BEING AGILE OR STAYING PROACTIVE IS NO LONGER ENOUGH...

I like what I am reading:

"... Being agile or staying proactive is no longer enough in an increasingly competitive global business environment. 

In a world that’s moving at an unprecedented rate, it takes something more:

– the ability to take a sudden burst of insight about the future and use it to produce a new and radically different way of doing things – solving problems, crafting must-have products, creating high-demand services or building new businesses... "

~ technology futurist Daniel Burrus;

You may want to read his latest article:

'The New Principles of Leadership'

Interestingly, he takes his perennial favourite topics, cyclical vs linear, hard trends vs soft trends, for a new spin to convince businessfolks to focus more on building anticipatory prowess as a leadership imperative, instead of harbouring on agility.

THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE: A LESSON IN STRATEGIC AGILITY

As I see this majestic lion in the picture, I am reminded of this harsh "Law of the Jungle", which goes like this:

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or gazelle. When the sun comes up, you'd better be running."

Transposed to the human domain, we just gotta be smart, quick and agile in today's workplace, in order to stay on the top of the game.

Readers may recall the global advertising slogan in the popular Timberland sportswear stores several years ago: 

"IF YOU ARE NOT FAST, YOU ARE LUNCH!"

HOW FAST IS YOUR COMPANY?

I have found this interesting 'Strategic Speedometer' test on the net. Go to this link to get a feel of your "strategic speed".


Interestingly, I recall vividly, several months ago, the Timberland stores in town had this apt advertising slogan on display:

"If you're not fast, you're food!"

FOOD FOR THOUGHT!

STRATEGIC AGILITY AS A SOURCE FOR CONTINUOUS RENEWAL

If you haven't yet read the book, 'Fast Strategy: How Strategic Agility will help You Stay Ahead of the Game', by Yves Doz & Mikko Kososen, you can go to this weblink to download a 20-page ebook [actually a Powerpoint presentation by one of the authors] which will give you a quick introduction as well as broad brush.

IF YOU'RE NOT FAST, YOU'RE FOOD!

This digital snapshot of a large bus stop ad - actually from Timberland - has been captured at Orchard Road, just in front of the Lucky Plaza shopping mall.

'If you're not fast, you're food!' is the essence of the Law of the Jungle.

Nonetheless, the apt message also applies in the fast-changing world of business, where it's called 'strategic agility'.

SURVIVING & THRIVING IN THE AGE OF TURBULENCE WITH CHAOTICS

I have, not too long ago, & also as part of my evolving personal collection, the following apt quote from Philip Kotler at the forefront of my daily idea scratchpad:

“To prepare for the twenty-first century, companies need to imagine alternative scenarios for the marketplace of the future, and use these scenarios to stimulate their thinking about possible contingencies and strategies. My advice, therefore, is get busy building scenarios and determining what they imply in the way of strategic planning. Do not think business as usual.”

I can't recall where I have gotten it, but I have also adopted it as one of my 'Today's VIP (Very Important Pose'), as well as considered it as one of my 'Pragmatic Insights from the Experts' in my personal weblog.

To my pleasant delight, I am glad that it helps to set a profound preamble to this book review of mine.

The lead author, now 78 or so, but surprisingly still active, is undoubtedly recognised as an internationally acclaimed marketing guru; hailed by the Management Centre Europe as "the world's foremost expert on the strategic practice of marketing."

Naturally, I have been quite excited to approach in reading his new book, 'Chaotics', but my fascination begins to fade after reading several pages at the front portion of the book. This is primarily because the author has drawn excellent material from several earlier authors - which he has humbly acknowledged at the onset & within the chapters of the book - namely:

- Clayton Christensen ('The Innovator's Dilemma' & 'The Innovator's Solution');
- Jim Collins ('Good to Great');
- Peter Drucker (The Age of Discontinuity');
- George Day & Paul Schoemaker ('Peripheral Vision');
- Richard D'Alveni ('Hypercompetition');
- Arie de Geus ('The Living Company');
- Benjamin Gilad ('Early Warning');
- Andy Grove ('Only the Paranoid Survive');
- Gary Hamel ('Leading the Revolution');
- Peter Schwartz (''Inevitable Surprises');

[The only odd one I have not read, to my chagrin, is probably Hermann Simon's 'Hidden Champions'.]

I have, in fact, over the years, read the works of these authors not only once, but many times in order to personalise their many ideas for easy application.

So, specifically for me, reading 'Chaotics' is like doing a grand refresher course.

In fact, it also reminds of me of the great works of two Scandinavian consultants Yves Doz & Mikko Kosonen (with their masterpiece: 'Fast Strategy: How Strategic Agility will help you Stay Ahead of the Game') & innovation strategist/futurist Jim Carroll (namely, 'What I Learned from Frogs in Texas: Saving Your Skin with Forward-Thinking Innovation' & 'Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast').

However, in fairness to the two competent authors, this bold statement of mine is not going to diminish the value of the book.

Strictly speaking, I reckon, riding on the shoulders of giants, so to speak, is apparently a cool move on the part of the two competent authors, because they didn't have to spend time dabbling with fancy theories. All they need to do, is to give all the proven stuff a new spin, which they have done so marvellously in 'Chaotics'.

In that respect, I have found useful nuggets, in addition to the fact that the two competent authors have synthesised, within 200-odd pages, all the "borrowed brilliance" into a timely, disciplined strategy guide on building strategic robustness, market responsiveness & operational resiliency, as embodied in their 'Chaotics' Management System.

In a nut shell, I want to say that the book is all about developing organisational agility & prosperity, but first business leaders need a new view of the world, & a new framework for dealing with it.

[At this juncture, I am reminded again by this superb insight from Dudley Lynch, author of 'Strategy of the Dolphin' & 'The Mother of All Minds':

"When your mind changes its worldview, it changes the world! Not just the world-at-large outside you, but also your own interior personal world, writ large!"]

So, 'Chaotics' comes in real handy, because it provides a comprehensive roadmap to navigate the so-called interlocking fragility of turbulence, chaos, risk & uncertainty amidst globalisation & digitisation, as well as a practical operating manual for inculcating new strategic behaviours.

[Readers can also go to this publisher's link to download an overview document on 'Chaotics'.]

For me, the beautiful nuggets come in the form of abundant pertinent probing questions, which all managers of today should ask themselves, if they really want to survive & thrive in the 'Age of Turbulence', all interpersed throughout the book (& strategically segmented to suit finance, IT, manufacturing, purchasing & HR) , plus a myriad of thoughtfully-crafted checklists of recommendations & ideas to consider.

In terms of immediate takeaways or learning points, the foregoing stuff is already worth the price of the book. It's like having both competent authors at your side to guide you.

For reader's benefits, I like to fish out a handful of the worthwhile checklists:

- factors that can cause chaos;
- hypercompetition strategies for disruption;
- most common mistakes that business leaders make when turbulence hits;
- ten innovation mistakes a company can make during a turbulent economy;
- ten most common mistakes companies make relative to valued stakeholders during turbulence;
- one effective & efficient approach to scenario construction;
- ten practices to weather continually extended & heightened periods of turbulence;
- ten effective HR recommendations to help retain talent;
- four key changes in the marketspace;
- eight factors for marketers to keep in mind when embracing 'Chaotics' marketing strategies;
- three important recommendations for keeping margins above water;
- six key steps for sales executives to inspired the team;
- common characteristics of firms of endearment (endeared company);

Some of the authors' concepts like defending vulnerabilities/exploiting opportunities for sustainability, as well as dual vision/triple planning, though not entirely new, are worth reading, too.

To conclude my review, 'Chaotics' is still worth pursuing, especially if you are hard-pressed for time in seeking a lifeline while traversing uncharted waters. Best of all, to the credit of the two competent authors, their writing style is crisp, succinct & easy-to-read.

AGILE BRAIN$ BREED BU$INE$$

Today, we are in The Learning Economy ~ the Age of Competitive Intelligence!

The creative brain capital resident within a corporation will determine the emergence of winners in an ecosystem of stampeding info-brokers.

This means that we must be able to:

• convert information into usable intelligence;

• come up with simple solutions to complex problems;

• understand and appreciate that true TQM equates directly with effective brain and heart usage;

The corporations that survive in the long term will be those with “smart teams” that are able to think quick, move fast, manoeuvre flexibly, and are more focused through the medium of “relaxed alertness.”

The possession of knowledge alone, without subsequent application, will produce a pundit rather than a practitioner. True knowledge resides in ultimately doing, not merely knowing about, and talking about.

[Excerpted from the 'Catalysing Creativity' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

Dilip Mukerjea highlights a very pertinent point: the importance of having “smart teams” that are able to think quick, move fast, manoeuvre flexibly, and are more focused through the medium of “relaxed alertness.”

In a nut shell, he is talking about “strategic agility”, at least from the organisational perspective.

From a personal perspective, I believe it is also important for us to embrace it.

Also, I reckon the ultimate test of it, as Dilip has also emphasised, is putting our knowledge to work in the workplace & in our personal lives, purposefully, productively & meaningfully.

In terms of performance results, true knowledge, especially in our prevailing Learning or Knowledge Economy, is always measured by our sheer productivity, i.e. what we do well consistently, & not what is acquired & stored in our heads.

As a matter of fact, learning should go beyond knowing to being able to do what one knows.

I like to leave an inspiring quote, originally conceived by German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but popularised by the legendary martial artist Bruce Lee in the latter's writings, as food for thought:

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."

I also like to recommend readers to get hold of & read 'Fast Strategy: How Strategic Agility will help you stay ahead of the Game' by two Scandinavian consultants, Yves Doz & Mikko Kosonen.

For me, their wonderful ideas & proven strategies, though written from the organisational perspective, are readily applicable in a personal setting, just with a little bit of tweaking.

DANGER IN THE COMFORT ZONE: MINDPOWER HAS REPLACED MANPOWER!

1st Worker: Is your job in jeopardy?

2nd Worker: No. My job is very secure. It’s me they can do without.”

The era of womb-to-employment is over. There are no longer any guarantees of lifelong employment. But you can guarantee lifelong employability.

Organisations are looking for executives who can make quantum leaps in speed, fluidity, responsiveness, precision, and agility.

We are now in a digital world. A supercharger has been attached to speed as a competitive business weapon. The safe routes of yesterday now lead to sterility and extinction.

So what’s to be done?

Take a sledgehammer to your business model . . . before someone else does it for you? Start re-skilling. Elasticate your possibilities.

Flexibility amplifies opportunities. Brain force has trumped brute force.

Start reading different books, meet different people, master different skills.

Keep creating value. You will enrich your actions, interactions, and transactions. Out of such relationships come products, services, and intangibles that will benefit you in the decades ahead.

[Excerpted from the 'Igniting Innovation' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

In a nut shell, what Dilip Mukerjea is talking about in the foregoing essay is: Break your Old Habits & Adopt New Habits!

I like to share an insight.

According to peak performance experts, there are three zones of existence:

- Comfort Zone: the realm of our existing old habits;

- Stretch Zone: where true change occurs!

- Stress Zone: where the challenges are far beyond or may overwhelm our current experiences;

Recent neuroscience research has discovered that when we consciously adopt new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, & eventually new set of neurons, that can cause our pattern of thoughts to jump into novel tracks.

That's to say, the more new things we experiment, the more we step out of our Comfort Zone, & move into the Stretch Zone, . . . the more creative we become as a result, both in the workplace & in our own personal lives.

Interestingly, the new ingrained habits can create parallel pathways that can even bypass those old ones. How about that?

So, my humble advice - as well as Dilip's - is to do something different every day!

We believe, just by getting out of your normal habitual routines will make you more aware of the many possibilities that may come your way.

Come to think of it, I reckon these are the only few things you actually need to get moving: a sense of wonder & a willingness to explore, experiment & play!

INNOVATE OR INCINERATE IN TODAY'S WARP-SPEED MARKETSPACE

Better! Faster! Cheaper! The chant of the marketspace!

Earnings have become less predictable. The challenge is how to reconcile unpredictable earnings with predictable bills. Hard work is no guarantor of future security. No pundit, preacher, or politician can predict with any precision about profits, performance, and productivity. Income used to be directly proportional to rank and seniority.

Now you’re paid for your ideas and your ability to inform, communicate, and entertain – so that you sell!

A Financial Times investigation covering an eighteen months timespan from January 2001 has shown that the directors and executives of the 25 largest US companies to go bankrupt in this period managed to amass a US$3.3 billion fortune between them – in horrid contrast to their companies, their employees, and the millions of shareholders that lost all their investments in them. A mere 52 individuals emerged with US$2.95 billion in remuneration shortly before their businesses went bust – 89 per cent of the total!

Some of the huge entities guilty of previously unimaginable corporate scandals were WorldCom, Enron, and Arthur Andersen, to mention just a few. Of course, the personalities of such creative chicanery are now confronted with financial bankruptcy.

In this new learning economy, success equates most with connections, relationships, alliances, talent, creative ingenuity, continuous innovation, and the ability to project ourselves into the ever-contracting attention span of potential customers. Inventiveness and empathy are needed to remain in contention.

In the corporate ecosystem, selling out was once a stigma; now, the worst scenario is when you’re not selling! Net worth and self-worth are generally poles apart; in today’s frenetic marketspace, they meet on equal terms when your personality has become a marketable commodity so that it sells successfully.

Creative ingenuity enables you to nichecraft; it helps you to blaze your own career path and make a reputation in your field, not just in your organisation. Promotion comes from promoting yourself. Entrepreneurship has morphed into multipreneurship, and the new individual has to become an intricate web containing several different nodes of expertise. Demand for ingenious innovators is outrunning supply. Electronic communities and coalitions are coordinating themselves via the Internet.

Constantly morphing constellations of diverse disciplines, such as researchers, designers, manufacturers, financial specialists, marketers, shippers, and many others, are merging into conglomerates that function as if they were a single enterprise – only to disband once their united aims are achieved, to form fresh coalitions of creative collaboration.

Are you in? Are you out ? Choose. And act!

The clarion call of innovation has forced large organisations to rip out entire bureaucracies – replacing middle management with computer software to streamline activities such as billing, procurement, and inventory; leveraging the Internet for customer services, auctioning,sales, and advertising; and renting space and equipment instead of purchasing them.

In many instances, bricks and mortar have been extinguished, rapidly replaced by brains and wits!

Continuous innovation emerges from continual learning, much of which is informal, unplanned,serendipitous. These outputs shape outcomes when technical insights merge with marketing imagination. Intangible value from innovations has surpassed tangible value from the creations of these innovations.

When, for example, buyers purchase a compact disc, some medication, or a transistor, they are paying the bulk of the price tag for researching, designing, marketing, and advertising; the raw cost of the products themselves is a mere few cents in each case.

How are YOU capitalising on innovation?

Here is another choice for you: Innovate or Abdicate!

[Excerpted from the 'Catalysing Creativity' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

Posting the foregoing essay by Dilip Mukerjea - & rereading it - reminds me of our earlier conversation in his car, while travelling together to visit his printer in the Tuas area some time ago, during which I have mentioned about a wonderful book I have read, entitled 'Fast Strategy: How Strategic Agility will help you Stay Ahead of the Game'.

I have then shared with Dilip a particular comment made by the two consultants-authors, Yves Doz & Mikko Kosonen, of the book:

"Companies are often the victims of their own success. They die not because what they did was wrong, but rather they kept doing it for too long."

It resonates with what Dilip has so eloquently written.

From my perspective, to succeed - and thrive - in an environment of disruptive change, we will have to be more versatile, more ready than ever to anticipate and adapt. I have mentioned this point in an earlier post.

Creativity &/or innovation, as argued by Dilip Mukerjea, is just one avenue. We also have to stay agile & remain nimble, mentally as well as physically.

With greater creativity, versatility and agility, I reckon we can have more options to deal with a rapidly-changing, discontinuously disruptive marketspace.

BUREAUCREATIVE, NOT BUREAUCRATIC!

Dilip Mukerjea & I share a lot in common:

- we are engineers by training;

- we have been globe-trotters in our own ways;

- we are voracious readers;

[That's how Catherine & I met Dilip during the mid-nineties, as we had then owned a bookstore. Dilip happened to find us by chance one day. When he stepped into our store for the first time, he was overwhelmed by all the great stuff, & subsequently, was made poorer by more than a thousand dollars! That's also why Dilip always remember Catherine.];

- we are fellow explorers in the field of creativity & innovation;

- more importantly, we like to urge corporations & professionals, to be changeable & change-ready!

The way we see it, they have two options:

- they can stand still, & wait to see what happens; or

- they can charge ahead with an eye on the future!

In reality, they can’t afford to stand still, because, as one futurist (Peter Bishop?) once said:

“Change is uncertain, but stagnation is fatal.”

In fact, Dilip Mukerjea poses a very pertinent question to drive home the urgency:

Are you killing yourself or are you skilling yourself?

We both strongly believe that, with creativity & innovation as our intellectual trampoline, so to speak, we can learn to deal with the future.

Developing change-readiness, mental flexibility, & operational agility is imperative in order for all us to stay relevant with changing times, & not to be made extinct by turbulent changes that come our way.

The two Scandinavian strategy consultants, Yves Doz & Mikko Kosonen, have brilliantly illustrated the urgency by introducing the term, "strategic agility", in their excellent book, 'Fast Strategy: How Strategic Agility will Help you Stay Ahead of the Game'.

Many years earlier, Mercer Management Consulting, through the great works of their former VPs, Adrian Slywotzky & Robert Duboff, had introduced their unique term, "strategic anticipation".

I particularly like foresight strategist & scenario planner Adam Gordon's latest fancy term: "future savvy".

Come to think of it, 'Innovate or Evaporate!' rings very true! I reckon it becomes more urgent for companies & their CEOs to move their butts, because elephants are slow to dance.

At this juncture, I like to share with readers a few selected excerpts from the book, 'Surfing the Intellect: Building Intellectual Capital for a Knowledge Economy', by Dilip Mukerjea:

"Perspectives for the New Millennium:

Are you relevant to the future or relegated to the past?

The world is changing economically, culturally, socially, politically, technologically, environmentally, and competitively.

Every individual must change in step with these world changes.

So must corporations and the human capital within them.

Unless you are prepared for all these scenarios, you are prepared for none of them. Ask yourself, are you busy preparing for a set of careers that will soon be obsolete?

We need creativity and innovation to live in a world where multiple realities have become the norm. Yet, each set of multiple realities poses a challenge, because no two people occupy the same slice of consciousness about anything.

We just do not occupy the same knowledge space, often seeking refuge in our private sanctuaries of specialisation.

Skills in creativity equip us with the capacity to succeed in the future. If we fail, it is because of a failure of imagination in the present. More than ever, you’ve got to aim for what you can’t expect to get. The marketspace of commerce has become a single global bazaar.

To be a viable player in this marketspace, we need to develop intellectual capital skills.

This means creativity, innovation, leadership, verbal and visual literacy, team play, and humanity towards one another.

Are you in the forefront of innovation, or have you receded into the white noise of your organisation’s background?

If it is the latter, consider getting outside the box so as to get inside the solution. We must integrate our diverse needs as members of today’s share of consciousness.

These are exciting times, ones that electrify a creative world where we are witness to collisions of chaos.

The Forces of Creation:

Combinations are spark plugs for creative combustion. An item by itself is a unilateral entity ~ filled with potential, but static, until it meets another. Then whoosh! Creativity!

All of us harbour forces within us. Within the vast ocean of consciousness, we have it in us to set loose a groundswell that can explode into mighty waves of unstoppable magnitude.

When we surf along these waves of human dynamism, our destination becomes inevitable. Often unplanned, serendipitously, we reach the shores of wonder. Such terrains, alive with infinite waves of potential, define the human intellect.

May the rhythm of your spirit create a song in your heart. May you never be the same!

Bureaucreative Perspectives:

Ideas are the raw material from which financial results are made.

Research exhibits the alarming fact that two-thirds of the companies listed on the inaugural Fortune 500 list in 1954 had either vanished or were no longer big enough to make the list on its fortieth anniversary. Why?

Lack of ideas to navigate through the shoals of change.

The world of ideas is emerging from the womb of creativity.

Metaphorically, it has been likened to a new tennis ball — fuzzy, but with a lot of bounce. This New World is becoming less fuzzy every day, but with a lot more bounce. Isn’t it time to knock the fuzz off the tennis ball?

"The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity." ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

Today’s corporate world is filled with executives that want someone to give them plug-and-play answers. How many such executives can you recognise in your organisation?

The future of middle management is extinction. Are the symptoms visible in your organisation? Are you becoming fossilised?

“Ideas have power by themselves. They can accumulate without travelling through an institution, and then suddenly explode.” — Michael Brown, CFO Microsoft

"The person who can combine frames of reference and draw connections between ostensibly unrelated points of view is likely to be the one who makes the creative breakthrough." — Denise Shekerjian

"Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training." — Anna Freud

Thomas Stewart writes that half of what a freshman engineering student learns is obsolete by the time she graduates; the obsolescence of electronics knowledge is so fast that techies use the phrase “Internet years” the way children say “dog years.”

Liam Fahey, a professor at Babson College and a stalwart of the Strategic Leadership Forum, likes to pose the following question: “How long will it take before half the knowledge you need in your job is obsolete?” If he poses it to a group, a third of the audience members usually say that the half-life of their knowledge is less than two years, another third that it’s less than five years.

Like money in a mattress, says Hugh Macdonald, “intellectual capital is useless unless it moves. It’s no good having some guy who is very wise and sits alone in a room.”

This is totally applicable to the world of ideas … ‘bureaucratic’ needs to make way for ‘bureau-creative’!!!

Getting results from investing in creativity requires a corporate culture that allows it to flow freely. This simply means scrapping rules that stifle new ideas."

Well, you just got to read the entire book to make yourself more creative & recreative.

As the author puts it:

"This book incorporate a spectrum of contemporary applications designed to meet today's corporate & educational needs. The vast repertoire of knowledge & techniques cater to our diverse areas of performance. We now know that our primary source of wealth lies in the development of intellectual capital. You will find the ingredients between these pages."

[For readers' information: Adrian Slywotzky wrote 'Profit Patterns: 30 Ways to Anticipate & Profit from Strategic Forces Reshaping Your Business'; Robert Duboff, 'Market Research Matters: Tools & Techniques for Aligning Your Business'; Adam Gordon, 'Future Savvy: Identifying Trends to Make Better Decisions, Manage Uncertainty, & Profit from Change '. All my personal favourites!]