The Reinvention Roller Coaster: Managing the present from the future [video+article]

1. Incremental change is not enough for many companies today. These companies need to re-invent themselves. Re-invention is not changing what is, but creating what isn’t. A butterfly is not more or a better caterpillar, it is a completely different animal.
2. “When a company reinvents itself, it must alter the underlying assumptions and invisible premises on which its decisions and actions are based.” In other words, it must change its context.
   1. The first step is for a company to uncover its hidden context. A company is only going to do this when it is threatened, losing momentum or eager to break new ground.
   2. “The journey to reinvent yourself and your company is not as scary as they say it is; it’s worse,” says Mort Meyerson, chairman of Perot Systems. You do it only out of the conviction that the only way to compete in the future is to be a totally different company.
   3. Shifts in context can only occur when there is a shift in being. Nordstrom’s is used as an example. Their way of being is summarized as “Respond to Unreasonable Customer Requests.” Those that have tried to copy Nordstrom’s have not understood their fundamental way of being and have failed.
   4. A declaration from a leader, like Sir Colin Marshall’s pronouncement that British Airways would be “the world’s favorite airline” (when, at the time, it was one of the worst), does a couple of things:
      1. Creates possibility
      2. Stimulates interest and commitment
   5. A declaration is different from a vision statement, which provides a more elaborate description of the desired state and the criteria against which success will be measured.
   6. Key to re-invention is the re-invention of the leader (see Goss notes).
3. Managing the present from the future
   1. Assemble a critical mass of key stakeholders.
      1. Many more than just the top 8 to 10 leaders.
      2. Should include key technologists and leading process engineers.
      3. Group should be sufficiently diverse to ensure conflict, which will get issues on the table so they can be resolved.
      4. Have to decide how it’s going to happen.
   2. Do an organizational audit to generate a complete picture of how the organization really works.
      1. Understand the competitive situation.
      2. Reveal barriers to moving from “as is” to the future.
      3. Core values.
      4. Key systems.
      5. Strategic assumptions.
      6. Core competencies, etc.
   3. Create urgency. Discuss the undiscussable.
      1. A threat that everyone perceives, but no one is willing to talk about, is most debilitating to an organization
      2. Book of Five Rings Japanese guide for samurai warriors. Written four centuries ago, directs the samurai to visualize his own death in the most graphic detail before going into battle. Idea being, once you have experienced death, there is not a lot left to fear: one can then fight with abandon.
      3. This helps explain the value of discussion about not changing and the dire consequences to a company in a difficult business situation.
   4. Harnessing contention.
      1. Conflict jump-starts the creative process.
      2. Most companies suppress contention.
      3. Control kills invention, learning and commitment.
      4. Emotions often accompany creative tension, and they are often unpleasant.
      5. Intel plays rugby; your ability at Intel to take direct, hard-hitting disagreement is a sign of fitness.
      6. Many excellent companies build conflict into their designs.
   5. Engineering organizational breakdowns.
      1. Breakdowns should happen by design, not accident.
      2. In trying to manage back from the future, concrete tasks will have to be undertaken; continuing on the current path will not get you there. Often you don’t know how to make these tasks occur. This will generate breakdowns, which can generate out-of-the-box thinking and solutions, if the situation is managed/lead correctly. Continuous open dialogue is key to working through breakdowns.
      3. Setting impossible deadlines is another way to encourage breakdowns and out-of-the-box thinking.

 Thinking Ahead Insights: Managing the present from the future