BUILDINGBETTERFUTURES

Howard TierskyCEO

Achieving a Transformation Vision

A major challenge that most large enterprises face is the lack of a true transformation vision.

Most companies have a growth vision or goal: to serve the maximum number of people, to sell the maximum amount of product, to grow different segments, or to expand in new areas.

The goal gets cascaded down to different areas to figure out how they can individually drive growth.

But that goal is predicated on optimizing the products and experience that they currently provide.

For most organizations to be successful in the digital age, they

need to change and adapt more profoundly.

Leaders of large enterprises tell product groups to make new products, channel groups to find new channels, and sales group to sell more stuff.

If you multiply the effects of these different areas of growth, you get something that looks like overall

organizational growth.

But there’s a problem with this method.

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Imagine a caterpillar trying to figure out how become a butterfly, and having every part of its body create its own strategies and methods to contribute.

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A segmented approach can work when you're just trying to multiply the scale of what you’re already achieving, with little to no optimization in the different areas, but it doesn't work when you're trying to transform an entire organization.

And entire transformation is what we need to do to keep up with the quickly changing digital world. A vision for the whole transformation is what’s going to truly coordinate your entire organization.

This is Lana Turner, famous movie star from the '40s. The story of her discovery as a Hollywood starlet is, I think, one of the most poisonous in our cultural consciousness today.

The story goes like this: Around 1934, Lana Turner (who was originally known as Judy Turner) is 16 years old, skipping school, and having a Coke at the counter at Schwab's Pharmacy in Hollywood.

She's spotted by a famous movie director who says, "You're beautiful and have a wholesome look. You'd be great in a movie. I'm going to take you in for a screen test."

He brings her to the back lot, does the screen test, and it’s fantastic. He puts her in a movie, and she becomes one of the top stars in Hollywood. The rest is history!

There are two problems with this story. First, it's actually not true. The whole story is fiction. But even if it were true, that’s not how transformation happens, and it’s certainly not how a 16-year-old kid becomes a movie star.

The other day, I was listening to Howard Stern talking to Jennifer Hudson about her success. He asked her if, when she was a child and sang in church, everyone knew that she was going to be a star.

She said, "No, because there were a lot of kids in my church who could sing like that, and there were a lot of people in my family who could sing like that."

The difference was that, besides the talent, she also had the drive, determination, and the vision to succeed.

This idea of needing vision to succeed isn’t new.

– Carl Sandburg

“Nothing happens unless first, a dream.”

– George Washington Carver

“Where there is no vision, there is no hope.”

– Helen Keller

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision!”

What is this transformation vision that you need to create? What are

its components?

There are two parts to a transformation vision. The first is a vision of how the world is changing.

How are your customers going to be changing over the next few years??

How is technology going to change, and what do you think your competitors, old or new, might do with the changing landscape?

The second component is to ask ourselves: what new products and services can we bring to market to take advantage of these changes

in environment and our customers, that will compete with what our competitors are doing?

How does our business model need to change, based on new technology capabilities, or new customer behaviors?

How will our operations, cost structure, and ultimately, our interaction with our customers change? Will we be delivering on different channels, serving and supporting them in different ways, or will we, in fact, be dealing with an entirely new set of customers?

It might seem like you need to be able to foretell the future to answer these questions, and I think that’s a major reason why many enterprises don’t have a true transformational vision.

They have a five-year plan, but it isn’t really a vision for transformation, because they believe they can't see that far into the future so it's not practical to have.

But here’s the thing: to anticipate the future, you don’t need to actually be able to see into the future. I’ll foretell the future right now.

Let’s say it’s about 4:30. I think that in the next couple hours, many people in my geographic area will be having dinner. I'm heading to the airport shortly, for a flight to London, and I predict that there will be lines at the TSA checkpoints that I'll have to take into account to get on my flight on time.

The truth is we can foretell the future to some degree, based on previous experience. We might not always be right, but there's a lot of information we can use to get a reasonable hypothesis of what the future is going to look like.

Was the iPhone that much of a shock, after the Blackberry Treo and other smartphones that came before?

Yes, the iPhone had aspects that we might not have anticipated, but its existence on the market was relatively predictable. The precise timing might not have been predictable by someone who wasn't in on Apple's plans, but fact that is came to market was a little predictable.

To get into the business of predicting the future, we have to get over the fear of being wrong.

“The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.”

– Seth Godin

Here’s one last thought about creating transformation visions: It’s important to be able to think in terms of transformation time.

Sometimes our focus is so much on the next quarter or the things that we have to get done right now. And that is the reality of the world of the large enterprise, especially if it’s a public company.

But in order to be successful long term, you have to be able to think in terms of transformation time. You have to think a few years ahead, because the transformations you need are often going to take a few years.

Products and solutions that burst onto the market, like the iPhone, are developed for years before ever seeing the light of day. Many of the things that we see as overnight successes are really the result of long-term visioning, planning, R&D efforts and product development.

Those that are successful will be those that define

the future of our company.

To recap, here are a few quick tips:

First, starting planning before you know what's going to happen.

Second, define the fundamental value proposition your company brings to your customers, and decide how that value proposition be best delivered in the future.

You can use that exercise to define what your transformation

vision should potentially be.

Track the changes in the world, and engage yourself in ongoing research, both to initially develop your long-term transformation vision and then to continue to see whether your predictions appear to be coming true (or are way off course.)

If the timeframe you initially anticipated changes, adjust your transformation vision to align with what’s actually happening.

Most importantly, be willing to get it wrong.

If you’re prepared for all the possibilities, you’ll be ready for the actual future when it arrives.

FROM helps clients win the digital customer by developing and optimizing properties, creating new digital products and transforming teams, unifying the digital experience online, in stores and everywhere you need to touch the next generation of digital consumers.

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