Strategy is nothing to do with the past. It is nothing to do with the present. Strategy is always about being a leader in the future. One thing we all know for sure is everything changes in the future. If you want to be a leader in the future, you have to adapt to change. Another way of saying adapting to change is innovation. Therefore, we are meant to say that strategy is innovation in the new normal.
Think of all your projects at your desk. How many of them are about managing the present? And how many projects do you have that will make you stronger ten years from now? Typically, when I ask this question, leaders realise that most of their projects are populated with daily necessities. This is normal and necessary for running a company successfully (or living a life in harmony). However, there is always a misbelief that to get the job done in the future; you have to be in the future. Actually, this is not true. One must act today for the future. Your place ten years from now is actually all related to your actions today. Therefore, I may say, “future is now.”
If you are not dealing with innovation, you are not doing strategy. You are doing something else.
Let me ask you this way:
Think of all your projects in life or at work. Then, put them in three boxes.
The first box is managing the present.
The second box is selectively forgetting the past.
The third box is creating the future.
I am serious; take your time and do it. Obviously, you do not need to put your projects into physical boxes, but you may also do this 🙂 Allocate them.
How many of them are going to make you a leader in ten years? Or, if I reframe the question, how many of them will help you to stay relevant in life where everything changes at light speed?
The first box is all about efficiency.
The second and third boxes are about opportunities.
In business, my focus is on helping clients to build on opportunities. Efficiency consulting is already populated with respectful companies with years of wisdom and experience. However, future thinking is an open source. It is not about how established you are but about your creativity and audacity. Besides, the exponential technologies are so augmented that the market for applied creativity is like an ocean. There is room for massive growth.
Once you step into the second and third boxes, you will need trusted playbooks and frameworks to make things happen.
The second and third boxes sit on two different mindsets in my practice. Both are necessary for the company, but they must be applied in two fundamentally different ways.
Continuous innovation
The second box is about selectively forgetting the past. Therefore the main focus is creating a dedicated team within the company in a safe space to apply continuous innovation. They would be designing growth at an adjacent space where the company culture and resources are in line. The team’s speed of learning is an unfair advantage. Therefore, when we say selectively forgetting the past, we mean unlearning, making assumptions and testing them at high speed.
This is what we call continuous innovation.
Breakthrough innovation
The third box is about creating the future. The company should create a fundamentally different space to execute such an innovation. Maybe a spinoff. The new space would run on fundamentally different capabilities, processes, metrics and cultures. It is a space where companies create breakthrough innovations. That said, there are challenges and conflicts in this area. As you are in the business of creating a brand new organisational logic, the dominant logic in the company (old engine) will not like it! And in life, you may assume your ego is the dominant logic.
The third box is all about thinking outside of it.
This is what we call breakthrough innovation.
Linear innovation
Of course, one can innovate in daily life and at work. Mainly with the help of exponential technologies, advancing leadership skills, embedding data awareness and so on. And this type of innovation is beneficial to run an efficient business. It is also necessary to stay relevant in an ever-evolving economy – to generate profitability and preserve capital.
This type is innovation is called linear innovation. It is all about increasing efficiency. And it is necessary for every established business. The six sigma, blue ocean, lean manufacturing, agile projects, scrum, OKRS, you name them.
But, my practice is not serving linear innovation!
Linear innovation is about getting things done in a better way.
We love to smash things down and find ways to build them better.
Therefore our mindset does not support linear growth.
We design growth – exponentially.
And we learn every day at the office.Â