Radically Rethinking your Business for Future Success

The word “change” can make us feel uncomfortable. Think about that old pair of comfy slippers versus a new pair. Chances are you would instinctively choose the ones you know fit like a glove rather than the new ones that you have to wear in! Globally businesses are seeing unprecedented change as the world is undergoing a health and financial crisis with COVID- 19, but change can lead to greater innovation and creativity.

According to a 2019 PWC Survey 42% of businesses said they were better off after a corporate crisis. PWC listed the top three corporate crises as financial/liquidity (23%), technology failure (23%), and operations failure (20%). A new Forrester report "Returning To Work: How To Prepare For Pandemic Recovery,” emphasises that leveraging digital will be imperative to pivot to new opportunities.

Organisations across every industry are transforming by harnessing digital tools to navigate an uncertain landscape. One example is the Coca-Cola Company  which employs over 700,000 people in 200 countries. They are standardising business operations on the cloud to modernize how they engage with employees and customers. Building on the goal of empowering employees with a networked way to access information and support, Coca-Cola Company has expanded beyond a chat interface and designed a compelling and comprehensive app-based experience available on employee mobile devices.

And it’s not just within companies, Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative and author of 20 books including ‘Think Outside the Building’ believes the leadership of the future is the ability to think outside the building , focusing on bold and imaginative thinking and creating cross-sector coalitions overcoming siloed thinking to drive societal change for a better world. Think about complex supply chains and the need to work together to drive end to end thinking and action to support those who are not well-resourced.

Many organisations are having to move at a rapid pace to prepare to build for the future. Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, one of the largest premium wine companies in the United States employing over 10,000 people, has taken numerous precautions to minimize risk and transformed business processes to serve its customers. This includes supporting employees to work remotely and ensure IT systems meet new critical needs, in addition to shutting down one facility and moving it to another location. Their business has transformed from 90% face to face and 10% online to now almost fully online sales which also meant completely changing their distribution model within hours which they have done seamlessly.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft recently said “It is in times of great disruption and uncertainty that our ability to stay grounded in our sense of purpose and remain true to our identity is of the utmost importance.”

Change is inevitable, no more so than today. Some people possess a natural ability to adapt to change, to connect, be knowledgeable and to enlist others. Malcolm Gladwell describes this in his book The Tipping Point. In any change, identifying those people who are the inveterate networkers who connect people to other influential people, those who are experts (he calls them “mavens”) and have a role in convincing others and the sales people who persuade others, convert followers and help to create a movement. For any organisational change, finding those people and making sure they are enlisted in helping you to create a movement for change is essential. 

For a business change, driven by technology, finding those people, those who possess a mix of business and technology skills is fundamentally important. Wayne Eckerson @weckerson was one of the first people to highlight such skills and refers to them as ‘Purple People’. Able to speak the language of both business and technology, they will serve as translators between those worlds.

McKinsey states that Change agents provide both the technical know-how and the social support needed by managers and front-line teams alike as they learn and adopt new lean practices. Change agents fix problems too: usually recruited from within the organisation, they can use their knowledge and contacts to detect and diffuse political issues that might otherwise threaten to derail transformation efforts.

My own view is that the future won’t be ‘business as usual’, but I believe it will foster creativity innovation, reinvention, and ingenuity. It is a time to embrace change and encourage and empower the change agents within your organisation to help transform the business. The comfy slippers may be gone but the new shoes will enable you to take the long road ahead!