Off with your?head?

The Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a great example of industries that vanish while those in charge argue over trivia such as maintaining an upward revenue trajectory when the said revenue is in the process of vanishing like the aforementioned cat.

As Oscar Wilde wrote in The Decay of Lying — Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life — my job and business have vanished with the same propensity as the Cheshire Cat.

A recent study by McKinsey found that the average lifespan of companies listed in Standard & Poor’s 500 was 61 years in 1958. Today, it is less than 18 years. McKinsey believes that, in 2027, 75% of the companies currently quoted on the S&P 500 will have disappeared.

So how will you know the unknowable in relation to the imminent demise of your current business which may employ thousands or even tens of thousands of people?

In my career, I have seen many public companies I have worked for disappear

· 1980s — Mini Computers and Line Printers — these companies disappeared completely (Digital Equipment Corporation, DataProducts Corporation)

· 1990s — Personal Computers — commoditisation drove legacy and inefficient businesses out of the market (IBM, Gateway)

· 2000s — Communications Service Providers — twenty years ago regulators licensed 3rd operators in each market to drive competition and customer value — this worked but will not work in the future when global connectivity at a fixed price with E-sim will dominate

It was impossible for me to accept that my company — Gateway Computers, with 20k staff could vanish in a year — but it did.

My recipe for survival is simple — you should work to live and not vice versa.

I always see my role as one of adding measurable value and striving to be indispensable — this provides maximum freedom in my current role while preparing for the next.

This allows you the freedom to assess the strategy and direction of your current business and evaluate the probable success of the same.

Specifically — in Gateway Computers, I managed all product implementation in EMEA and APAC. I had five PCs at home — always the latest models, in 1998 when I asked my children if they wanted to upgrade to a new model — they refused and said that last year's models were “good enough”. I knew the strategy of assuming customers would want the faster, cooler new model every other year would fail — it did and the company vanished in 2001.

In the cellular markets at the end of the 1990s regulators licensed 3rd entrants in global markets to break duopolies and deliver improved value and services to end users — It worked, prices went down and usage exploded.

Every operator showed their investors upward trending curves showing incremental Value Added Services (VAS) revenues which were met as 2g, 3g & 4g data revenues rose — until they stopped around 2005.

Between 2005 and now data consumption grew exponentially and investment costs in new technologies matched this growth in an example “running faster to stand still” effect.

Throughout the last 30 years, I have had to leverage technology and process efficiency savings to mask the real social engineering changes which were achieved by building high-performing teams. This was because nobody believed in generating incremental value through people — rather foolish, but personally beneficial as these team members provided me with ongoing support in all new ventures which made their and my lives easier.

Now we are again at a revolutionary crossroads where FAANG companies are set to dominate global commerce. The current Communications Service Providers (CSPs) will be relegated to supplying Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS). This perspective is aggressively resisted by incumbents because hundreds of thousands of staff will lose their jobs.

I was treated with similar opprobrium when I indicated that VAS services would not be an exponential growth driver forever, as the global local phone call will become the norm — it did, look at WhatsApp.

Now we are faced with a similar change, because of inertia the smaller enterprises will change first — this is happening with cellular tower sales and edge services outsourcing.

When this accelerates there will be resistance to change — Digital Organisation Transformation (DOT) will accelerate, and those who are procrastinating and are unsure how to start will fail first.

Transformation will be a challenge, but all industries commoditise and evolve as stronger or become extinct — survival of the fittest as Darwin theorised.

The likely winners will be the companies who also aggressively adopt Diversity and Inclusion strategies effectively.

Are your business leaders squabbling like the King and Queen with the executioner who complains that he cannot cut off the head of the cat with nobody?

Change will challenge all companies, but those whose employees see change as an opportunity, rather than a threat, will survive and thrive.

Don’t be the smile on the Cheshire Cat — be the change.