It is a reality of the business that change must be slow, focused, highly documented, and easily replicated to please these customers. From that standpoint, the organizational culture is defining the pace of innovation (Valencia, Valle, Jimenez, 2010). The pace of change is relatively slow as the customers demand a thoroughness to their applications and resist rapid, volatile change. Assess yourself- regardless of your role in your organization, you are essential to any strategic planning process (be it planning, implementation or evaluation). How would YOU personally respond to change?

As my role in the organization centers on the planning process, the goal is to be more Kaizen focused and less seismic. Yet given how rapidly the enterprise software market is changing, it is critically important to be agile, focused on future opportunities and push the organization forward. So while the culture dictates my role support the Quantum Peeper approach, there must be initiative to push the company forward over the long-term. The organizational culture defines a slow and steady focus on growth, yet to keep the momentum going forward, there must be a constant focus on learning and continual growth (Valencia, Valle, Jimenez, 2010). This focus needs to be on continually learning more and staying in front of the technology adoption curve. It takes balance to respect the culture of the company yet also push for adoption of new approaches to ensure it stay relevant in the coming decades.

Second, plan how to change in small, incremental steps every day, taking a kaizen approach to continual improvement over time. Third, stay focused on continual learning and improvement because knowledge will win out in the end over seniority or politics in any organization. Fourth, strive for ethical behavior because the world is becoming much more transparent due to communication technologies.
References

John Bessant, Sarah Caffyn, & Maeve Gallagher. (2001). An evolutionary model of continuous improvement behaviour. Technovation, 21(2), 67-77.

Farris, J., Van Aken, E., Doolen, T., & Worley, J.. (1 January 2009). Longitudinal Analysis of Kaizen Event Effectiveness. IIE Annual Conference. Proceedings,1-7.

Julia C. Naranjo Valencia, Raquel Sanz Valle, & Daniel Jimenez. (2010). Organizational culture as determinant of product innovation. European Journal of Innovation Management, 13(4), 466-480.

Vlaanderen, K., Jansen, S., Brinkkemper, S., & Jaspers, E.. (2011). The agile requirements refinery: Applying SCRUM principles to software product management. Information and Software Technology, 53(1),…