If you want to win in today’s highly competitive environment, you need to possess an unwavering and intentional focus on tomorrow. Think about this:
The future is no longer a timeframe; the future is a mindset!
The greatest handicap with the conventional planning process is that it works from today forward and implicitly assumes, whatever the assertions to the contrary, that the future will be more or less like the present. The leading minds know that the future will not be an echo of the present. Getting to the future first requires that you be deliberately farsighted.
One of the acid tests you might reflect upon is – “does our current strategic plan have our firm differentiating itself in some meaningful way, show us doing anything different from the three or four significant competitors in our marketplace; and cause other competitors to see us as a ‘leader’ in some particular niche areas?
Many are satisfied if they can get a handle on their clients’ current needs. But, this is not the answer. You must also think far ahead of the curve. You must lead the pack by anticipating clients’ needs before clients even know those needs exist. Thus, the question is NOT, “how might we better serve our clients?” That is an example of working from what is. To work from what could be, the central question becomes, “What service might we provide that clients are not yet asking for?”
How many of you, as you are reading this, understand the potential influence of Synthetic Biology, or Graphene, or CRISPR Genomics, or Biometrics, or IoT and how any one of these will profoundly affect your future? Your strategy should only be concerned with looking externally, looking to the future, and looking for growth opportunities.
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At different times during this past year, I released three new eBooks through the kind folks at Legal Business World – all of which remain available free for you to download.
This excerpt comes from
Strategy Innovation: Getting to The Future First
(242 Pages, 43,079 Total Readers, Top Countries: US, United Kingdom, Australia, India, Netherlands)
By Patrick J. McKenna
Keywords: Digital Transformation, Innovation, Business Strategy
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