Well what a year it’s been. I have been spending a lot of time at home this year and the Bestem Network members have not been able to meet for most of this year which is unfortunate. Interestingly I dug out last year’s notes from the dinner (link) and they tell an interesting tale of how we were thinking then.
This year the network came together virtually to share experiences at the start of the pandemic. We kept up this approach and, with network members at AGM Transitions, we turned this into a book (link). It’s been a year of finding new ways to do business.
Did you build resilience?
Those that listened to Capt. Mike Paterson’s talk at the network dinner in 2015 (before Trump and before Brexit) might recall his sage advice:
Change is happening faster than ever fueled by: high-speed communications; close trade links; and cross-border
investment. Rising inequality, climate change and cyber-development combine with politically/ideologically motivated ‘real’ and ‘Maskirovka’ type conflict. With increased change comes increased risk and, whilst we are accomplished at compiling risk registers, scenario planning better helps us to understand and to respond quickly.Read the whole report here
Business leaders must ask: How do we build resilience? How to make risk based decisions to drive behaviours?
Business has been changing for a while
About seven years ago I started to sense that traditional business approaches weren’t working as they used to. I started to investigate what might be going on and uncovered work by people far smarter than me. They were starting to conclude that society was heading for a 4th Industrial revolution. I wrote about some of my influences in this post which I published almost 5 years ago. https://bestemnetwork.com/2016/03/29/innovation-and-productivity-with-4th-industrial-revolution/
At that time, I was a Non-Exec director on the board of an oil and gas technology company. I guided the excutives to pivot part of that company and pursue oilfield digitalisation. This included a mail-out to COO’s of oil companies setting out the case for digitalisation by assembling the works of leading writers. I urged them to make the case that it was too important to be something led by IT. This was now to become the backbone of an operational transformation.
I recall there was division among the owners of this company, I was almost laughed out of the room by one who, despite the evidence, was unable to acknowledge that the world would change and was convinced there was no such thing as digitalisation in the oil field. His view was that IT should remain in charge of anything computers and leave operations to operations people. It was not an isolated view in the industry.
My post on digital disruption of the oil and gas industry (link) from three years ago was this year’s most-read post on the blog, with hundreds of visitors each week. When I published it, it seemed no-one was interested.
The case for flexible innovation
After covid, perhaps the case has been made for investing in flexibility and contingency (as advocated by Capt. Paterson) even if the business case is based on a balance of probabilities and not a black-and-white P&L. I urge you not to be so stuck in the present and the current “rules of the game” that you believe the future will not be radically different. It may.
Perhaps look at the wise words of Patrick von Pattay from 2017. (Pattrick has been the hero of the year for his company.)
Just because we have not yet identified the potential disruption does not mean to me that there cannot be any. It just means that we haven’t thought hard enough. If it were an obvious change then it wouldn’t be so disruptive as we’d all have the ability to respond. A disruptive threat, by its very nature, is likely to come from left field.
https://bestemnetwork.com/2017/11/27/interview-with-patrick-von-pattay/
To me it’s clear we are heading along a 4th Industrial Revolution path. It is a transition and, as with all transitions, it will take longer to get where we are going than we expect, but we will go a lot further than we can imagine.
What will happen in 2021?
COVID-19. First, we scrambled to keep going, waiting for things to return to normal. Then we started to talk about the New Normal, and The Great Reset. People talk about this year accelerating change. I don’t think that captures it. It makes it sound like we’ve just gone a bit faster along a normal path. We’ve seen step changes, fleeting moments of opportunity grabbed, and old models fail.
I am putting together a post for the new year highlighting some of the trends that the network is telling me about. I think these will play out well in the coming period for those that take the heading from the course they set . It will be a jouney of rapid discovery, the answers are not final even if the direction is clear.
Overall though, it’s obvious that to be successful we will all need to innovate and to try new products, services, customers, partners and ways of working – no one has this covered yet, but some people are finding new and interesting ways to respond to the changing world.
You could wait and see if you finally get the opportunity to try the 2020 strategy you made last year – or you can get up, shake off the dust, scratch your head and figure out a way to commercialise the innovations that your team have been making.
For a hint of the changes to come, have a read of this post from 2019: https://bestemnetwork.com/2019/06/17/london-tech-week/
The future is coming, how you choose to prepare and respond is up to you. The choice is yours.
This nicely articulates recent challenges and future commercial progressions!