At the KIN Global event this year held in Evanston, Illinois May 30 – June 1, I was asked to participate on a panel whose topic was “Transforming the Future”. Members of the panel included me, Betsy Holden, former CEO Kraft Foods, Howard Tullman, founder/CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, and Julio Ottino, the Dean of the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. The four of us were asked to give our thoughts on how business leaders should lead their organizations into a future world vastly different than today’s.
With the advent of technological advances made in the late 20th century, the future is coming at us at a lightning pace. In addition to technology, changes in age demographics, the shift of world population centers, the rise of the middle class, and movements in the geopolitical fault lines call for corporate leadership to not only embrace, but drive change in their organizations. However, history tells us that in 25 years the corporate landscape will be dramatically different with many of today’s household corporate names falling off the radar, displaced by companies yet unknown.
In order to be one of the successful survivors, corporate leaders must go beyond just knowing how the world is going to be different. There are behavior changes that need to take place – most of them very uncomfortable, which is why large and successful companies often fall by the wayside. The reality is that with size and scale comes entrenchment of behaviors. Policies initially designed to ensure performance and stability end up creating cultures that are immune to change and unfriendly toward innovation.
Large corporations live in very small worlds. The problem is that there is too much similarity in people who run large global corporations. They are educated in similar institutions, follow well-trodden career paths, advised by the same handful of consultants, and spend their time reading the same publications. They attend industry events that feel more like a reunion than a place to meet new people. Driven by Wall Street demands, most meeting agendas are about quarterly performance against well-established metrics and less so about changing dynamic of the marketplace or emergence of new competitors.
So if you find yourself on the leadership team of one of these corporations, here are some things you might consider doing to increase the likelihood that your organization is prepared to meet the very different world approaching:
Skip the industry conference, and go to something different this year. Trust me…. they might miss you, but they won’t forget you’re there. Instead of spending two days with people you see every year talking about the things that you could talk about any day if you picked up the phone and called them, spend three days attending a totally different conference meeting people you’ve never met before. Rather than simply making a keynote address and then leaving, I’m suggesting that you immerse yourself with a totally different group of people who are thinking about different things. Don’t worry about the relevance – you’ll find it.
Talk to and learn from people between the ages of 25 and 35. The older you get, the more foreign this will seem. But if you want to know about the future, realize that they have a much greater vested interest in it than you do. Understand their motivations, how they live, how they purchase. You don’t need to agree with it, but failure to understand will result in the ultimate failure of your company.
Create partnerships with entrepreneurs. The source of most innovation comes from these people. By definition, entrepreneurs are in business because they believe there is unmet demand. They are agile, willing to take risk, and often driven by a personal mission. They are not constrained by organizational structure or policies. They are everything corporate leaders are generally not. They will force you to think and act differently.
You get my drift. In an earlier blog, I wrote about the importance of getting out of your comfort zone. This is more of the same message, but driven by a specific purpose. Failure to do so will result in an inability to meet a future that feels vastly different than your next Monday morning.
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