The writer presents various examples and data-driven mechanism to welcome disruption and transformation
Business transformations always begin with failure. These could be a result of internal making or of a harsh business environment. However they are always born with the potential of being disruptive and transformative. A point of regeneration and re-growth.
Failure can be a stepping stone to rethink and rework on the path of transformative turnarounds and disruptive exponential growth. It is a time of rejuvenation and rethinking for the organisation on its strategies, vision and mission on an abstract level and of the competitive advantages, supply chain intricacies and efficiencies and re-workings on its SWOT analysis at the practical levels.
Analogies can be drawn from the game of cricket where strategies as game plans need to be constantly drawn and redrawn based on the situation on the ground level while chasing or building a large score. As wickets fall, batsmen rethink on the nature of the game, trying to stabilise the game or bring down the required run rate by going for the boundaries etc. The event horizon continuously keeps changing as strategies unfold and new perspectives come to light. The resources at hand are accounted for and optimised to develop a fresh competitive advantage which can sustain the winning position of the team.
Failures are known to bring out the best and worst nature from an organisation. It is said the rats jump out first from a sinking ship and the Captain or leader disembarks last. In other words, people who have lost the vision and cannot see any potential upside from the situation will give up first. Whereas, leaders with vision and determination will stand against the odds and try for a turnaround of the organisation. Failures need to be necessarily seen as an opportunity to reorient the organisation in a new and sustainable direction rather than as a personal or organisational weakness.
Managers need to be data-centric and decisive besides being well equipped with the tools and technologies to bring about transformative change in the organisation. They require training to see potential signals in the internal and external environment which could be causes of major disruptive events in the working environment of the industry. In today’s scenario, blockchain has the power of disrupting the entire system of organisational working – be it private or public sector. A faraway event like a model featuring on a magazine cover may be the signal of entire industries sitting on the edge of disruptive change as told by Dr.Phillipa Malmgren in her book Signals.
Signals are all around us. Be it a news item in a newspaper or an advertisement or a hoarding which we pass by everyday without taking notice. It could mean a lot to the thoughtful observer rather than the casual passerby. Linking of events, or so called joining the dots is an art that needs to be developed by the leader when leading an organisation or a country. Becoming a manufacturing house for the whole world was as vision of the Chinese leaders backed by low wages and a socialist society; wanting to emerge out of its slumber of decades of poverty and oppressive rule. It became a source of competitive advantage which made the Chinese economy second only to the American; and helped partially by the fall of the Soviet Union. Today, we are sitting on the back of another major turn of ideologies where leaders are turning inwards and becoming protectionist rather than the supporters of globalisation which opened up markets of the world economy to opportunities unfathomable to any metric.
Understanding transformations needs a deeper understanding of strategies and their formulation and as vehicles of transformative change. Henry Mintzberg postulated the 5Ps of strategy – plan, ploy, perspective, pattern and position. These are becoming more relevant than ever before as companies continue to lose identity and become the “me too” kind of organisations doing only what is popular and not what is right. Positioning itself with the right kind of strategic perspective as a plan is losing weight to seeking patterns in changing perspectives of the dynamic business environment. Michael Porter emphasises on the need to develop competitive advantage as a perfect combination of a perfect mix of business processes each highly important to the others rather than a single non-coherent activity which other competitors can easily copy and improve.
Finally, failure will no longer be seen as an end of line event, as more and more transformations and disruptions keep becoming the order of the day and as leaders become energised by being more thoughtful of using the event of failure as a means to transform and metamorphose organisations into something more beautiful and relevant in a way a worm turns into a beautiful butterfly
