Being Pushed In
You are moving from a dominant position to a highly contested one with a particular product or product line. After years of operating in a kingdom market, enjoying proprietary status over a product or product line, you may find yourself suddenly (or not so suddenly) challenged by one or more competitors. This often is the result of some new technological innovation, or the expiration of a patent or copyright.
The intense struggle that followed may have pushed some of your product lines into the jungle. This creates a demand for new ways to produce these products - and a need for new structures to support those processes. During the past decade, this has happened to many of the companies that were rulers in the 70s and 80s.
Key IssuesCompanies that are forced into a jungle market are seldom happy with their predicaments. The strategic intent of rulers is to keep products so well protected that they are never subjected to the kind of competition that goes on in the jungle. Yet virtually every product or service eventually winds up in either a jungle or battleground market.
So, if you have been pushed from a kingdom market into a jungle, you are probably a reluctant (if not kicking and screaming) player. In all likelihood, your company is designed to protect its interests, not to launch an attack on the market.
You will need to change this orientation, and fast. If most of your company's products are sold in a kingdom market, then operating in the jungle will be intensely foreign to your culture.
The central change your organization needs to make is to learn to fight for a share of the market rather than to protect your lock on much or all of it. This requires new behaviors in production and operations. It also means expending significant resources on studying and selecting your customers, so that you can concentrate on certain markets where you have a chance to dominate.
Like it or not, your company will need to do some major downsizing to reduce costs. You will also need to redesign your internal systems to respond to external demands much more quickly and effectively.
Common DifficultiesIncreasing the speed of decisionsTraditionally, rulers are not speedy competitors. They tend to move slowly, because management is many levels apart from its customers. Unless you move your decision-making processes closer to the action, your company will be in trouble. This means that you will have to eliminate some or all of the checking processes that management has used in the past to maintain control.
Redirecting attentionRulers are more attuned to their internal needs, and to production and delivery issues, than to customer demands. In a jungle market, however, this focus is a recipe for failure. You will now need people who are finely attuned to the market. Internally derived numbers are no longer very useful; your people will now be looking at different numbers, and for different reasons. Accountability must change from delivering product to holding and satisfying customers in all ways.
Showing people to the doorMost ruler managers have a difficult time letting go of control - and, for some, it's outright impossible. Those for whom it is impossible must be reassigned to a different unit (one that operates in a kingdom market), or else given notice.
Changing individuality to collaborationRuler cultures foster and reward individual accountability. As a natural result, rulers tend to build functional silos that are useful under kingdom conditions. These barriers are anathema to meeting customer needs, however.
Your managers must understand the need to collaborate across the system - and must be trained to do so. If they cannot, they may seriously hobble the company.
Even when people are willing to make the change, getting this large-scale teamwork to happen - and supporting your teams with the supply chain information they need - can be very difficult.
Removing the boundaries between silos is a major task that many people will resist. The only way to make it work is if, from the beginning of the change effort, power is allocated differently at the top of the company.
Getting product across the functions to the customerThe toughest challenge of operating in your new market environment is finding ways to force products and services across the system to the customer as quickly and efficiently as possible. This means you must focus on processes rather than simply on delivery.
Yet most rulers are stuck in delivery mode, in which products move from one function to the other, pushed by some product manager. This process will no longer do the trick. It will need to be replaced with a process centered on customer satisfaction.
Changing the decision-making processThe knee-jerk reaction of many ruler managers is to bring important issues to some kind of committee. This ensures that no part of the system is aggravated by a proposed strategy. However, these committees will now work directly against your success in a jungle market. The whole process takes a great deal of energy and resources, which are now needed elsewhere - as well as lots of time, which the company can no longer afford to spare. This is an extremely common issue - one that makes moving from a kingdom to a jungle market exceptionally difficult.
Stifling the huntersIn ruler organizations, management’s role is to supervise and control. Indeed, that is what it does best. Unfortunately, when conditions begin to change and competitors have much more of a say in the market, management does what it knows best and attempts to exercise more surveillance and control. This has the effect of stifling hunter activity. Management direction then becomes perceived as meddling. This becomes a source of considerable contention and resentment, especially by those employees who work with or close to customers.
Practicing frugalityRulers have become comfortable with the presence of ample financial resources. Ruler managers thus tend to approve most sensible requests for financial support. People generally get most of what they want - and they get used to getting it. This generosity can spell disaster in a jungle market, where frugality is not merely a virtue but a necessity.
Managers now need to solve problems creatively and inexpensively, rather than just by spending money. Ruler managers are not skilled at this.
The management control boundaries used in ruler organizations surround functions such as manufacturing, sales, marketing, and technology. These boundaries are very useful in organizations that can focus on delivery in a demand market. However, they are anything but useful in a jungle environment. They slow things down, take a lot of energy, and are very costly.
SolutionsAny solution must begin with some significant form of new leadership. Somewhere a person in a key, highly-visible position must lead your organization forward by example. This person usually must be new to the organization, and must have a reputation for demanding or inspiring hunter behavior. They must also be (or become) a symbol or icon for hunter attitudes and actions in everyone's eyes. Furthermore, what they do in their first few months should firmly reinforce this reputation.
This new leader needs to present a vision of how things need to work, and they need to support that vision with a redesign of the key processes that affect both quality and cost. When these designs go into effect, the leader needs to provide substantial rewards for all successes achieved as a result. They also, of course, need to not reward any of the old ways of doing things.
Finally, it is important that, from the beginning, this new leader be empowered to find (and, if need be, hire) the people who are able to support the change. They can then use these change agents as the nucleus of the new system, building around them. This sends early, clear messages to everyone in the organization about what the new rules and culture will be.
Until and unless this kind of strategy is followed, it is next to impossible to make the needed changes, even though there may be many attempts by people throughout the system. (These attempts are helpful nevertheless, because they are early warnings of what the company will need to do and be like. Unfortunately, the people behind these attempted changes tend not to last very long.)
Adaptation IssuesRuler managers bring together all the individual pieces of a system by exercising power. But both power and politics often go awry in a ruler organization when the market changes, because what was known and taken for granted is no longer true. Therefore, it is important that power be used to begin the transformation process, since employees expect power to be wielded and are used to seeing it employed.
However, this use of power needs to be focused on reducing or eliminating the siloing, segmentation, and multi-level structure so that people can collaborate more easily.
Everyone in the system needs to develop skills for working together collaboratively. This is perhaps the most significant issue for rulers who are forced to become hunters. These skills simply will not be developed unless they are very clearly modeled by the people at the top of the organization - and unless those people communicate exactly what they want and expect from employees. This refers not only to internal teamwork and the kind of management that enhances it, but also to understanding the market and customer needs. Everyone in the system also needs to know how to continually redesign processes to survive in the ever-changing jungle environment.
