Formula for being Future Ready: Antenna and Agile
You are not the only one who wants to be future ready. There are tons of companies out there working only on this project - 'How to be future ready'. There is a billion dollar market just to coach corporate on how to be future ready. And till future is not here (well, this is a pun), there will be companies who will keep on making money of this wave and there will be companies who will spend budgets to be ready. In such times, when you are mid sized and tight on budget, what would be your strategy?
Develop Antennas and go Agile : Keep your radars on these companies. The way you watch the companies whose stocks you buy, keep a similar watch on their OD practices, their general announcements, the nature of their deals, the kind of jobs they are opening, profile of the people they are hiring, work with their hiring consultants etc. Keep sensing their movements. You don't have to be the first one, nor the second one, there will be settling time if you play it right. Once you see something is catching up, take appropriate steps in that direction. Though we do understand that it is very difficult to copy the practices and policies, the standardization, the talent that is needed takes years to mature, so it would not be a direct copy and paste. So here's where Agile comes handy. Don't build a full future strategy. That is for the big ones to take care of. You should do 2 things: 1. Observe the giants 2.Take small steps those are needed to solve and win the problems here and now & keep adapting. The mantra is : Train, Prototype, Test, Observe, Repeat (pause if need be), Automate. Just keep on training staff on important technologies, through hundreds of online training materials, just enough so that you stay in budget and you are not left behind.
Time to time, once something is really hot is making business, buy talents from the market. Invest in right people at appropriate time. It would be easy to identify whom to hire because all this while you were watching on different experts in the industry. Adjust process in Agile way. Move into future, sprint by sprint, prototype to prototype. When you have not invested a lot it is easier to throw of what is not working and trust on this, there will be a lot of throw away by the time the future is here. So be frugal in buying what you would possibly throw away in the course of time.