Adapting
Adapting in the sense of the guiding process ‘Handling the Past’, means an organisation makes decisions whenever new things should happen.
This can relate to all other guiding processes. In every decision, it is also decided simultaneously whether the new is introduced (or whether the old is retained). Organisations can occupy themselves more radically with this guiding process as well, when very fundamental subjects or very risky questions are to be examined regarding the necessity for change (culture-change projects, change of strategy, product placement, mass redundancies etc.). Especially such learning processes need other forms of management rather than a simple directive: “Do this differently!”. Instructions are just about the weakest method of making learning in an organisation likely.
In dynamic environments, in which constant learning is required to survive, specific, organisational, group dynamic and psychological abilities are needed in this guiding process in order to be able to cope with the ongoing irritation which has overtaken the status quo. In addition, on an organisational level, considerable communication- and coordination processes are required to be able to allow the different opinions on a group dynamic level to be expressed and utilised, and to identify, on a psychological level, the surrender of past competences and obsolete opinions. As nothing about this is self-evident, a learning approach to the past is never easy for organisations.