Perfect
balance plays an important role behind the success of any organization and it
is the prerogative of every leader to strike the right balance. The world is
always going through continual changes but the acceleration of change has
increased noticeably in the recent years. Many businesses became irrelevant
because they couldn’t cope with the rapid changes. Hence there is dire need for
organizations to re-organize, re-invent and restructure themselves to be the
best or to compete with the best. This fast-moving world has become highly
impatient, which is evident from the various business decisions being taken.
The impatience does not allow a business to properly analyze the cause and the
effects and re-invent does not necessarily mean overhaul. The already existing
and well performing strategies need continuous evolution. The most critical
question is at which point should the leader strike the right balance? Or is
there even a point at which business leaders should strive to choose between
re-inventing everything vs. perfecting the existing processes?
Below were
the sub-themes for the seminars:
The biology of corporate survival:
Companies
operate in an increasingly complex world; business environments are more
diverse, dynamic, and interconnected than ever—and far less predictable. Yet
many firms still pursue classic approaches to strategy that were designed for
more-stable times, emphasizing on analysis and planning, focused on maximizing
short-term performance rather than long-term robustness. The future of
corporate survival is determined by how effectively new strategies are devised
and implemented. To measure the effectiveness of this survival strategy, the
longevity of more than 30,000 public firms in the United States over a 50-year
span were investigated. The results are stark: Businesses are disappearing
faster than ever before. Public companies have a one in three chance of being delisted
in the next five years, whether because of bankruptcy, liquidation, M&A, or
other causes. That’s six times the delisting rate of companies 40 years ago.
Although we may perceive corporations as enduring institutions, they are now
dying, on average, at a younger age than their employees. And the rise in
mortality applies regardless of size, age, or sector. Neither scale nor
experience guards against an early demise. But despite the apparent gloom,
there is still cause for optimism with companies still in need of advice.
Strategic principles for competing in the digital age:
Digital
capabilities will increasingly determine which companies create or lose value.
These shifts will take place in the context of industry evolution, which isn’t
monolithic, but can follow a well-worn path: new trends emerge and disruptive
entrants appear, their products and services embraced by early adopters
(exhibit). Advanced incumbents then begin to adjust to these changes,
accelerating the rate of customer adoption until the industry’s level of
digitization—among companies, but perhaps more critically, among consumers as
well—reaching a tipping point. Eventually, what was once radical is normal, and
unprepared incumbents run the risk of becoming the next Blockbuster. Others,
which have successfully built new capabilities (as Burberry did in retailing),
become powerful digital players.
When to change, how to lead:
It’s
fashionable to say that we live in fast-changing times. Does that mean
leadership itself must change? Is leadership an immutable endeavor in which we
learn as much from Alexander the Great and the Bhagavad Gita as from GM’s Mary
Barra or Apple’s Tim Cook? Or does the role of the business leader change with
the changing times? The case of leadership being a timeless endeavor rests on
the fact that the ability to lead is strongly linked to personality and
character. Several studies suggest that open-minded, conscientious people who
are emotionally tuned to take charge, tend to be stronger leaders than people
who aren’t. And while leadership skills can be learned, personality and
character are pretty much given by the time you enter the workforce and don’t
change much over time. In this sense, one could say that some people are more
predisposed to lead than others, and that hasn’t changed in the past 50 or 100
or 1,000 years. We all can lead better by developing a better understanding of
ourselves, so we can make the best of what we have. Our research suggests that
leaders who are self-aware—who know themselves or, as we put it, are “centered”—are
up to four times more effective in managing change than people who aren’t.
Seeing through the noises and hypes of technological
disruption:
A “disruptive
innovation” is a market-oriented change, one that revolutionizes by changing
the purchasing preferences of the market. The mass-produced Model T changed the
purchasing preferences of millions, despite it being based on old technology.
The disruptive innovation wasn’t the car — it was the assembly line. For music,
the disruptive innovation wasn’t the MP3 or digital, but the iPod. In both
cases, and many more, the market changed forever because the innovation made
the market better. The e-book existed for years before the true disruptive
innovation arrived — the Amazon Kindle, with its built-in Whispernet connection
at no cost, low-cost books, and so forth. The market responded quickly.
Disruptive
innovation is a high bar that requires not only a major technology to arrive
and be transformed into something profoundly enabling to a latent market needs
but also needs a market that is ready, willing, and able to follow that
technology into a market shift. The benefits have to be clear and compelling,
not debatable and abstract.
Consulting and Entrepreneurship – how consultants are
adapting to the needs of entrepreneurs:
The term
consultant still conjures up an image of an expert who can make great
presentations, generate recommendations and leave you to do the hard work of
implementation. This may work for big companies who have specialized staff, but
it doesn’t work for start-ups and small businesses who are already understaffed
and overloaded.
Start-ups
need outside experts who can do the work, as well as provide training on what
needs to be done. That’s called leading by example, and it is actually
appreciated by businesses of every size. It’s time to eliminate the term
consultant, as well as focus on activities and approaches that appeal more to
the growing volume of small businesses today.
The paradox of combining speed and stability to achieve
agility:
The world is
changing and it is changing very fast. It means organizations have to keep up
with the pace of this change. This has necessitated the overall movement of
organizations towards an agile age and it has captured the attention of top
businesses in all parts of the world. Importance of agility extends from whole
organizations to individual executives as well. This is forcing the businesses
to change the way business plans are implemented. The nature of the challenges
being faced by businesses, change their forms and scope very frequently and
Agility in the organization has the potential to prepare the businesses to deal
with these challenges effectively.
But the real
challenge in adapting to Agile is the balance between speed and stability.
Businesses find it very difficult to maintain stability in their execution
while following an agile strategy at the same time. Leaders and managers move
quickly when challenged and businesses adjust to changes and to new ways of
doing things. During multiple survey conducted by leading Strategy consulting
firms, more than half of the leading executives assumed that growth would
result from refining the corporate focus regularly. For many businesses, these
surveys also revealed opportunities to reallocate tens of millions of dollars
to business areas that could deliver significantly better returns than existing
priorities. Not all growth opportunities are created equal, but growth is still
a critical driver of performance.
Impact of Public Policy in shaping consulting strategy:
A great
challenge today is the complex nature of social problems. It translates into a
greater demand of citizens which eventually necessitates accelerated change in
the system. The Public Policy framework has enormous impact on every business,
and changing nature of this framework is something which businesses must
efficiently adapt to. This is definitely an area where consulting has a wider
scope to help businesses. There are multiple factors of the public sector,
which shape strategic management.
Evolving nature of Knowledge Management in Consulting
Industry:
The need to
manage knowledge increases proportionately with the service intensity of
businesses. Service-oriented knowledge-intensive firms share some common
characteristics. Services by nature are intangible; inseparable (production and
consumption occur at the same time, and is therefore non-standardized),
heterogeneous (customers are treated differently), and perishable. With
knowledge-intensive service firms, the work is performed by professional or
technical workers with high levels of skills and expertise.
Management
consulting firms are good examples of highly knowledge-intensive businesses.
They heavily depend on the expertise of their people, focus on customer relations,
employ network architectures, the nature of their work is project-based, and
emphasis is placed on applying creativity for solving client problems. Hence
management consultants live and breathe knowledge because they sell business
solutions and knowledge themselves. Explicit knowledge in consulting firms is
typically embedded in the firm’s products and services. Structured knowledge
tends to be stored on file servers and databases. A challenge for management
consulting firms is to holistically address the management of both tacit and
explicit knowledge.
Challenges and Opportunities for Consulting in 4th
industrial revolution:
The fourth
industrial revolution, characterized by the large-scale digitization and
interconnection of products, value chains and business models, has arrived. It
refers to the coalition of technologies across both across physical and digital
worlds which is not only creating entirely new capabilities but also has striking
impacts on political, social and economic systems. Industries across the world,
whether big or large, are being affected, if not transformed, by this
revolution. The pace of change is continuing to accelerate with its expansion.
For the next
five years, it is being estimated that the share of investments required for
Industry 4.0 solutions will account for more than 50% of planned capital investments. Today only 20%
of the companies have digitized their core processes along the value chain. In
the next five years’ time, 85% of companies will be implementing it. Many
businesses are riding this wave to create value and earn profits, while others
have crashed, burned and lost. So how today’s consulting companies can beat the
odds? Inventing the future will require companies to forego the constraints of
our previous models of success, lead with belief to create what will be the
alliance of both evolution and innovation. However, the bottom line is the
still the same: business leaders and senior executives need to understand this
changing environment, challenge the assumptions and relentlessly and
continuously learn and innovate. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is still in
its nascent state. But with the swift pace of change and increasing disruption
to business and society, the time to join in is now.
There are no old roads to new directions:
Over the
years, many consultancy firms have made significant contribution to the growth
and financial success of their clients. But despite this, the consulting industry
today is in state of continuing transformation, insecurity, and uncertainty.
How will the
consulting firms respond to these serious threats and challenges? There is
obviously no single uniform response. Under the widespread changing scenario,
consulting firms will have to change their existing strategies and restructure
their practices in order to survive. In order to have a competitive advantage
and stay in the business, consulting firms have to think of creative and out of
the box business strategies. Lowering of information costs can work in favour
of them. Companies can make good use of analytics to make sense of the
information at their disposal. The basic results will help to realize the value
that the information holds and how it can be used in business to either earn
more revenue, or reduce operational costs.
Digital Technology – Big Data Analytics in consulting:
Big data and
advanced analytics are creating opportunities for businesses. Yet only 4% of
companies are able to combine the right mix of its resources like people,
tools, etc. to take advantage. Organizations need strategic and not merely
technological solutions to realize the value of big data. Techniques such as optimization,
scheduling, data mining, text mining, segmentation, forecasting and statistical
analysis, etc. are used to provide insight and valuable advice to clients.
Big Data
Analytics enables consulting companies to approach problems and make decisions,
backed with data, and to act on it in logical and structured method. The core
of the approach is the ability to abstract a model of the real-life problem
that is easy to use, yet sufficiently realistic to support robust
decision-making. These models helps in providing deep insights, and quantifying
the risks benefits analysis associated with solutions to complex client
problems.
Adhocracy for an agile age:
Adhocracy is
a flexible, adaptable and informal form of organization that is defined by a
lack of formal structure. The concept of adhocracy was first proposed
essentially as a flexible and informal alternative to bureaucracy. Adhocracy’s
defining feature is that it privileges decisive (and often intuitive) action
rather than formal authority or knowledge.
While the
formal structure of operating businesses help in maintaining order and decorum,
the new age model of adhocracy enables companies to achieve agility and
adaptability. Adhocracy may not be the best solution for situations where
extensive data mining and research are required or when prior knowledge on the
subject is limited. However, in scenarios where knowledge and wisdom acquired
by employees are adequate and reliable, adhocracy can be quickest and most
efficient alternative. Organizations need to understand which model would suit
their requirements the best and work full throttle towards adapting and
implementing the same.
It is not the strongest or most intelligent of the
organization that survive, it is the one that is most adaptable to change:
Well, though
originally this was a Charles Darwin statement about species and their
preservation in nature, it fits perfectly well with the existence and
prosperity of organizations in the modern age. Severe competition has become
the most gruesome characteristic of the corporate world. Both individuals and
members of an organization’s managerial team, need to prepare themselves to
adapt successfully to a rapidly changing business environment.
Organizational
change is not optional to keep pace with business. "Adapt or die" may
seem like a harsh directive, but there does seem to be a certain necessity to
constantly move forward and adapt to new opportunities and challenges.
Operations
and Supply Chain consulting – The solutions enabled by technology:
Supply chains
and operations are undergoing radical restructuring as they face the challenge
of improving performance in a world of unprecedented complexity and
opportunity. Globalization has diminished boundaries and opened vast doors of
unexploited market potential. Companies are constantly looking for new avenues
to expand and diversify their market portfolios in order to boost revenues and
gain cost leadership. One major roadblock in achieving this is coping with the
different dynamics of supply chain and operations in varied geographical
regions.
Supply chains
and operations should be viewed as sources of strategic competitive advantage
which can help organizations identify and invest in the right operating models
to unlock the full value from their strategic asset. Technology plays a pivotal
role in enabling companies to achieve this.
Be prepare to
disrupt to avoid becoming a victim of disruption:
What
Disruption can bring to you? The dawning of a new age? A manifesto for the
reframing of society, governance and business?
The
interaction between the trends, developments and ideas shaping the future could
result in any one of the above scenarios - and many more. As professional
futurists, we believe the disruption is to rehearse the future and prepare for a
range of possibilities rather than simply adopting a singular viewpoint.
The reason
why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive
innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them
good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the
disruption. Hence organizations need to understand that and be prepared to
disrupt to avoid becoming a victim of disruption.
