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You see companies attempting to pivot their business model all the time these days. Digital technology and networks make all the difference. In contrast, Facebook grew to 500 million users in a little more than six years. interstate highway system took 35 years and an estimated $425 billion (in 2006 dollars). Physical things do not scale quickly, easily or cost effectively. Wharton has also spoken of a “network revolution,” noting that for generations, most companies were “asset-builders.” Now the most successful companies are “network orchestrators,” with the reason being fairly simple: That’s a fancy way of saying that it’s hard to challenge the status quo at work because the people in power have a natural tendency to do things that retain their power, and challenging the status quo usually isn’t one of those things.īut we also know all organizations have to eventually change and grow, both to meet the demands of their customers but also the shifting employee base they have - and that’s going to become a bigger issue in the next 3-5 years as more organizations embrace a “hybrid” mix of on-premise work and remote employees. This partially happens because with some power, we process others through a more lateral region of the prefrontal cortex, known for planning, goal setting and conceptual thinking - with less activation of medial networks that are known to be central for thinking about people’s past, present and future, and considering people as social entities in a complex network. In particular, we start to mentalize other people as concepts - rather than people with specific goals and real emotions. This takes a lot of different forms, normally “re-orgs,” but it can happen at a more granular level as well.īut: even a tiny bit of power changes the brain in massive ways.
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When you are challenging the status quo at work, then, it’s typically a change management process where you’re trying to reach some type of new end state. While it’s often applied in a broader political or sociological context, in a work and leadership context the idea of “challenge the status quo” means shaking things up. “Status quo” is a Latin phrase that essentially means “existing state of affairs.”
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