A couple of weeks back I was in Chicago attending a senior management course at Booth School of Business and amongst the several areas of thought leadership I was privileged to be part of, quite a few stood out and one in particular seems to have resonance for this magazine.
Even since technology became a key aspect of businesses, technology was considered an enabling function - used for ensuring core business could utilize available technologies to streamline operations, remove efficiency barriers, create decision support systems for easier analysis etc - however things have changed now. Technology is no longer just an enabling function enabling core businesses like banks and telcos to streamline and run operations but actually is now increasingly defining strategic value more than ever. Let me explain.
Most of my working life I have been confronted with a statement from the CXO community - 'we have a business problem (& it could be efficiency, productivity, revenue or something else but mostly tangible), find me the best way to solve it - typically using a mix of consulting, business process engineering and technology provisioning.' What I am hearing now is an increasing number of CXOs speaking about disruption - brought about principally by technology. I am hearing more CXOs (and not just the CIOs, in fact the CIOs seem very quiet in this one!) who are asking me - well, we understand there is this new great technology or application (some CFOs, COOs and CEOs are even using acronymns like apps!) and we want to be able to leverage it, we are struggling with how we can use say facebook to provide better service for our customers or increase our branding. Incredible but for the first time in almost two decades, I am witnessing technology driving business innovation, desire and dynamics and business leaders are struggling to keep up with it.
So what is causing this transformation? So what is causing the COO or the CFO or the CEO to struggle to appreciate and utilize these trends? These are some of the smartest people I am privileged to work with and they should know how to leverage Facebook for their banks or telcos right? Well, I am not sure - not because the CXO communities are not smart - they are exceptionally so - but the fact remains that the rapid change is something no one has prepared anyone for. It is not something that can be taugth in a business school and no one really knows how to leverage knowledge economics at the speed of light. It just hasnt happened before and most standard management books are unable to provide a template or a framework for leveraging this phenomenon. Interesting isnt it? To put this into context - for today's consumer (& not just the Gen Y or Z), the last tweet is often is more important determinant than the career resume'! So by the time someone dreams up a strategy or framework to analyse and leverage the existing knowledge content, the time for it has already passed!!
The short answer on leveraging knowledge is - build agility as part of the business dynamics. Agility and adaptability have always been part of a CXO's agenda but they are probably more essential than ever before and the virtuous cycle of agility perhaps has to be exponentially rapid. Perhaps it is time to revisit the 1-5 year business plans, perhaps it is time to jettison large and complex programs that promise much in 18 months time (or more), perhaps it is time to re-think on what actually constitutes strategy - perhaps it is actually time for us to evaluate our knowledge content, its relevance and frameworks, perhaps it is time for us to revisit long held notions of importance given to revenue sustainability, marketing dynamics and I think most certainly it is time to rethink what actually constitutes our target markets (& marketing strategies thereof) and our competition.
Which is all good reasons why I thought a break to study at two world class institutions was a good idea! We shall go back to discussing outsourcing operations in my next article.
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