The competencies of forward-thinking organizations. 

Companies in the digital age are going to have to compete in a different way. Many of the characteristics that were good predictors of an organization's success and longevity in the past are no longer sufficient.

The 8 main competencies of blue organizations and the digitalization of companies

We have identified a series of essential characteristics of companies, that are better equipped for new competitive scenarios. These new leaders who possess these characteristics are forward-thinking organizations.
We have divided the 8 competencies into two groups: Those that determine what the company is, and its essence (focused on purpose, simple, cellular, positive with talent); and those that determine how the company acts (disruptive, responsive, customer-obsessed, connected).

1. Focused on purpose

Forward-thinking organizations have a reason for being and a strategic direction that is permanently updated and shared by the people in the organization, who serve as a guide in decision-making. We need the purpose to be our guide to action, which must move to action, be transformative, ambitious, challenging, and exciting; the purpose is the declaration of the transformation that the company wants to provoke in the world.

2. Simple

To meet these demands for agility, and to contain the cost of complexity, blue organizations are aggressively pursuing simplification. Simplicity is an extraordinary golden rule for success in business and in life. Forward-thinking organizations tirelessly seek to simplify the different dimensions of their business, knowing that by reducing the complexity of the organization, they make possible levels of agility and connection with customers and collaborators that are impossible in complex companies.

3. Flexible

Forward-thinking organizations are organized in ways that transcend the traditional hierarchical organization. They are structured in cells, mission-oriented self-managed teams, beyond projects. The structures have to be lightened and made more suitable for the demands of agility that the new organization is going to ask of them.

4. Positive talent approach

Forward-thinking organizations bet on trust over control. Talent is going to be scarce in the coming years, and the companies that capture and retain it will be those that provide their employees with higher levels of autonomy and empowerment.

5. Obsessed with the client

Forward-thinking organizations live 24x7 to anticipate and satisfy the needs of the company's collaborators. This is not so new. What it is, is having the focus also on the company's customers. It aggressively seeks to improve the customer experience through the innovative use of technology.

6. Disruptive

Forward-thinking organizations constantly challenge the status quo and work to incorporate disruptive technology-based innovation into the organization. The disruptive company explores the future while exploiting the present, excelling in both innovation and execution, transcending current business models and industry boundaries.

7. Connected

Forward-thinking organizations are intensely connected inside and outside the business, capitalizing on those relationships and using them to add value. Blue organizations are living, complex organizations made up of collaborators with a high level of autonomy, who connect with each other to create value collaboratively. They are organizations with high levels of internal energy, permanently oriented to the creation of value through permanent connection and alignment with their clients. Connected organizations engage in networks with customers, partners, and even competitors, to cooperatively create new opportunities. These organizations interact with customers and influencers through digital platforms.

8. Responsive

Finally, Forward-thinking organizations permanently listen to what is happening in the internal and external environment, to detect weak signs of change and respond quickly with adapted and aligned changes. They are organizations that have agility in their blood. That they continually listen, at all levels of the organization, to weak signals of change in the competitive environment, amplify them and analyze them to take proactive action. Responsive companies are non-conformists, they do not accept the status quo of the sector and seek to improve their competitive position with new value propositions adapted to changes in customers and technology. Responsive companies respond to customer requests agilely and quickly, even anticipating those requests thanks to their active listening processes.