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Your industry may be the same as it was 50 years ago. Change comes slowly, if at all, so your future appears to be secure. But you’re worried, anyway. As you look around the world you see entire sectors in upheaval. New technology has led to companies being “Netflixed” – completely destroyed with sudden speed by outside innovations.

How can you be sure that won’t happen to your organization?

The fact is, you can’t prevent such external forces. Somewhere, bright people are invisibly trying out fresh ideas, experimenting. They intend to revolutionize and displace whatever product or service you offer. More recently, COVID has shown just how small the earth is, and how vulnerable we are in the Caribbean. Your company isn’t safe, and the barriers that kept competition away are falling faster each day.

In the face of increased risk, how do you respond? Some are fatalistic, believing that you can’t stop a hurricane, epidemic or technology from upsetting the best -made plans. However, if your organization intends to do more than put its head in the sand, here are some steps to follow.

1. Plan Scenarios

If you can divine the small beginnings of a disruptive technology, congratulations. You’re halfway there. If you can’t, start looking by scouring the trade press.

Also tune into what younger staff are seeing and saying. They could be closer to determining the outlook than you are. Why? They’ll be the ones who will deal with it. In fact, if they sense a disruption, expect them to test your leadership team. “Do these executives even have a clue?” they may ask. When they conclude the worst, they’ll leave.

Use these inklings to capture future scenarios for your organization. Go out at least 20 years and see what happens when different possibilities play out. For the ones which are most likely, craft a single preferred outcome. Then, backcast to this year to determine what your short-term actions should be.

But sometimes this won’t work.

I have seen teams realize: “The company has no future.” Like the old photo film industry, they realized that the tides are turning for good, and they need an escape plan. Working harder would just deepen their dependency, as it did for Kodak. Today, its rival Fuji is thriving in entirely new lines of business while Kodak is defunct.

2. Get the Timing Right

Another lesson which emerged from the Fuji vs. Kodak battle is the fact that the latter invested in bad bets.

Some believe Kodak didn’t foresee the advent of digital photography, but a closer look at the record shows otherwise. They were one of the first to predict that the technology would replace their more profitable film business.

However, their response to the threat was mistaken. They invested in digital kiosks around the world, mostly in shopping centres. Their belief? Customers wanted to make prints in a convenient location.

They were correct, but they missed the growth of desktop computing. Customers shifted to managing their photos at home, powered by computers and printers built by HP, Compaq and Apple.

Unfortunately, Kodak’s timing was wrong. Their strategy failed.

The best solution to this problem? Bring in a wide range of team members to craft your plans. This task is too difficult to be left to a single individual, even if he is the company founder and a certified genius.

3. Focus on Todays’ Implementation

Even if you capture the perfect plan for the next disruption, it’s easy to be swallowed up by today’s emergency. No surprise: your organization isn’t designed to adopt unfamiliar ways of doing things.

For example, the day after the retreat, the easiest thing someone can do is go back to what they were doing before. After all, their calendar looks the same, email messages haven’t gone away and the same meetings are scheduled.

Consequently, internal processes don’t change. Projects fail to be launched. Strategic initiatives never leave the retreat.

It takes incredible energy to bring about such a transformation and Caribbean people won’t switch if they don’t know why they must. In other words, just being told to do something different will not work.

Instead, company leaders should win over hearts and minds. They need to inspire staff to see the reasons why change is imperative and urgent. But this is no one-time task: it requires constant reinforcement and performance management.

In summary, the real villain isn’t innovative technology but your company’s ineffective response. Delay these three actions and you’ll probably fall behind, never able to catch up.

The upside is that these steps are within your control and will prepare you for the introduction of a new technology that threatens to “Netflix” your company into oblivion.

Francis Wade is the host of the Caribbean Strategy Conference on June 23-25. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

You’re the member of an executive suite who has battled the COVID-19 pandemic alongside your colleagues. As the world adjusts to accommodate the virus, it’s high time to look beyond the mere survival of your company. But…surprise! Not everyone on the senior team or board agrees this is urgent. Do you garner full support first or power ahead, hoping laggards will catch up later?

Now that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, most leaders are ready to move past survival mode. Today, companies must thrive in waters churned up by COVID-19, inflationary recession, armed conflict and unsteady supply chains.

However, a few visionary managers have outgrown a yearning for the old normal. Some are convinced that customer behavior has changed…permanently. They also expect new competitors to attack from anywhere in the world.

In their minds, there is no going back. They see once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to transform everything by moving forward.

However, their impatience to seize the future and disrupt their markets isn’t shared by all their fellow leaders. Board members, executives and senior managers are showing a mixed bag of commitment and reluctance. Why can’t they see the obvious?

1. They are stuck in short-term habits

Disruptive thinking requires an ability to think in the long-term. But the past few years have prioritized short term, firefighting skills. Many corporate leaders have thrived by learning how to set everything aside, other than the bare essentials. In this emergency mode, they have adapted by becoming hyper-alert, flexible and willing to exert a great deal of energy at a moment’s notice.

But it’s not enough. In fact, their transition up the organizational ladder requires more strategic thinking, not less.

The bad news is that these skills aren’t taught, nor is their need emphasized. Consequently, you find top executives and even board members silent in strategic planning retreats. While they can rally to any emergency, they lack the practice of asking themselves: “Where is the organization headed?” They become the kind of leaders who win battles, but lose wars.

However, it’s never too late for a reboot. Long before your next planning session, create opportunities in meetings at all levels to explore strategic choices. These discussions should help develop staff’s willingness to think in both short- and long-term dimensions at the same time. This crucial skill will make its way into the culture of the organization, preparing it for later disruptions.

2. They lack the skill of precise long-term planning

Newly promoted executives discover that an enthusiasm to be strategic is just the beginning. For example, in the middle of a retreat, when they are asked to create a detailed 20 and 30 year plan, they balk: “I can only think five years out.” Or, “Things are changing too quickly to look that far ahead.”

Too many leaders assume that because they can’t see how long-term planning works, it must not be possible.

When shown multiple examples of successful cases, their resistance softens, but the point is not to change their minds. It’s much more important to give them the necessary skill of long-term planning.

Unfortunately, even the best business schools only hint at this capability. If you’re an MBA, you may recall courses on strategic planning. But the case method of discussion which most use isn’t intended to teach you actual steps. That comes from real-life, and some lucky exposure.

However, the process is easy enough to follow, even for skeptical team members. In prior columns, I have laid out the steps in detail. Observe them, and you will have a skill which can be yours forever.

Don’t ignore the need to develop this competence among your leaders.

3. They won’t collaborate

If you’re a top executive, you probably hate the occasions when you have to force people to act. At most, you receive grudging compliance. But you don’t get true understanding or intrinsic motivation, i.e. buy-in. Therefore, you feel forced to micro-manage.

Nevertheless, you won’t produce a disruptive strategy following this method. Why? A lasting, game-changing plan is beyond the brilliance of a single individual. Instead, it takes a multi-disciplinary team to envision the breakthrough and implement it together.

While a collaborative approach requires more time and interpersonal skills, it’s the only one which is sustainable. Selling a disruption to teammates calls for extraordinary capabilities, but these aren’t ordinary times. The remaining months of 2023 are a chance to separate your company from the Blackberrys in your industry…the failures. Make the most of it by including your colleagues from the very beginning in a smart way.

Francis Wade is the host of the Caribbean Strategy Conference on June 23-25. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

Almost all corporate plans cover the next five years. However, many companies go not a single month further. In other words, they survive on one five-year plan after another. If you have ever questioned the wisdom of this practice, keep reading.

Your strategic planning team meets and decides to limit its time horizon to only five years. Why? “It’s too hard to know what will happen in the future.” It’s true. The past two years have brought COVID, the recession, a war and other rude surprises. Companies’ best intentions lay in tatters.

Given the amount of change we have experienced, some say it’s folly to think past the short-term. In their mind, leaders will be so wrong about the future that it makes no sense to think too far out. The idea seems perilous.

If your managers are thinking along these lines, they aren’t alone. Around the world, the focus of attention has been on survival tactics. They keep the top line viable, limit costs, micro-manage workers performing their duties and secure supply chains.

Why then, should your company consider the creation of a new long-term plan? Here are three reasons we have gleaned in two decades of experience with clients who craft 15-30 year plans.

= Your 5-Year Plan is Just a Dull Revision

If your executive team is like many, it may be “mailing in” the strategic plan. In a half-hearted effort and minor revisions, the old plan merely becomes the new one.

Your Pre-COVID thinking is fully preserved.

This contrasts with the best companies, which are undertaking a fundamental re-think. They realize that more changes have taken place in two pandemic years than in the prior 20, shifting the underlying unmet needs of customers.

Furthermore, competitors are using the opportunity to craft “Blue Ocean” spaces which have never existed before. Consider the way Digicel entered the mobile phone market in 2001. Inside the walls of the incumbent, C&W leadership fought the notion of a pent-up demand for cell phones. The long lines on the first day of free competition propelled the new entrant to regional prominence.

If your company is too busy or lacks the energy to do a rethink, prepare for its own rude surprise.

= Your 5-Year Plan is For You, Not Them

While the Great Resignation is slow to reach the Caribbean, this hasn’t stopped the Big Disengagement. Your most talented and accomplished employees are withholding discretionary effort, searching for outside opportunities, and starting side-hustles in the meantime. Their faces are on the screen, but their dreams lie elsewhere.

However, when you announce a fresh strategy, their ears perk up. They want to see whether or not there is something worth staying around for.

Unfortunately, if all they hear is a “new” five-year plan, they will accelerate their plans to leave. It’s written proof: the company’s leaders are just as clueless as they suspected. And self-serving.

The fact is, a long-term strategic plan signals that the future is being secured by savvy creativity, rather than lost by selfish short-sight. It could craft a legacy to be celebrated.

= Your 5-Year Plan Ignores Technology Trends

The whole point of planning for a long horizon is to place intelligent bets now that shape the future. Understanding technology trends helps you do so effectively.

In your industry, these transformations have probably accelerated due to COVID. Companies who have accepted this fact and planned accordingly, are thriving. By contrast, the laggards are stuck teaching their employees how to use Excel and PowerPoint in face-to-face classrooms. They already failed. Perhaps they believed that the digital future would take care of itself.

Today, you know the truth. Organizations which fail to invest in younger, digitally savvy talent will reap the sour fruit of stale thinking. Their strategies won’t disrupt their industries.

This isn’t to say that it’s easy to create a 30-year strategic plan. However, some believe it can be captured in a nebulous vision statement.

Unfortunately, in today’s fast-moving world, these pronouncements arouse the suspicion of staff. Fancy words aren’t enough. Without a roadmap, they simply won’t trust grandiose statements which have no foundation.

To carve a credible route, adopt tools like back casting and the Merlin Process to connect the future to today. Yes…people want Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG’s), but they must be grounded in feasible logic.

The timing may be right for you to create more than a mere five-year plan. It could exploit opportunities which, perhaps for a limited time, beckon your organization to achieve great things. It’s the best way to stay out of danger.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.