Do you want results . . . or are you satisfied with excuses?
The barrier to irresistible growth is not the unstoppable,
uncontrollable external change, but fixed (and frequently
unexamined) ideas of how to respond to those changes.
John Kenneth Galbraith, the late economist, noted that "The
enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march
of events." And the tide of expected future change in our
society is now rapid and breathtaking to most -- whether we
consider irresistible forces like the advent of the
Knowledge Age (with knowledge doubling in many fields
within a few years, months, or even days), the electronic
improvements in communication choices (the potential number
of ways for you to receive or send a message will continue
to grow rapidly for many more years), shifts in work
activities (from routine fulfilling of standard tasks to
Peter Drucker's knowledge work) and stability (as a result
of down-sizing and a "free agent" work force),
demographic-driven social changes (ever older populations
in the developed countries and ever younger ones everywhere
else), weather volatility (both in temperatures and
storms), the movements of currencies and markets, social
mores of the moment (fads get shorter and shorter), or
personal styles of the young (differentiating from older
teenagers, not just from adults).
There is no doubt that today the world has become much more
complicated and interconnected. For businesses,
globalization means that the number and distance of
customers, suppliers and competitors have grown
geometrically. Such interconnectedness also means that what
affects one can quickly spread and affect all, like the
rapid expansions of computer and human viruses. These
connections mean that economic and financial adjustments,
especially in prices and currency values, travel faster and
further than before. Your irresistible growth enterprise
must be agile in adapting to these changes. I believe that
making rapid and best use of sudden changes in powerful
conditions no one can control is the key to becoming an
irresistible growth enterprise.
When asked in the 1950s about how much control they had
over their business's success, U.S. CEOs felt they had a
great deal. By the start of the 1990s, CEOs often felt that
irresistible forces had more impact on the company's
success then the employees did.
We only have to look at charts measuring events over the
last 100 years to see that the volatility of many
irresistible forces is also growing. In the last 30 years
alone, this volatility has included an unprecedented
success by a commodity cartel (the Arab oil embargo), the
fall of a major government type around the world
(communism), stock prices have experienced unprecedented
growth in the United States and many other countries,
interest rates have fluctuated from over 20 percent to as
low as 2 percent in North America (and more widely
elsewhere), and the advent of the service economy (of
stores and local brokerage offices) was diverted into
creating an information-based economy.
As these examples suggest, the degree and speed of change
are both accelerating. At one time, corporate leaders could
conduct leisurely studies of such changing phenomena after
they began to occur, thoughtfully select the right actions,
and then experiment with the best way to proceed. In many
cases, the time involved to deliberately study its choices
today costs a company its biggest opportunities, and can
even lead to failure.
Consider Barnes & Noble, the leader in physical book
stores. Before launching its electronic commerce business,
it decided to watch what happened with Amazon.com for a
while as it studied its options. By the time Barnes &
Noble was ready to act, Amazon.com had built a commanding
electronic lead that will be very difficult to overcome.
Naturally, it is nice to be able to find one trend and ride
it for a long time. The results can be wonderful.
McDonald's is one of very few companies that have had this
experience. The company's premise is based on customers'
desires for dependable, inexpensive food, served quickly
and effectively in convenient clean locations. From its
beginnings as a single hamburger stand in the 1930s in San
Bernardino, California, it has become a global giant today.
But even McDonald's had to learn eventually to adapt to the
irresistible force of consumer food preferences as it moved
beyond North America. The familiar hamburger, fries and
soft drink menu had to expand to offer curry in England and
a glass of wine in Paris.
Today's enterprises will find such long-term rides to be
the exception to the rule. Consider how Microsoft flirted
with disaster in the 1990s by missing the early
significance of providing software and services for the
Internet. Intel was originally a memory chip manufacturer,
and shifted into microprocessors as its primary business
somewhat by accident.
The world is full of shuttered stores that failed to meet
customer needs. Their boarded up windows are mute testimony
to the need to shift with the changing trends. Many of the
most significant irresistible forces (such as new
technologies, improved communications, the weather,
demographics, user preferences, and economic conditions)
have grown much more volatile and unpredictable in just the
past five to ten years. Analysts suggest that this trend
will accelerate due to the "chaos" effects of how a small
change in one place in the world can cause an enormous
change elsewhere.
Simply consider all of the changes that Jack Welch went
through to turn General Electric from a
slow-growing-industrial goods manufacturer into a financial
services powerhouse with high-margin manufacturing
specialties. Any one of these changes would have
overwhelmed most organizations, yet Welch succeeded with
several.
How well the company fares under Welch's successors will
reveal a lot about the difficulties of continuing as an
irresistible growth enterprise.
This multiplier effect will increasingly happen with all
irresistible forces, and this is the key insight upon which
you must act now. While most organizations will react to
such forces and their changes only when it is impossible
not to (out of self-preservation or fear), the irresistible
growth enterprise will see the creation of broad
unstoppable change, the accurate anticipation of such
changes, and the steady beneficial harnessing of such
changes to achieve its purposes as its primary tasks.
Are you ready?
Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an
Optimist, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The
Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for
accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .
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