Shifting gears from BoT to BoF

Any business that is sitting pretty with their Business of Today (BoT) and being content with it is simply risking its existence. Inability to shift gears while in business is the same as not shifting gears while driving - you are guaranteed to be left behind. Since 2000, about 50% of Fortune 500 companies have gone bankrupt, acquired or ceased to exist. Same way 75% of today's S&P 500 will be replaced by 2027. So, the name of the game to survive in today's market is - shift gears and be ready for your Business of Future (BoF). 

At the core of it, the process of shifting from your BoT to BoF is a two step process:

1. Analyze your Today
2. Create your Tomorrow

Let's dive a bit deep into it. While analyzing the current state of the business, most people look at trends. I think the problem with focusing too much on trends is - you can't connect the dot while looking forward, you are always looking backward. Also, trends lack one very important aspect - creativity (innovation). Being Agile helps no doubt but, willingness to learn and change is a much more important attribute that has to go deep in the company's culture. While analyzing 'today' most companies make the mistake of doing a pure rationalization exercise - kind of a stock taking in a department store - they consider the customers, projects, services, processes, revenue numbers etc. Many companies tend to look at big charts and trend/predictive reports to track them too. These are good and essential elements to track for BoT, but the following in my view are more critical to understand and track:

• Risk taking capacity and the risk taking history of the company. If the risk appetite for the company is low, the future will have to look very different from a agile, high risk taking enterprise.
• History of Change management at the company. How easy or difficult is it to introduce change in the company? In the last few instances of introducing change - were they forced on the employees or they were willing to change and welcomed it?
• Reaction to unforeseen situations. How does the company leadership and the employees react to some unforeseen and adverse situation? This is critical because when you shift gears towards the BoF, there will be many such cases and it is important to know how the company and its people will react.
• Culture of the organization and it's core values. Again, in my view this is extremely important. In the journey towards BoF, there will be some difficult questions - should the company culture and core values remain the same or they need to change?

There are probably a few more and I would love to hear them. 

Once the present is (somewhat) understood, it is time to focus on the future. Companies need to create their tomorrow rather than waiting for it. The change needs to come from within rather than an external force of disruption or environmental shift - which in most cases is too late anyway. While creating the future, I feel the following are the topmost considerations:

• Innovate - Ideate - Iterate. Bringing a culture of innovation is the key. People at every level, every department should innovate - this can’t be a top-down activity, this can’t be even measured correctly. Encouraging unstructured discussions, impromptu brainstorming sessions is a good sign. That followed up by an innovation lab should go a long way.
• Get over the 'Glory days'. Just because a business has survived for 30 years or seen thru 3 depressions does not mean it will outlast the oncoming AI/ML onslaught. Startups with available VC funds are waiting for elephant hunting and will disrupt any incumbent. The biggest risk for a better future for a company is to get caught in the past glory.
• Collaborate with the ecosystem of the future. With business being affected by ML/AI and multiple types of platform models, any traditional business will be at risk in the future. At the same time - it will never be possible to do everything on your own (that costs money). The best strategy is to create a ecosystem of partners, forget the ego, join hands with a small AI company that can save you a few percentage points in the supply chain.
• Lastly, Reskill and motivate your people. In my view however smart AI or ML becomes, in the BoF your employees will still be in the driver seat - so, it is important that they know how to steer the ship.

You must have seen Dell's Ad on being future ready with their line of hardware and cloud services - in reality it is not about the infrastructure or the cloud, it's about what goes to the cloud and who uses the infrastructure.