Mastering strategic renewal - Mobilising renewal journeys in multi-unit firms

How do large multi-unit firms in a deconstructing world reconcile the confl icting forces of profits for today and flexibility to adapt for tomorrow? P rofits for today requires order, control, and stability: adaptation for tom orrow requires flexibility and creativity in the value-added system. Large firms in many industries are confronted with this challenge of exploration and exploitation. in the European financial services industries these confl icting tendencies are increasingly obvious. Existing large financial player s seem well placed to exploit the present but ill suited to adapt to the fu ture. Why is this so, and what can be done about it! We consider the mechan isms of selection, adaptation and co-evolution that take place between leve ls within the firm and between the firm and its environment, and from this identify four ideal kinds of strategic renewal journeys that organisations can adopt as a way of coping with increasing environmental pressures. We la bel these journeys: emergent, directed, facilitated, and transformational. We show how these ideal types represent different options for top, middle a nd front-line managers, and we identify how each type differs in its capaci ty to cope with the changing environment. We illustrate our renewal journey s with examples from Dutch (ING and Rabobank) and British financials (Barcl ays, Lloyds and Prudential) and other organisations such as GE, IBM, Inter, Novotel and Philips. We suggest that for mobilising renewal in well-establ ished financial institutions-once protected but now exposed to the winds of change-managers have to recognise that many of the current journeys are un suitable for the future. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .