thinkfuture: technology, philosophy and the future

Can you innovate by copying?

Many organizations are planning for 2020. There's a right way and a wrong way to do it.  Some organizations call this “strategic planning,” however since the plan is only a year out, I’d argue that you might not call it “strategic,” although, in this world of extremely short-term planning, let’s say that planning one year out can be considered strategic. Most companies who are looking at completing these strategic planning exercises look at what they are doing today and extend that out a year. They plan by looking at the extensions of what is going on today.

Is digital transformation simply applying digital technologies to your current processes, products and services? No, it is much more.  Get you free paper on "Doing Digital Transformation Right"

Everyone has their own reality. This is why its so difficult to get people to agree on anything - everyone experiences their own reality, and its this reality which  is what you should be selling. Your version of reality. 

A wise man once said – if you are not embarrassed by your first version, then you waited too long to launch it.

Have you ever looked at what you were doing and realized that you were just washing the walls, and not pushing the balls?

Do you know your customer journey? Have you mapped it out lately?  Do you make it easy for customers to do business with you? After a time, your processes may have begun to deviate from the ideal customer experience. Are you seeing an increase in customer service calls, lower net promoter scores, and other key indicators that something is amiss in your customer experience? 

As humans, we’ve been biased to go after short term results over long term results ever since we were primitives wandering the savannah. The ability to plan and think to the future, to save for tomorrow, to think about what is next, is something that only human beings have, along with the ability to think and reason. But like most humans, we are lazy, and only look as far out as we need to.

In every company, there are troublemakers.

These are the radicals, those who don’t toe the party line, they use different processes, they don’t go through channels, they might say or do things that cause some discomfort. Some may describe them as “pains in the ass,” rogue elements which create all manner of disruption, and the company would be better served if they either just went away, or just shut themselves up and fell into place along with everyone else. You all know the type.

The question is when you come across this type of person, what do you do? How do you handle this kind of “rogue” individual or team? Do you try to stop them, to turn them into “normal” workers who don’t cause trouble, do you leave them alone, or do you actively work to shut them down and expel those elements from the company?