From the Battleground
After your organization's regular product or service lines have become commoditized, it develops a new product or service for which there is no already-developed market. Warriors and pioneers are diametrically opposed. Warriors think in terms of similarity rather than innovation, and usually oppose (sometimes with a vengeance) any significant changes to their products and services. This is necessary when dealing with extremely high volumes and low margins. In contrast, differences are not only important to pioneers, but highly valued by them.
Rulers and hunters normally have at least some need for innovation. Warriors, however, generally do not, beyond finding ways to improve the manufacturing and distribution of their traditional products and services. Thus, changing from a warrior to a pioneer organization is the most difficult of the 12 types of changes an organization can make. It is also the least common.
Though rare, it is possible for a new product, service, or process to be born in a warrior organization, particularly if the warrior has been involved in a merger or acquisition. When it does happen, most often the wisest response is to sell the discovery to another, more pioneering organization.
But sometimes a warrior may choose to develop the new product or service itself. Let's look at the factors that need to be considered and addressed.
Key IssuesTo move from a large commodity-producing entity to an organization trying to find a market for a largely unknown product or service is a huge structural and cultural change. Why would management get involved in this kind of business? Whatever the answer to this question - and there are a few valid ones - that answer needs to be communicated extremely clearly and visibly to everyone affected. This message needs to be repeated and emphasized over and over, because warriors' natural tendencies are antithetical to what is needed in the new startup.
Common DifficultiesWarrior cultures are designed to accelerate, improve, and streamline the production of a known entity. Their focus is on volume, speed, and quality in the production process. All their innovation centers on these activities, not on creating new products or services.
A pioneer project thus has to be staffed entirely from the outside in order to succeed. Management must understand from the start that this is an absolute requirement.
One of the pioneer's biggest concerns is having enough resources to develop a product or service that is at least partly unknown and untested in the market. Such an investment is foreign to warrior management. This means that the new pioneer will need to have a reliable funding source outside the avenues normally used in the larger organization.
Solutions In general, I recommend against even attempting this kind of change. If your organization is considering such a transformation, however, keep the following points in mind:
- From the start, completely separate the new pioneer enterprise from any part of the warrior organization. The two should have their own distinct missions, people, and cultures. If possible, they should also be in separate physical locations.
- Make sure the warrior organization exerts no influence whatsoever on the pioneer. It may provide financial support, however - provided that support comes with very few or no strings attached.
- Every leader in the new pioneer enterprise - and, if possible, many of its employees - should have significant experience working in pioneer organizations. Top leadership must also have experience in designing and managing pioneer ventures.
- The new pioneer enterprise must be driven by a very clear new product/new service vision, rather than a vision to some day be a part of the warrior organization. The future of the business should be in either a jungle or kingdom, never in a battleground.
Adaptation Issues The guiding philosophy of a warrior organization is to create order and sameness in production and to do things ever faster and more efficiently. The new pioneer venture, however, should favor newness and innovation over speed, and it will very likely disdain order.
What makes a warrior organization profitable is the presence of systems that work the same all the time. In contrast, the new pioneer enterprise will have little that is formal and standardized; its systems will be imperfect and fluid, changing all the time. Much of what is done is being done for the first time. It is a learning environment - finding out about the product or service, the market, the distribution channel, and so on.
Making a transition from order to creative chaos, and from inflexible systems to hardly any system at all, is next to impossible. This is why the new pioneer venture must be kept entirely separate from its warrior owner.
