy.

The (P) function, which stands for the word productive, makes the company effective in the short run. It can be measured by the rate of repeated sales: what percentage of sales are from repeat customers. If customers (in a competitive market) come back to buy more, we might conclude they are satisfied with the service or product we have.

The (A) role, the role of administration, makes the organization efficient in the short run by programing, systematizing processes.

Entrepreneurship, which is the (E) role, makes the company effective in the long run -it addresses questions about the changes the company has to make to stay effective in the future, i.e. to satisfy future needs of its clients and of new clients?

And the (I) function, integration, teamwork, makes the organization efficient in the long run. People support each other.

Those functions call for a complementary leadership team because no single person, no matter how smart and ambitious, can perform well all four functions simultaneously on every subject.

Your company is healthy if you have a complementary team running it with an organizational structure where all four functions operate successfully, none of the PAEI roles is left unattended. Second, the complementary team respect and appreciate each other’s different style because they learn from each other’s differences.

To be willing to learn from someone who thinks differently, one must have respect for differences. Not resent them or forbid them. Be open to learn from them. When that happens, the company is synergetic: Exchanging information, learning from each other’s differences, creating new values, creating synergy.

To implement that decision, the power centers, the stake holders, should have a common interest leading them to cooperate in implementation. When that happens, the system is symbiotic.

A healthy company is symbergetic: SYMBiotic and synERGETIC.

A healthy company is managed by a diversity of management styles, making better decisions by learning from each other differences, for which mutual respect is indispensable. For efficient implementation the stake holders share common interests necessary for collaboration, trusting each other to do their best for the benefit of the total.

Fostering an environment where open communication is encouraged helps to reinforce these values. Regular feedback sessions and transparent dialogue ensure that concerns and ideas are addressed constructively, further strengthening trust and collaboration throughout the organization.

The company is integrated by mutual trust and respect.

So, how should change be managed? It should not undermine or destroy mutual trust and respect. It should not reinforce or accelerate disintegration which will start with initiating change.

This principle, that integration is the sign of health and that integration is based on mutual trust and respect between the organizational ingredients is critical for guiding our decisions in how to manage change.

Health starts to deteriorate when mutual trust and respect is lost, the organization is getting sick and losing energy disabling it to fight competition effectively and efficiently, leading eventually to its demise.

The biggest asset a company has is not technology. It can be bought. It is not money. If there are technology and market, money will pour in. It is your organizational culture. A culture of mutual respect in making decisions collaboratively by a complementary team with diversified styles, and mutual trust between stakeholders, power centers, necessary to cause cooperation in implementing the decision.

Now analyze world leaders that are leading change. Can you predict the future of their country?