Take the Shift Index Organizational Self-Assessment: Weekend Reading
As improvements in core digital technologies accelerate, the pace of change is also accelerating. Flows of knowledge and resources, enabled by technology and policy, are changing the way value is created and captured around the globe. Individuals are gaining more power as consumers.
But, guess who’s caught in the middle? Companies. Executives and employees initially respond to these changes by working harder within existing institutions and practices. The result is diminishing performance and mounting stress. Until the nature of those changes are understood, and executives evolve institutions and practices accordingly, companies won’t be able to effectively harness new capabilities and turn stress into success.
The Shift Index, first produced in 2009, provides comprehensive insight into the underlying drivers of corporate performance. The study measure the performance of 20,000 U.S. firms from 1965 to date in great detail, looking beyond cyclical events, and shedding light on the deeper trends of longer-term change. It provided a clear, comprehensive and sustained view of the dynamics changing the world, thus documenting and quantifying what is called “the Big Shift.”
The Shift Index is designed to help executives understand and take advantage of the changes around them. Updated every year, the Index looks at more than 40 years’ worth of data for 25 metrics in three areas: developments in the technological and political foundations; underlying market changes, such as how flows of capital, information and talent which are changing the business landscape; and impacts of these changes on competition, volatility and performance across industries.
For example, one way of measuring performance erosion is through return on assets. Examining all public companies in the United States back to 1965 shows that return on assets have declined by more than 75%. “So the pressure is mounting on companies,” says John Hagel III, co-chairman of Deloitte LLP’s Center for the Edge. Part of the reason for that pressure is that companies are caught in a legacy mindset of focusing on predictability and efficiency during a time that demands much more agility and the ability to respond more quickly to unforeseen events in the marketplace.
“More fundamentally, there is a marketplace shift in the way value is created and distributed and the implications for companies are profound,” says Mr. Hagel. “It basically means that the institutions that we have created, which are relentlessly focused on scalable efficiency, are going to have to transform into institutions focused on scalable learning.”
The organizational self-assessment tutorial (see link below) introduces the capabilities required for scalable learning through a series of videos. Questions following each video allow executives to assess their immediate team’s capabilities. At the end of the assessment, suggestions are made with respect to possible steps to take to improve performance and create a scalable learning environment.
Understand how well your organization is prepared for the Big Shift by taking this 15-minute tutorial.
Read other Shift Index reports written to help executives translate research into action by making workers more passionate, making sense of the changing business environment and finding opportunities by embracing contradictions.
For more business research from Deloitte University Press visit www.dupress.com
- Shift Index Organizational Self-Assessment Tutorial
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