What is the expected lifespan of your company—10, maybe 15 years? Used to be the average lifespan of an organization would be somewhere around 70 years. Not today.
The speed of innovation in technology, consumerization of IT, ease of duplicating and copying successful products [commoditization], and increasingly demanding consumers are creating opportunities for new products and business models as fast as they obsolete established ones.
In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
— Source Unknown (incorrectly attributed to Charles Darwin)
Where does that leave you? It appears Heraclitus of Ephesus was right, the only constant is change. And while in days past business survival hinged on strength and numbers making it today requires foresight, agility, and a willingness to adapt as market dynamics dictate. That means you better be informed, intuitive, and decisive or your business won’t make it past the crawling stage.
The nimble organization instinctively perceives, defines, and understands market dynamics. It is equal parts proactive and reactive and is fueled by a single-minded focus on consistently amazing those it serves. The nimble company is a thinking company. Its structure and operating mindset are devised by effectively melding futuristic ideas with imminent needs. Its selling story is coherent, simple, and cleverly contrived, communicating value in precise and easily understood terms.
Futurist author Daniel Burrus offers seven triggers for inspiring what he calls flash foresight in innovating, transforming, and adapting your organization to remain competitive and relevant:
- Start with certainty (use hard trends to see what’s coming).
- Anticipate (base your strategies on what you know about the future).
- Transform (use technology-driven change to your advantage).
- Take your biggest problem and skip it (it’s not the real problem anyway).
- Go opposite (look where no one else is looking to see what no one else is seeing and do what no one else is doing).
- Redefine and reinvent (identify and leverage your uniqueness in new and powerful ways).
- Direct your future (or someone else will direct it for you).
[see Flash Foresight, pp. xx and xxi]
MindMeld utilizes a business lifecycle planning model that helps you visualize and plan for the future while your optimize the present. If you would like to see how it works let me know.
About MindMeld: Our vision is that your business will grow, prosper, and make a positive and lasting impact on the world. We accomplish this by helping you discover and communicate the inherent value of your products and services and capitalize on that value in lasting, meaningful ways. To learn more please contact me at doug.knuth@mindmeldmarketing.com.