WE NEED TO BE

ROAD RUNNERS

On whom would you bet on in a battle between?

A powerful, lean, mean and hungry desert wolf who can run at about 50 kmph ?

or

A small bird that can't fly but can only run at about 25 kmph ?

 

If you chose the wolf, you're going to be disappointed

Have you seen Warner Brothers' The Roadrunner, which children watchand enjoy on Cartoon Channel ?

Wile, the wolf, is smart, intelligent, and resourceful; plans carefully, and is persistent, yet he loses. Wile keeps laying out perfect traps, but they just don't work. Wile ends up losing all the time against the roadrunner.

He just can't figure it out.

The reason he can't figure it out is very simple - The roadrunner is operating under completely different paradigms

Albert Einstein puts it very succinctly, "You can't solve the problems of a paradigm from within the paradigm."

A paradigm shift that Wile is not able to make, and ends up being constantly baffled by the roadrunner, who seems to operate in a different dimension.

This story is being constantly repeated all across the corporate world.

It happens with the powerful, resource-rich organisations being out-manoeuvred by the new kids on the block who seem to operate on concepts completely different from the ones that the established organisations operate on.

Meticulous planning, organisation, latest tools and equipment, clear goals and objectives - all these perfect management behaviours fetched large returns in the past. But in the last few years, like Wile, many organisations have begun to feel a bit uncertain.

Behaviours that worked earlier don't quite seem to make the returns they used to. Upstarts and mavericks come along and redefine the rules.

Like the roadrunner — a free spirit — someone who takes on the establishment and beats it, simply because he doesn't want to allow the rules of the establishment to apply to him.

We need more roadrunner-thinking today rather than Wile-thinking.

Wile-type subterfuge and stealth don't work as much as flexibility and out of the box thinking does.

Most of us have grown up in the business-is-a-jungle paradigm where stealth, intrigue, and politicking worked best.

No more.

Business is more like a desert now –

Fast changing, Quick moving, Transparent, and With clear open spaces where little can be hidden  

Desert organisation is a flat, open, information-sharing one. Globalisation gives everyone the same information, resources, technology and markets.

Ability to put together those pieces in the fastest, and most innovative manner will separate the winners from the losers.

So how can poor Wile begin to shift paradigms and become more innovative?

Only by stepping out of the paradigm.

Towards this, We – Wile type - first need to ask the following questions

1.What rules and assumptions I am currently operating under. 2.Why do I need to do it this way? 3.What would happen if I do it differently? 4.What would happen if I do it completely opposite to the way it happens currently? 5.Why do I need to do it at all?

Some common paradigms in almost all organisations are: 1.We can only grow X per cent a year - Ask what you would have to do to grow 10X per cent. 2.The market will only buy through these channels -Ask what you'd do if these channels became unavailable overnight. 3.We've always done it this way - Ask what you'd do differently if you fired yourself and then rehired yourself as a new guy.

Some ways of dealing with paradigms are:

Start at the end and work backwards.

Often, we have some process in place and then think what to do with it. Reverse this. Begin with the end in mind and then map what you need to do to reach that end.

Change the frame

The future is not an extension of the past. For instance, remember, Amazon asked why books needed a physical location to be sold

Do the opposite of the obvious

Just see what happens.

Find someone who doesn't know that what you want done is impossible.

Often experts "know“ something can't be done, so they don't even try. That is until someone comes along who doesn't know it can't be done, and does it.

If you have some "state-of-the-art" process in your company, realise that "state of the art" is often just a fraction of what can be.

Established organisations to get to quantum growth will need to challenge and breakthrough existing paradigms in three areas:

Organisational, Market and Industry.

If the industry or the organisation says that only incremental improvements are the way to go, and if you follow that, you're doing a Wile and you're going to be fair game for the first roadrunner that comes along.

Often people doubt a market exists simply because the product doesn't yet exist.

Similarly, they doubt that something can happen within the organisation or industry simply because it hasn't happened yet.

The major mistake most people make is to confuse the unusual with the impossible. They think that just because something is unusual it's impossible.

And even the impossible is not really impossible. The impossible becomes possible with a different paradigm.

Ask the roadrunner.  

And become one

A Roadrunner!!!

Thank You