Zoom! So many moving parts in today’s new age economy are bringing a “universe” of complexity for CEO’s and business leaders to sort through to make sense of their businesses. It seems that we are just now discovering that our entire universe may also be unexplainably expanding at an accelerated pace … as recognized
recently by the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics! As the illustration of the CEO complexity universe suggests, there are a myriad of diverse issues that business leaders must consider as they navigate their organizations towards success.
The corporate scrap yard is full of organizations that were caught by surprise with sudden flips to irrelevance driven by changes in consumer preferences, shifts in key customer strategies or just getting left behind due to unexpected technology or competitor leaps.
The corporate speed of play in the “major leagues” of business is accelerating and requires proactive, agile organizations who can sense and respond better and faster. Having been a soccer player and coach for many years, I have grown to recognize that there are two parts to SPEED … how fast are you and when did you start running! Building that dynamic capability to “read the game” requires a systematic focus on anticipating change … identifying the key “forces of change” and a skillful effort at MONITORING the right trends and success factors. Many of the forces of change that we face will be internal to the organization where most organizations have a fire hydrant of information and information demands that often crush and frustrate the troops.
Agile organizations determine the right key performance indicators that provide forward-looking insight to help their leaders rapidly recognize important patterns and trends affecting business success. Increasingly, these leaders are depending on business analytics to help them monitor and interpret the universe of complexity they face … in real time. Here is a brief video clip with Jim Davis, SVP/CMO at SAS Institute in Cary, NC … the industry leader in business analytics … Monitoring through Analytics!
Other important forces of change involve monitoring external stakeholders including consumers, customers, suppliers or even competitors. Successful, agile organizations have established on- going monitoring capabilities to help them recognize and inform their strategies and operating dexterity in response to insights they gain from their monitoring. One of the pioneers in monitoring consumer behavior, trends and attitudes has been the Jankelovich Monitor … now called The Futures Company and headquartered in Chapel Hill, NC. This is a very good example of an external resource partner that helps organizations and leaders read the game better and faster as the speed of play continues to accelerate.
Anticipating change will continue to be one of the greatest challenges for all business leaders as our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world become progressively more so and faster. Now is a good time to huddle and determine if you have the right monitoring processes in place to help you anticipate the change ahead in your world.
