Upon the invention of the micro-chip in the Nineteen Fifties, companies experienced the equivalent of a small earthquake. Little did they know that the “faults,” just below the foundation of where these companies built their processes and products, had shifted and business would never be the same.
The global marketplace has experienced the equivalent of “after-shocks” with the invention of the personal computer and the Internet. The seismic activity within the global marketplace has created a tsunami of historic consequence for business. In no other time in human history have we seen that established businesses are now threatened by small and medium sized competitors.
Businesspeople are not recognizing the consequence that this earthquake and its aftershocks have created. Businesses don’t see the fault lines in the foundation upon which their own companies are built.
They don’t see that inflexible and bloated processes are thwarting the ambitions of owners and shareholders.
They aren’t seeing that it costs too much to engineer their products and services.
What they DO see is that their mind share, market share and profits are eroding.
They act by laying off employees because that always worked in the past. They act by focusing on beating the competition because it worked that way in the past. Sometimes they act by trying to bullshit the marketplace, because that used to work too.
Bourne out of the earthquake the micro-chip created, there is now a tsunami that is crashing down on the global marketplace. It is a tsunami caused by a computer-driven marketplace. When its done, many of the traditional brands and companies will either be weakened, or washed away. Instead of trying to find the “right” solution, I suggest businesses focus on the consequences of the various choices they face.
They can ignore what’s going on and continue to think and act as they have. This will not make the tsunami go away. The company will just live peacefully and weakly UNTIL the water crashes overhead.
They can batten down the hatches and reinforce spaces in their business where they are weak. They can’t prevent the tsunami from hitting but they can “hope” they survive. This will be very costly in time, energy and money. If they are wrong about any of the choices they’ve made in shoring up weakness I speculate they will suffer the same fate as the company that did nothing.
There are other options. One option I teach companies to do is to transform their business. Get on a surf board and ride the wave of computer-driven tools instead of getting hit by it.
Tomorrow, I’ll write specifically about how I help companies tranform.
