Lessons Learned from Peter High's Book: Getting to Nimble (Part 1)

In reviewing Chapter One of Peter High’s book, Getting to Nimble, I am reminded of the companies that mastered their digital transformations well before Covid appeared. A few that come to mind:

• Walmart?
• Frito Lay
• Domino’s?
• The Wall Street Journal

It appears that history tends to repeat itself and perhaps we can learn from this. A few lessons we can learn from Frito Lay former CIO Charlie Feld:?

• Charlie Feld was brilliant with his company strategy, providing hand-held devices for salespeople in the field. This was well before anyone else.?
• Charlie hired "rock star" young talent. Many of these rock star young employees back in the day at Frito Lay, are now CIO leaders.?
• Charlie also created and maintained a great culture. Culture seems to be so easy, but it truly is a “talent” for leaders that can do this successfully.?
• Charlie’s team was technically ahead of the rest. This was way back in the ’80s and ’90s!

On the other hand, Kodak and Circuit City were two companies that weren’t so successful with transforming their companies. Circuit City was known for its customer experience. I remember visiting this store in high school and it was the “go-to” place for electronics ~ boomboxes were very popular! Along with big hair. This was way before you could buy electronics from so many other stores, and not even online.?

Peter High mentions lessons learned from Circuit City:

• They took their focus away from their priority main business. They opened new companies and became less focused on their leading company, Circuit City.?
• They took their eye off their customer service, which was their sweet spot.?
• Best Buy swooped in with their Geek Squad and this became a household name. Everyone knew about the Geek Squad! I think I even remember a few friends in college who dressed up as the Geek Squad for Halloween.?
• ?They let go of their top talent trying to recover from the decline in sales. This was Circuit City’s “sweet spot” and removing it crushed the company.?

Kodak, as I mentioned previously, was another company that failed to successfully change.?

• Kodak “owned the market” in the photography space.?
• They became complacent.?
• Kodak failed to be nimble and missed the mark in moving to digital quickly.
• In 2012, the 131-year-old company filed for bankruptcy.?

Companies today are going through the same threat with Amazon’s powerful digital shopping experience deeply driven by data. It’s a bit creepy that Amazon can know what you are looking for before even you know! That is powerful data analytics!?

As Peter High mentions, you can see the importance of

• Renewal
• Modernizing
• Accepting change
• Not resting on the laurels of the past

The companies in the past that succeeded with their transformations, focused on modernizing people practices, processes, and technologies. I can think today of companies that have done very well with this and some not so well. We all have experiences where we think this could be done better! No one likes to wait on a website that is loading or crashing, or technical problems at a store. We move on. We are an impatient society! The generation below us is even more impatient.

?One thing that you can say about the Pandemic, digital strategy efforts to modernize and transform business have never been so important. So how do you be certain you make the right choices? I will take a deep dive into this with my next review on Chapter two of Getting to Nimble, by Peter High.?