If you want to thrive as a leader, grow your business, or leave a legacy … you have to first recognise that tomorrow will not be a continuation of today. Not remotely. Exponential shifts in technology will change the job landscape forever. Continued disruption and uncertainty demand new thinking about organisation design. A new generation entering the workplace redefines past assumptions about what it means to be a leader.
Will your organisation stand proudly amongst the winners? To even stay in the game you will almost certainly have to:
1) Be unwavering in meeting your commitments to the capital markets.
2) Make organisation culture the centrepiece of your approach to competitive advantage.
3) Develop the capacity to create tomorrow, today.
4) Fully engage those in the middle of the organisation.
5) Make your organisation values come to life in everything you do.
6) Consistently change (learn) faster than the competition.
7) Find ways to unlock the innovative talent both inside and outside (e.g., crowdsourcing) of the business.
No doubt your organisation has faced significant challenges in the past. Take it as a given, those difficulties were merely the hors d'oeuvres. The main course is coming up. Moreover, if you are not working to reinvent yourself the market/competition will (painfully) do it for you.
It's all-too-easy to push concerns about the future to one side. In 1907 that's what a buggy-whip maker in Detroit did. "That damn fangled Ford machine ain't going to affect us much."
A hundred years later, it's why a driver in New York spent a million dollars buying a taxi medallion (owning his own cab). "I now have security for life!"
It's what Nokia did. "We've got a really great phone; let's move production to China in order that we can make it cheaper."
It's what BlackBerry did. "Why would anyone want a camera in their phone?"
It's what Kodak did. "Photography will always be about chemical processing." To make matters worse, Kodak actually invented digital photography.
These businesses were run by really smart people. Unfortunately, if you drive the bus by constantly looking out the back window a crash is guaranteed. In the meantime, "Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress." Alfred A. Montapert.
Insights from "The 4th Industrial Revolution".
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