Question

As part of a discussion of a proposed major restructuring, you point out that major change attempts work best when there is a “burning platform" (i.e. a great sense of urgency to change). Your boss disagrees, saying, “That’s motivating with fear. We need to change before the platform is on fire.” Take a position for or against your boss’s argument.

Answer 1

I extremely support my boss argument about the burning platform of change. There several reasons to tell why a burning platform is bad for a change. They are explained as below:

a) It is too late to recognize that change is essential and to implement it: The trends of threats and opportunities for a company pile up from long past and to eradicate them at the time of burning platform is too hard as the situation results in out of control stage. At this stage, competitors will be moving ahead and the company will be still struggling to recognize opportunities to implement the change.

b) Results in deeper performance dip: A company will rise to a burning platform situation indicating that there are some urgent issues related to the performance have to be resolved strategically and this pressured situation deviates the concentration to take decisions effectively regarding many other performance demand issues like strategic planning, pricing, competitor strategies etc. So, the organization will suffer more at this stage due to the performance dip of authorities at many levels of the hierarchy of the company.

c) Piles up stress among employees: An urgent resolution stage of the burning platform will never motivate an employee to use his skills but instead builds stress levels among employees and make them resistance towards the upcoming change. This triggers a negative environment at the workplace leading to fighting, flight or freeze mode among the employees

d) Many opportunities to implement best solutions will be missed: Best solutions or opportunities require sufficient time to make a deeper analysis for implementing them. Lack of time and increasing stress levels will kill the creative thinking of the employees and will also inhibit collaborative teamwork, leading to unforeseen the real problems and opportunities at the workplace to implement

e) Many initiatives fail: With employees in the mode of fight or freeze, they don't use their capabilities efficiently to implement the solutions, which result in failure of all initiations taken by the company to resolve the crisis situation.

Example: Nokia is the best example to tell that burning platforms cannot save companies. Nokia is once the king of mobile phones and it hasn't been well prepared to handle the smartphone revolution created by Android phones previously, which collapsed Nokia massively. Still, it is struggling to find its future in the competitive markets ruled by iPhone and Android phones, irrespective of many initiatives taken by it.

So, I agree with my boss words that "That’s motivating with fear. We need to change before the platform is on fire.”

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