Strategic Reset.
Strategy is “future competitive advantage”.
What will the people we sell to need in the future?
Who will we be competing with in the future?
Given these people needs and competitors what advantage will we provide?
A case can be made that every organization and every individual who has not updated their strategy in the past three years must do so with urgency because we are seeing the contours of the future shift dramatically.
1. People expect more.
It is clear that people in addition to wanting things better, faster and cheaper as they have always done, are now placing a premium on solutions, expect accessibility of everything, everywhere, every time and in every form, values ( companies and people that align with their passions and leanings) and experience ( service, impact, memorability).
Its not just BCF ( Better Cheaper Faster) but now also SAVE (Solutions, Accessibility, Value and Experience)
2. Old assumptions are less true.
Many of the assumptions that underpinned strategy have not only shifted but, in some ways, the exact opposite of what firms believed is coming true.
Here are just a few “beliefs” that now need to be queried:
a) Expanding populations: When calculating “Total addressable market” or “rate of growth” most companies factored in growing populations.
Now the exact reverse is beginning to happen. Populations have started to decline in most advanced economies at a frightening rate. Outside of 7 countries in the world, population is either flat or in decline. This year the US may have its first decline in population. It takes 2.1 children per woman to keep the population the same and the number today is 1.6 in the US with the rest being made up by immigration which is now going in to reverse. In 2025 there will be 2. 5 million fewer immigrants coming into the country versus year ago. If immigration remains curtailed population will decline by tens of millions in the next two decades. To see the future look at China ( 1.1 children per woman) or Korea ( .8 children per woman) where there is excess housing, closing down of schools and replacement of toy stores with pet stores. GDP growth is often co-related with population growth.
b) Scale is a competitive advantage: While scale still matters it matters far less than ever before (except for a few businesses like funders of Large Language Models, Data Centers, Chip Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals and a few others where it matters even more).
The very nature of what is scale is changing with many old forms of scale being competitive disadvantages!
Scale of Distribution: With direct to consumer marketing enabled by the Internet and platforms like Shopify, widespread retail distribution is no longer as effective an advantage outside of a handful of companies like Walmart.
Scale of Communication: New media behaviors by people particularly search and social are leading to communication channels where spending power is less aa competitive edge as it was in television or print where marketers cornered key inventory at advantageous prices. Now as we enter an Answer vs a Search economy we can anticipate greater shifts.
Scale of Manufacturing: The “Everything as a service” platforms from Amazon Web Services to Foxconn allow smaller companies to gain the edges of scaled manufacturing, distribution and technology without any of the legacy disadvantages of size.
Scale of People: From IBM to Unilever to GM who have hundreds of thousands of employees and therefore have the ability to recruit and grow a range of talent and offer career advancement. Scale of people continue to be important to execute complex and large tasks but there are also new ways to re-aggregate talent. And a generation of talent wants to work in smaller and more entrepreneurial environments. The new metric is revenue per employee versus number of employees.
Today AI further reduces most of these advantages with AI accessible at $20 to $200 a month providing small firms (David) with access to knowledge, expertise, production and much more as a slingshot to compete with large firms (Goliath)
In addition to the diminishment of legacy scale which allows for new entrants, there is also a rise of new types of scale that are becoming increasingly important.
Scale of Data: Increasingly companies are realizing that collecting, refining and leveraging data is what is driving the modern fast growing and highly valued companies from Amazon to Google to Uber.
Scale of Networks: On the Internet network effects play a dominant role in creating winners. Dominant platforms such as Google, Meta, Netflix, TikTok enjoy flywheel effects of more users attracting more users and therefore marketers and businesses.
Scale of Influence: Today individuals have tens of millions of TikTok followers or leverage X to reach hundreds of millions of people with single post and tweet. Podcasts and Substack are allowing talent to unhook themselves from companies. If you look at scaled entities on social media, they are individuals and not companies.
Scale of Talent and Ideas: One of the lessons of history is that every advance in technology places a premium on superior talent. Technology is a lever and great talent can have major scale effects. AI is the ultimate lever for talent.
c) Work and Jobs are the same thing: The rise of marketplaces from Fiveer to Upwork, from Shopify to Etsy, from Uber to Amazon have allowed individuals to access opportunities and offer services and products in a scaled global way from their mobile devices. Add the acceleration of work from anywhere made possible by distributed work and now the removal of barriers to knowledge or talent (agents, free-lance, fractionalized employees) and the biggest shift which almost no company is prepared for is underway. 67 percent of Gen Z with a full time job have a side hustle or side gig with which they make money and whether they are forced back to the office or not they are preparing for next. In fact forced mandates to return to the office is increasing their urgency and reason to seize their future with the best talent who have the most options being the first to peel off.
Work can be done without filling a job.
Work and jobs are uncoupled.
Most companies are organized around jobs vs work. Most companies believe most of the work is done by full time employees at places they go to versus most of the work is done outside the organizations by a combination of different talent and agents they access.
Implications for Companies.
a) Some of greatest opportunities and threats come from outside ones category when consumer, technological and nature of work change: Uber and Tesla came from outside the automobile industry. The big winners of the next generation will be companies we have never heard of. Today Morgan Stanley is challenged by Robinhood, Adobe by Figma, many companies by Open AI. If strategy is future competitive advantage it is critical to look outside ones current competitive set.
b) Run Schizophrenic Models: If one looks at the next generation of challengers one will find many of these companies to be a) AI first, b) Talent anywhere, c) Plug and Play, d) Ultra fast.
It will be very difficult to take a company that is very successful today to reinvent itself fast enough by trying to make the changes within. Instead a company should take a significant portion of its best talent, provide them with access to all the resources of the company and ask them to create the next version of the company. This way the new unit while connected to the mother ship is not burdened by existing Client demands, processes, business models and ways of making money. And the existing business focuses and optimizes the current business model to maximize cash flow and minimize distraction to help fund tomorrow. The existing business not only learns the new methods, retains talent that may want to go to start-ups or new opportunities but also then begins to assimilate the best of the new innovations and bring back the talent they exported as they scale
Implications for Talent.
a) Prepare for a completely different landscape by 2027 : Knowledge will matter less as it can be accessed on demand for $20 a month. Experience gets less important as the ability to unlearn and learn becomes key.. Almost everything that one does that can be done better by AI will be, and if one cannot build new skills to work alongside AI one’s career regardless of level will be at risk. The possibility that a full time job will be replaced by a main job that provides cash flow and insurance ( fractionalized employee) plus a number of other gigs will be the dominant form of earning an income however scary and improbable it sounds.
b) Seize the future of your career with urgency and do not delegate it to others: Carrie Underwood asked Jesus to take the wheel but when it comes to a strategy for one’s livelihood and future we need to take the wheel. Please remember that HR works for the company that you work for and does not work for you.
Hone skills. Build a reputation. Plug into networks. Launch the side gig. Up skill. Now.
Learn to become A Company of One ( A series read by hundreds of thousands that prepares one step by step to be one’s own future navigator). By learning to operate as a company of one allows us to have a long career in a company of tens of thousands. Not doing so will make us a company of one even if we do not want to be one or are not prepared.
Learn how people are forging and preparing for the future of work via the Rethinking Work Show.
On Wisdom.
Joy.
A definition of success is the freedom to spend time in ways that gives one joy.
Joy is more than happiness which is often transitory as it ebbs and flows with external events.
Joy is more akin to contentment and satisfaction.
Some believe it is momentary suggesting we have “flashes of joy”.
The joy that comes with deep satisfaction and contentment however endures and its contours do not waver with the oscillations of the transient.
Experience, time, and observation reveals there are ways to architect joy.
Joy=Grace+Flow+Connection.
Joy encompasses grace, flow, and connection.
The joyous exhibit graciousness, they tend to be in a state of flow and connected to both reality, other people, and some things higher and deeper.
Graciousness combines respect for others, a sense of humility and a spirit of generosity.
Flow comes from learning, making and building.
Connection is some combination of a greater purpose, spirituality and relationships with others.
To be free to use your time to pay attention to what matters and what matters to you.
Or as the late David Foster Wallace said in his mind shifting talk This is Water:
“The important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”
Appreciation.
Among the teachings of the Stoics is the ephemeral nature of life and the passing of time.
The followers of Wabi-Sabi in the Orient recognize the impermanence, imperfection, and incompleteness of all things.
The Poet Kate Ryan writes of the “joy of finding lost things”
And Carly Simon in “Anticipation” sings that she will stay right here because these are the good old days.
From all these individuals one learns three mental exercises to appreciate what we have:
1.Imagine a thing you own or a person or place you appreciate lost.
All of us have lost things and sometimes re-found them.
A set of keys, a wallet, a passport.
Other times it is our health or a home or a job.
As the line goes “we do not know what we have until we have lost it”
2.Imagine that you were doing something for the last time.
What makes the ordinary and every day extra-ordinary is that one day it will not be so.
There will be a last day a child will crawl. A last day you will see someone. A last day you will visit a place or drive a car or go to a restaurant. Sometimes we know the last times and often we do not. When we are aware of the last times, we have a higher sense of attention and a sensitivity to the specialness and the passing of the moment.
But these last times come every week and sometimes every day.
The ordinary becomes extra-ordinary when we pay attention, and we find poetry in the crevices of every day
3.Imagine that the life you lead is the life that millions aspire to as you aspire to some other life.
Most humans aspire to the next better and bigger thing. A combination of our hedonistic adaptation (getting used to what we have), benchmarking against others and other things (the income and home we thought would be amazing a decade ago may be seen as just okay when compared to others) and imagination (our ability to imagine greater, bigger and better or be reminded of it in our media streams) all drive us to next.
We sometimes define our happiness by our advancement toward the things we do not have versus the things we do have.
Most people living in the Western World or Upper and Upper Middle Classes of most countries who also have their health are living the life that billions aspire to.
The life we have got used to is the aspiration for most people.
We may wish to celebrate every new day as a day of thanks and gratitude.
Loss
If there are three realities to life they are learning, love and loss. Not everybody succeeds at learning or love, but everybody gets a graduate degree in loss and a doctorate when people very close die.
Joan Didion wrote two books on the loss of her husband “The Year of Magical Thinking” and her daughter “Blue Nights” which are read by many dealing with loss.
She wrote of the fragility of life noting that her husband died while eating dinner: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends” and the loneliness afterwards: “A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”
And as time moves forward and people, places and hopes come and go people are shaped by what is no more.
“We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day is not at all”
But in the end Didion notes we go on by forging new stories and finding new places and begin forgetting.
“We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”
But one must forge ahead…
“Do not whine...Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.”
And to college graduates a few years ago she made the case for living deeply…
“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
Time
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives wrote Anne Dillard.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? asked Mary Oliver
Life is a journey through reality and time in search of meaning.
Franz Kafka wrote “The meaning of life is that it stops”
And most of us can calculate the robust and healthy days left if we are lucky by subtracting our age from 80 (around which much begins to go wrong physically and sometimes also one may see a diminishment in mental faculties leading to a much more constrained life) and multiplying it by 365 days.
If you are 60 you have less than 7500 days. If you are 40 you have 15,000 days.
So, when someone asks you to do things without some form of fair compensation (it does not have to be money but could be learning, experience or the joy of helping) or does not respect your time, do remember you are the one paying for their dis-respect and their cheap valuation of your life!
In the future the ritual of the ordinary day will be special, just as we came to realize after months of Covid that the simple pleasures of free movement, meeting friends, sitting in a crowded bar, and watching a sports game were so special.
Life does not have to be lived forward and understood backward if we decide to pay attention.
Be aware of the fading moments of now.
Look around you. Watch the special quality of light or listen to the hiss of the air duct. Treasure the conversations and even the repetition and lack of differentiation of day after day.
Because one day it will not be so…
Photography by Rishad Tobaccowala
Tectonic Time: 5 Shifts.
Image using MidJourney
This Friday while flying back from a couple of speaking engagements in Sweden with European C level execs in the Real Estate and Marketing industries, I calculated it was my 70th flight, putting me on track to fly more than the previous record of 104 flights in a year when I had a full time job.
Looking back just to the beginning of this year between the companies I advise, the companies I have spoken at, the leaders who have been guests of the weekly What Next? Podcast and the Rethinking Work YouTube Show I host, I have interacted or spoken with more than 200 leaders and almost 100 companies in 8 months across 11 countries.
And increasingly there is a common feeling across all these companies and leaders that these times are more than transformational.
The changes underway feel bigger than the shifts felt during the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Post 9/11, The Great Financial Crisis, The Internet, The Rise of China and Covid.
The changes today are fueled by all these transformations interacting with each other at scale and some new forces to create far greater tremors and movement.
These are not just transformational times.
We are in Tectonic Times.
When the very ground under our feet moves, things rupture and quake, all shaking the foundations of what we believe, how we operate and what might happen.
The Five Tectonic Shifts.
Animation using MidJourney
1. Duality : Everything and its opposite is true at the same time.
Here are three examples of duality .
a) Scale matters more. Scale matters less.
Scale matters more than ever as we see the top 4 companies in AI spending ( Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta) on track to spend over 300 billion dollars in one year. For comparison this is just slightly less than half the revenue of the Walmart which is the worlds largest company ranked in sales. 300 Billion dollars is also 5x the total revenue of Accenture and 2x Accentures total total market cap.
Similarly Russia and China and US armies and spending give them significant advantage.
But scale matters less than ever as AI and other technologies enable asymmetric competition providing David with a sling shot to bring down Goliath. The fastest growing, most innovative and highest revenue per employee companies are small. A combination of agility, limited to no legacy structures and AI first/Talent Anywhere thinking are changing the rules of the game.
A combination of drones and new ways of thinking have allowed everyone from Ukraine to the Houthis to fight way above their weight class.
The smartest companies are combining small teams with large amounts of capital and other resources providing them with freedom to challenge and compete for a new age.
b) Globalization matters more. Globalization matters less.
Today two countries, the US and China, with 30 trillion and 18 trillion dollars of GDP dominate and increasing make the rules of the Globe ( for comparison Japan, India, Germany and France have only 4 trillion dollars of GDP each). If the world was not so connected Trump’s Tariffs or Taiwan’s hold on High End Chip making or China’s hold on Rare Earths would not matter but they do. And from Climate to Covid, Mother Nature refuses to acknowledge borders.
But at the same time the Globalization of Davos is clearly over and there is a far greater regionalization and country focus around the world. Covid illustrated the challenges of global supply chains. Europe’s dependence on Russian gas indicated a vulnerability. Strategic resilience now often is more important than comparative advantage provided by free trade and globalization.
c) Markets matter more. Markets matter less.
Market economics and different flavors of capitalism have created more wealth and lifted over 2 billion people out of poverty since 1990 with opening economies in China, India and many other places. Today rapid data transfers and interconnectedness places a premium on markets.
On the other hand, market economics has led to a blowback in many parts of many countries due to job losses and ways of life. Market economics have led to vulnerabilities for countries for key resources and materials making countries increasingly mercantilist and inserting themselves in markets. A new political order is rising everywhere which combines state and markets in different ways.
Image and Source: Rishad Tobaccowala
2. Third Connected Age : We have entered the Third Connected Age.
The First Connected Age began with the advent of the World Wide Web in 1993 where we connected to discover and transact which gave rise to Search and E-Commerce. During this age we consumed content.
In 2007 we entered the Second Connected Age where we were connected to everybody, all the time and to entertainment which gave rise to social, mobile and streaming. We consumed and created content but much of the value created was captured by the platforms rather than the content creators.
These Connected Ages continue to build on each other and roil everything from traditional media companies, elections, what people believe, polarization and much more.
But just as streaming, mobile and social reinforced each other and turbo-charged commerce and search we now have a new set of forces which began as early as 80 years ago (AI), 15 years ago (Blockchain), 7 years ago (5G…but not really available in the US though your phone says you have it…real 5G is 2 to 4 gigabytes per minute with almost no latency as seen in parts of China) and AR/VR which is still scaling but will clearly become important. And due to the Blockchain and the rise of competition in creator platforms from YouTube to Substack to Podcasts to OnlyFans, we will move to a read, write and own era as pointed out by Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz.
AI is the topic of the day as a combination of all the data on the Internet, better algorithms and much better chips such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 has turbo-charged this space. But it is not just AI but also Blockchain that is revolutionary and will likely change the nature of ownership, competition, data transparence. One impact in Finance as most recently seen in StableCoins.
This Third Connected Age will make the first two Connected Ages which were huge look small.
Think of the shifts already underway:
The value of knowledge is going to zero and the value of many types of experience is declining.
World class Knowledge driven companies like McKinsey have stated this is an existential threat and opportunity if played right. Traditionally, a strategy project with a client might require an engagement manager—essentially, a project leader—plus four consultants and a partner. Today, it might need an engagement manager plus two or three consultants, alongside a few AI agents and access to “deep research” capabilities. McKinsey today has 40,000 humans and 12,000 AI agents. Read more here.
Knowledge is being reimagined.
The interface of Search ( First Connected Age) and Streaming (Second Connected Age) is now joined by Conversation (Third Connected Age) as people look for outcomes and answers. This has already got companies thinking about massive reductions in traffic due to search and rewiring themselves for an Answer and Agentic Age. But in addition to the plumbing which is how one reaches the customer we are about to see the rise of poetry where due to Generative AI provides the ability to tell stories and have interactions at scale in personalized way that will disrupt the entire marketing landscape.
Personalization will increasingly be augmented by Anticipation in delivering outcomes and answers. Tech Stacks will be upgraded to Experience Stacks.
The fabric of communications is being rewritten anew.
Source: Nathan Halberstadt
3. Generation Ruptures:
The above chart by Nathan Halberstadt first published in the Daily Wire and much discussed and shared. He has not released specifics on his data sources and there is some debate on the numbers but not the direction of travel.
Clearly younger folks are getting married and becoming home owners much later as some of this data shows
Marriage and home ownership rates are only two of many significant ways there is a marked difference in generations.
Today 66% of Baby Boomers believe in Capitalism but only 22% of GenZ do.
A small sliver of Baby Boomers want to work for themselves but 76% of GenZ want to launch a company. Today 67 percent of GenZ employees with a full time job have a side gig or side hustle to make money.
And here are more differences in mindset.
Source: ChatGPT 5
The irony is that companies that wax and sing hymns to personalization treat all their employees the same. One size fits all for RTO and much more. No wonder talent wonders what has infected managements mind!
Source: ChatGPT 5
4. Work and Job Uncoupling: People have always worked but rarely had jobs. The idea of a job is about 200 years old and it looks like we are in the midst of a decline of full time jobs and a rise in the opportunity for different types of work.
Work is any activity humans do to survive or create value—hunting, farming, caregiving, crafting, etc. Jobs are a more modern idea: formal roles within an economy where you exchange labor for wages, usually under an employer. Jobs are structured, specialized, and often tied to contracts or salaries.
Prehistoric & Agrarian Societies
Work meant survival: hunting, gathering, farming. It was shared among families or tribes, with little concept of individual "jobs."
Ancient Civilizations
As cities grew, work diversified—merchants, scribes, artisans, priests. These roles were often inherited or tied to caste/class systems.
Medieval Era
Work was tied to land (serfs, farmers) or guilds (craftsmen, apprentices, masters). Identity and community shaped work more than wages.
Industrial Revolution (18th–19th c.)
This is when the modern “job” emerged: factory work, wage labor, set hours. Work became standardized and separated from the home.
20th Century
Rise of office jobs, corporations, unions, and the idea of a lifelong career at one company. Benefits like pensions and health insurance tied identity even more to jobs.
21st Century
Work is shifting again: freelancing, gig economy, AI and automation, remote work, portfolio careers. People may separate who they are from what job they do more than before.
Work has always existed—but the structure of jobs (formal, specialized, wage-based roles) is a relatively recent invention, only a couple of centuries old.
Today most companies are structured around jobs and jobs to be filled vs accessing talent and work to be done. But as demographic mindset differences, the shifts of the Third Connected Age and fractionalization of expertise that is increasingly distributed, ricochet of each other, companies will need to rethink their organization, talent base and leadership from the ground up.
Image: Google Gemini Flash 2.5
Image: Google Gemini Flash 2.5
5. Imperiled Leadership: Leadership is never easy. Today the quality of leaders has never been stronger in pure skills, motivation and drive but the challenges and fears have never been greater for a variety of reasons which include:
a) The Need for Dual Track Thinking: While it is critical to make this years numbers so is reinventing the business for a new age where the business model might be literally completely different. We see this in the struggle of traditional auto companies to ensure profits from internal combustion engines and hardware as they pivot to a software driven electric age. Or companies in the Food and Beverage space who have to balance peoples taste preferences with people’s health needs with the rise of GLP1 drugs and new FDA guidelines that may or may not align with science!
b) Debossification: Due to the generational shifts, distributed work and other factors no longer can one manage through a zone of control only but also has to be adept at managing through a zone of influence.
c) Political Heat and Changing Rules: Every act from changing the name of a firm to where one locates a factory to points of view on anything and everything is open to attack. This is true in India, China and now the United States. This makes some of the most amazing leaders censor themselves or curry favor in ways that are understandable to ensure the well being of their shareholders, but clearly comes at a cost whose price is still to be understood. The rules keep changing and uncertainty is at an all time high.
d) Personal Relevance: Today a leader can no longer stay up to date but needs to stay up to tomorrow. One has to constantly upgrade ones mental operating system. Find time to learn and to unlearn.
Again and again it is awe inspiring to see how so many leaders are rising to the occasion and finding ways to navigate and secure the future of their firms while remaining on the right side of markets, science and political reality.
But it is very very difficult and the pressure has never been higher.
Especially given we are in tectonic times as the five shifts of Duality, The Third Connected Age, Generational Ruptures, the Decoupling of Work from Jobs, and Imperiled Leadership, move in tandem rubbing off each other.
Change.
1. Change sucks.
When one has to change one has to unlearn and learn.
Twist oneself into new shapes.
Make mistakes. Look foolish. Be uncertain.
Change is not easy nor good.
It sucks.
But irrelevance is even worse.
2. Inner Dinosaur Disease ( IDD)
All of us suffer from Inner Dinosaur Disease.
We ourselves struggle to change and so we do the IDD 2-Step
Step one is the Deflection Dance.
We blame our inability to change on our bosses, a terrible work culture, stuck in the mud clients, P and L pressures or point to failed experiments in the past.
Step two is the Botox Bling.
Announce the retention of a Consulting firm who, over the next X months, will benchmark and develop a plan of action. Launch a Vision or Change 202X task force to “get out in front” of change. Hire a talent agency, next generation modern marketing firm, or niche agency, then issue a press release. Re-launch a quiet, unsupported brand or initiative with a small budget dedicated to a new way so there is something to point to.
3. Change is less about a company and it is more about people.
Companies do not transform.
People do.
Having a strategy, pursing M&A or acquire hires and re-organization are often necessary steps in making change happen.
But not sufficient.
Unless one explains to people why the change is good for them, incentivize them to do the new tasks and ways of behaving and provide training change will not happen.
No personal alignment. No incentive alignment. No training investment.
No change.
Just Boards with press releases and shiny puffed up consultant decks and excel spreadsheets with pivot tables galore.
4. Change is about what leaders do and not what they say.
Change is scary and like never before is there a need for trust and integrity as one enters a world of uncertainty.
If there are gaps between what leaders say, do and believe they will not be able to bring about change.
Today the challenge to change is not tech or strategy but aligned incentives, truthful conversation and trust.
Leadership must inspire with clarity. Be absolutely candid as to what is being done and how it is being done and show that they are doing exactly what they expect of others.
5. To deal with change think like an immigrant.
We are all immigrating at fast speeds into an unknown country called the future.
Things are different there. Current business models may not hold. Current knowledge and experience may matter less. New skills and mindsets could be important.
To thrive we should think like immigrants.
A) Immigrants think like outsiders: When big change happens the opportunities and challenges come from outside one’s category or group of power brokers one hangs out with. Tesla and Uber came from outside the automobile leaders. Dollar Shave Club shocked Procter and Gamble. The biggest mistake is to benchmark against current competitors, go to the same conferences and parrot what everybody else is saying.
B) Immigrants think like underdogs: When someone says they live in a castle surrounded by a moat, an underdog sees the moat as a source of water to flood one out of the castle. Today, AI technology is the slingshot that allows David to bring down Goliath. Scale matters less. Speed, ingenuity, agility matter more. Scamper do not strut.
C) Immigrants think short term pain is a worthwhile tradeoff for long term gain: Focussing on ensuring margins versus investing for the future, continuing to manage slow decline versus making the hard calls to change the trajectory is what is called for. As Ringo Starr might say about Change. “It don’t come Easy”.
Access for free the best of five years of writing on Change and other topics all curated and organized on one page…click here.
Selling Better.
Selling is critical not just to business but to life.
We all need to advocate for our point of view, convince others to align with us and to separate ourselves and our companies from others thorough storytelling that combines data, insight, ideas, emotion and examples.
Over the past five years I have written and taught workshops on selling better and here are the three most impactful exercises and approaches that everyone can use.
These have become more important today as AI places a premium 1) on outcome versus process, 2) changes where and how work gets done thus distributing more value creation often outside a firm and 3) and makes knowledge and experience less important than selling and adaptability.
The first is a Heuristic: SAVE
The second is an approach that leverages the Principles of Photography.
The third is how to write a presentation in 9 slides or less.
1. S.A.V.E.
S.A.V.E is a heuristic and filter that one can deploy both for business and personal interactions.
S= Solutions
A= Accessible
V= Value(s)
E= Experience
Solutions
People and potential Clients look for solutions, but companies often focus on products, services, and processes.
This is understandable since the purpose of an organization is to provide products and services and often the way to differentiate oneself is by focusing on the special inputs (e.g., data), ingredients (e.g., saffron), processes (e.g., “bespoke”, “hand curdled”), approaches (e.g., some sort of diagram of how the company comes up with results) or organizational structure (e.g., “our special way of working and organizational structure that is silo-less, client focused and efficient”)
All of this is well and good and often necessary but never sufficient.
Because what the buyer is asking is “can you show me some cool shit instead of showing me how your colon works?”
Ask how much of your selling efforts are about broadcasting a colonoscopy on your company’s methods, tactics, history, purpose, and strategy and how much is simply “here is an amazing solution, idea, innovation”.
Accessible
Today, most people are constrained for time and want things fast, friction-free and optimized for their personal situation.
Simplicity in understanding what is available.
Convenience in buying.
Flexibility in delivery and returns.
Optionality in payment terms.
Are our solutions easy to buy and ourselves easy to deal with?
For an organization this means being easily discoverable on all major platforms. Using language that is simple and free of buzz word bingo and jingo lingo. Being available to purchase or interact with across all channels and offering varied methods of delivery and payment.
Value
Value is always a key since in addition to time, money is often a constraint for most.
This often requires competitive pricing but is not necessarily about selling out with the lowest price.
Ideally one finds a way to price the outcome versus the input.
Buying cheap pigs could lead to poisoned hot dogs.
Smart archers use fewer arrows and can get to the bullseye of solution faster, so quality has great ROI but often one must find ways to illustrate and numerate quality.
Some approaches include truly differentiated solutions or people where the result or experience are so clearly superior that premiums are justifiable.
It is important to note that Apple, LVMH, Disney and many others do not differentiate on price but value.
Experience.
In the end people remember the experience and pay for the experience.
And much of business and marketing is creating seamless experiences or rectifying and correcting lapses in the experience.
2. Leveraging Photography.
Many of the techniques used by the best photographers are the ones we can use to become great at problem-solving.
The essence of photography
At its essence photography is driven by three variables:
a) Framing: What the photographer decides to focus on, how the camera is angled and positioned relative to the subject and what is left in and left out of the viewfinder.
b) Exposure/Lighting: This is a combination of aperture, shutter speed and how sensitive to light the film is (ISO speed)
c) Editing: Once upon a time with analog film only professionals had the tools of editing (darkrooms, chemicals, and papers) but today with digital capabilities of our phones we all can pre-edit by taking several test shots, give ourselves lots of editing options by taking a lot of pictures and then later with easy-to-use tools sculpt our pictures to our liking by cropping and filtering and more.
The essence of problem solving
The best problem solvers tend to be good at three factors:
a) Framing the problem by asking the right question: They want to know whether one is solving the right problem.
b) Getting the right input/data/facts so they can throw as much light on the problem: Can one get as much illumination as one can?
c) Interrogating and iterating the answer: The first answers tend to be somewhat right and often led to additional questions or additional fine tuning before one reaches a more robust solution.
3. Rethinking Presentations: Why most decks should be no longer than 9 slides.
Think of all the presentation you have sat through or produced. Many were fifty, sixty or hundred slides long. How many slides do you remember? How many stood out or made a difference?
Presentations are often un-necessarily long because:
a) We often confuse volume with quality.
b) Many people feel without a huge deck they cannot justify their expenses or point of view.
c) Often firms are paid by time exerted so they are incentivized to bloat and be baroque.
d) We often focus too much time about the process, the background, the history, the tools, the sources of data versus delivering the idea, insight, innovation, or imagination.
If we need more than nine slides to tell our story, sell our point of view, or close a deal, we may not have anything truly convincing, differentiated, or interesting.
Over the years here is some learning gleaned from the best story tellers, salespeople, and communicators reduced to a simple exercise.
The best presentations are ones where you write the deck but never present or share it.
Begin with a letter size sheet of paper and a pen or pencil.
Place the sheet so it is in landscape mode.
Pretend you are playing tic tac toe and draw two vertical and two horizontal lines.
You now are looking at a slide view of nine slides on a single piece of paper.
Slide 9 is the appendix slide where you will list supporting material and will be the last slide you fill in.
Slide 8 is the Desired Action slide which highlights what you want to get from the meeting/ have the person you are presenting to act on.
This is the first slide that you fill in since this is what the point of the meeting you are having is.
Then the focus of your work is slide 4, 5 and 6 which you may want to label Insights, Ideas, Imagination. What insights about customer, consumer, marketplace, competition will you be sharing that get your audience to THINK differently? What one two or three big ideas are you delivering that will make their customers or consumers SEE them differently? What provocations, perspectives, points of view are you communicating that will get your audience to FEEL differently about their business, their future or you?
The goal of slide 4, 5 and 6 is to make sure you get the action you are looking for on slide 8.
Slide 7 is the Proof on why you or your firm should be believed, and this is where you show or share the cool results you have driven for other people.
Now you are ready to write the opening slides 1, 2 and 3 which are very key. Slide 1 should be a title that will make your audience come to attention, slide 2 a promise or some other benefit or outcome you will drive (e.g. your firm will generate 20 percent improvement or x or y) and then slide 3 which is the agenda slide or navigation slide which notes that you will be sharing ideas, insights, imagination and supporting material….but are ready to jump into any section based on what your audience is interested in first or how you have read the room at the beginning.
Finally slide 9 which is the appendix of all the supporting material that the first 8 slides are built on and can include data, cases, and other stuff.
Once you write this out you will find that you can make the entire presentation often without the presentation and at minimum you no longer have a long ponderous deck.
Instead, we have perspectives, provocations, points of view, insights, ideas, imagination, promises of delivery and a warehouse of stuff they can rummage through assuming they are interested.