Changing skin is good for the health…of the company!
24 October 2022
How to grow businesses
7 December 2022
It is undeniable. We are coming to terms with a reality in which certainty is few and often fleeting.
Our personal, professional and business lives are sinking into doubt and uncertainty as never before.
The world around us has also experienced an increase in crisis in recent years.
The global pandemic of COVID-19, unforeseen events including the Russia-Ukraine war, U.S./Australia-China trade disputes, as well as other events such as strikes, civil unrest, and factory disasters have shaken economies around the world to a greater or lesser degree.
Despite crises, component shortages and unforeseen events whether we like it or not we are immersed in the fourth industrial revolution.
The ability of large companies to produce innovations is going on at a breakneck pace, and in this context, the speed and uncertainty of the transformations taking place are mixed up. And we all rush to either grab the supposed benefits of the upcoming novelty or to guard against the potential risks associated with it.
Faith in planning
None of us today can accurately predict all the impacts of external factors on the business world and the social plane. Yet, most companies base their decisions and strategies on long-term planning and business plans.
Management and corporate leadership, in order to decide what directions to take and what innovations to embrace, require planning everything in detail so that it is clear to everyone what the next steps are and what results are to be achieved. Unfortunately, in today’s highly variable environment, plans and business plans do not survive first contact with customers. And so people spend time updating these documents or are paralyzed by the inability to plan and predict the future.
Learning to Scrutinize an Invisible Reality
The truth is that it is not possible to deal with the profound uncertainty and enormous variability in which we are immersed using the same approaches we have used up to now.
Complexity and uncertainty require us to conceive of strategy management and governance of our companies as an experimental process-just as the good old scientific method taught us.
We make hypotheses, build an experiment, check the results at regular cadences, react to unforeseen events, and start over.
- What are the variables and data to be measured during experiments?
- Who will I let participate in the experiments?
- How many experiments will I do, who will follow them, who will do the data processing and review of the hypotheses and the starting model?
These are some examples of the key questions to best manage uncertainty.
In my latest book, “Management in the Age of Uncertainty,” I explore managerial strategies for being more flexible in every part of the company in such a complex, uncertain and variable period as the one we are living in.
Practical insights and strategies to make the company more compact and strong, to make better decisions, to innovate and experiment with greater market impact, and to better manage personal and business change.
