Most articles about organizations who failed to read the writing on the wall and thus lost a life-changing opportunity, faded into obsolescence or lost their brilliance include some anecdotal evidence that illustrates how senior management had been forewarned by a harbinger and chose to ignore it.
This writing style goes back all the way to Homer (the Greek, not the Yellow) and is at the same time a prophetic admonition as well as a shaming public execution of the heretics who failed to pay their respects to the gods.
In the business world, it may be something like an email dated 5 years ago detailing what would happen if the company did not invest in a specific technology or a presentation made to senior management about the risks associated with some practice.
These prove that management had been warned and chose to ignore the warning.
However, what is seldom mentioned is that each of the 10 members of senior management receives more than 200 emails a day (i.e. almost 4 million emails in 5 years) and 6 meetings a day (75 thousand in 5 years). And, among these, there were 500 other false prophetic forewarnings which were also ignored but never materialized.
The truth is that telling the true innovation prophecies from the false ones is tough. But I’ve listed 5 ways you can please the right innovation gods and stay on top of the changes in your market.
What should you do?
As I mentioned in another article, the first step is to identify where change is most likely to happen first. And, as I explained, this has nothing to do with whether they are an early adopter or not and everything to do with who should first feel the pressure to change.
These might be more than one group of clients. Maybe your international clients will receive early pressure due to their operations offshore while, at the same time, your clients selling to Government will receive early pressure from a changing regulatory environment. These are 2 distinct innovation segments.
And what do I do with this?
- Monitor them. Once you have your innovation segments and understand where the pressure they feel should come from, you should create deliberate processes to monitor these clients. Make it a point to have frequent calls with them to discuss nothing but how they are feeling and responding to these pressures. Make this someone’s responsibility, have him produce formal reports and incorporate this in his evaluation.
- Involve them. In these lists of clients, you will probably find a few whom you call ‘friends’. These ‘friends’ are great candidates for your own innovation advisory board. They can help you understand what is happening with your other clients, suggest course corrections for your responses and bring new ideas for you to consider. Keep their involvement at a high level, their meetings not too frequent and discussions well planned and structured for maximum value.
- Get involved with them. The flip side of solution #2 is for you to get involved with some of your friend-clients, if possible, providing advice on how banks, insurers and other providers can support their strategic challenges. Helping some of your clients solve their emerging problems will give you a superior understanding of how change is impacting them.
- Cooperate. Other organizations are likely to have similar issues as yours. These may be direct competitors, peers serving similar clients in different markets or companies in other businesses (e.g. a technology vendor serving your clients). Consider creating task forces or even joint initiatives to maximize your learning. As a general rule, try and avoid organizations and individuals already committed to a specific solution (e.g. a Blockchain-based solution vendor) as these tend to introduce their biases in your discovery process.
- Your solution. What other solutions have you experimented with or currently use? Let me know on the comments below.
