More than anything, this involves being able to navigate the tension of often competing priorities and different ways of thinking. On one hand there is a need to grow and be productive within the existing business model whilst also being innovative and hasty in identifying and adopting new business models.
Becoming an ambidextrous organisation, involves answering questions such how can my organisation be both strategic and meet current business requirements along with what kind of organisational and capability development path is needed to achieve same.
Being ambidextrous is also a cultural matter, for example it involves behavioural opposites such as controlling and monitoring plus trial and error, corporate scale and start up mentality, optimisation and creativity, cost and innovation.
O’Reilly & Tushman in 2004 described this balancing act as continuously making trade-offs to establish an equilibrium between the two sides of being both optimised and renewed. For leaders focussing on both steering and transformation, people and culture, structure and process as design principles to guide how the organisation thinks, feels, and behaves can provide structure to the balancing act.
