Vision is both a blessing and a burden. In rapidly changing times,
it becomes harder to convince others that what you see is true and to persuade
them to follow you.
Faced with this tough task, what can you do to anticipate and respond
effectively to change? We have devised four thinking techniques to prepare your
mind and liberate you from the assumptions, fears, prejudices, prejudgments, and
yearnings that prevent you from seeing as far and as clearly as you need to do.
1. Looking through alien eyes. People who know so much about a subject that they can’t see anything new about it suffer from educated incapacity.
They need to shed the knowledge that renders them incapable of change. One effective
tool is to look at things as if you were an alien from another planet, seeing
them for the first time.
For example, in financial services men have always been seen as economically
more important than women, so products were designed and marketed to both men
and women from that perspective. But an alien would see that women face profoundly
different sets of risks and needs and would create products based on that understanding.
2. Trend/countertrend. Every trend creates its opposite, or countertrend. Countertrends don’t happen despite trends; they happen because of them.
For example, some observers believe that over the past 200 years there has been
a gradual decline in the sense of community. Universally, dislocation of people
(forced or voluntary), regionalization, and globalization have marched relentlessly
across the face of the globe. The growing percentage of singles in the world may
also indicate a change in the traditional notion of community, which was built
around marriage and family life. However, one striking countertrend is the commercialization
of community. To create as well as capitalize on the countertrend, entrepreneurs,
designers, professionals, and marketers are turning community into an emerging
consumer durable-goods category. New businesses, such as the Institute for Community
Design Analysis, help towns and cities reformat themselves into communities that
focus on lowering crime rates and reducing traffic by using walls, lighting, fencing,
and shrubbery to manufacture a safe community. New towns, such as Disney's Celebration,
are constructed to mimic nostalgic versions of community. For those whose need
for community is not based in geography, cyberspace is creating opportunities
for human relationships, status, and sexual contact.
Both trend and countertrend present opportunities. You want to ask
how your assets and competencies can be used to your advantage in either direction.
Creating or riding countertrends makes money. Ignoring them means missing the
opportunity.
3. Entropy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that as systems
become more complex, the energy in them dissipates over time, leading to a disordered
state that requires more energy to control than the energy originally invested.
This is entropy.
Benchmarking—identifying the best practices and the companies
that embody them—is a case in point. One company does something spectacular.
Other companies try to emulate the success by studying the process and grafting
it onto their operations. But because it didn’t spring up in the acquiring
company, much energy must be expended to maintain and support the adopted practice.
Eventually, the effort begins to stagger under its own weight, and it takes more
energy to keep it going than it did to adopt it.
Your future will be shaped by how well you counter entropy, which
can happen when you reach the point where your rules and procedures become more
important to you than your customers and employees. Entrepreneurialism and competition
thrive as older systems fall victim to systems harnessing new energy.
As a leader, you must give up many sacred cows and start over, to
pick your fights more wisely. The power of your opinions dissipates when you fight
or complain too much. Focus on what is really important, and try to fix that.
You need to lose your fear of experimenting, particularly with less significant
things. And you must give up relying solely on the best practices of others. The
energy required to maintain ideas that don't necessarily fit comfortably with
you may eventually be more than the energy it took to copy them. Usually it is
better to look to your own strengths and innovate accordingly.
4. Right-of-way. The railroads’ big mistake was not realizing
that they were in the right-of-way business. When the telegraph and telephone
companies and mail deliverers came along and received permission to use the land
alongside the tracks, the railroads missed the opportunity to own and profit from
the entire communications business.
Amazon.com looks not necessarily at the customer but at the customer's
shelves. What other things, the company asks itself, does the customer need on
those shelves? Why shouldn't we, already having access to the customer, be the
one to supply those things? This is recognition that access to the customers—right-of-way—may
well be the most valuable asset you can have. Movie theater operators know that
they have an opportunity to sell other things to their customers. Snacks are sold
at elevated prices to a captive audience. Most movie theater profit comes from
selling food and beverages.
Your potential rights-of-way include your customers, constituency,
or clients—who else wants access to them? Your real estate—to whom
can you sublease, or co-market products or services with on-site, as supermarkets
have done with pharmacies and banks? Your suppliers—what can you do that
is valuable to them in expanding their client base and that you can charge for?
Your advertising—whose logo or message can you profitably share your space
with, as co-branding has allowed some companies to do?
These four thinking techniques provide you with a new basis for self-motivation.
Any break from the past is threatening to most people, but you can minimize that
fear and see, accept, and act enthusiastically on new and exciting visions for
the future. PE
