We urgently need to totally change the way we think about every aspect of business. Everything we know, will soon no longer apply. Whether it be leadership, corporate culture and community citizenship, management, marketing and advertising or customer communication and service, we need to be able to manage extraordinary change.
The worlds leading thinkers, Singularity University in Silicon Valley, estimate that in the last 10 years we have advanced just 1% of the technology revolution, in the next 15 years we will move the next 99%.
That means that in just 10 years, we will be exposed to 2048 times more information every day than we are getting today. In just 5 years there will be over 5000 new apps every day, the overwhelming majority to facilitate various aspects of business.
Leadership…
Increasingly, leaders will have to be a visionary, inspiring the market and employees. Investor demands will change from steady management and incremental change to transformational, disruptive and dramatic change. Cloud technology will interconnect everyone, from management to employees, to investors and suppliers, transparently and faster in all directions. It is likely that CEOs will be more like the visionary inspiring leaders of Jobs and Musk than business managers like Jack Welch with the traditional CEO role being carried out by the COO. Leadership will change from protecting status quo to extending innovation capabilities.
Leaders will be challenged by;
- Information intelligence not information management
- Platforms to enable new value chains and integrated ecosystems not IT systems management
- Business transformation and accelerated growth not cost management
Millennials will move into positions of authority changing the values of the corporation and transforming the whole attitude toward life-work balance with the emphasis on life first. Organizations lifespans will be reduced from 45 years to 10 years.
Corporate Culture and Community Citizenship is key
Research has shown the rapidly increasing importance of the Triple Bottom Line as the community becomes increasingly aware of, and concerned about, not only the environment but also the concept of assisting those less fortunate. The triple bottom line is the concept of not only generating financial returns but also simultaneously creating social and environmental returns.
In order to attract the top employees, investors, and generate sales from consumers, companies are having to increasingly take into account their complete impact on society and the environment, not just their impact on the economy. Businesses will have to assume responsibilities that go well beyond the scope of simple commercial relationships.
Ivan Kaye - Leaders will have to have "big visions" because if they want to keep their best staff they need to inspire, enthuse and engage.
millenials just want to have fun!!!
Good corporate citizenship will increasingly provide substantial business benefits in eight areas;
- Reputation management…the percentage of companies value derived from intangible assets increased from 17% in 1981 to 89% in 2011 and will continue to increase
- Risk profile and risk management…investment in environmental management will substantially reduce a firm's perceived risk and increase stock price from 5% to 25%.
- Employee recruitment, motivation, and retention… In 2013, 56%, and predicted to rise rapidly, of employees take into account a company's ethics when deciding to take, or remain in a job, increasingly critical in high skill talent shortage (Ivan Kaye - Tim Draper says that entrepreneurs need to have that big idea- that vision - that why - to engage, enthuse and inspire not only their investors, but also their best and brightest people - because engineers just wanna have fun! )
- Investor relations and access to capital…corporate focus on environmental and social criteria now acetter financial performance than companies without such focus. This will become increasingly important.
- Learning and innovation…corporate citizenship objectives encourage creativity and innovation and continuous learning, which leads to bottom line benefits. (Ivan Kaye comment:- Heather Mcgowan talks about the importance of continuance learning and learning agility to ensure the longevity of an organisation. (BBG - beyond the future of work)
- Competitiveness and market position…research clearly shows that a rapidly increasing, and now a majority of consumers, form their impression of a company on the basis of its corporate citizenship practices rather than on brand reputation or financial factors.
- Operational efficiency…reducing material use and waste saves money, as well as reducing the environmental impact which leads to direct improvements on the bottom line
- License to operate…companies with a good reputation for corporate citizenship will increasingly fare much better in the face of labor or environmental issues.
The opening line of this newsletter said it all…We urgently need to totally change the way we think about every aspect of our business - and start focussing on the why!
Just when I discovered the meaning of business, they changed it.
Bob Pritchard