ADAPT #34 - 🤘 Warning: Ignoring These Laws Could Be Fatal

Straight to it this week:

Forget trying to predict the future.

Inspired by Newton’s laws of motion, here are some “science inspired” business thoughts!
(I’ve done this before HERE when I wrote about innovation and the second law of thermodynamics)

Stay with me it’s short and worth it.

Business transformation is complex, so these thoughts may be a useful way to look at it and even communicate with it.

Newton’s first law of motion states that:
"A body at rest will remain at rest,
and a body in motion will remain in motion
unless it is acted upon by an external force."

I talk in my keynotes a lot about the danger of MOMENTUM which is basically this:

An individual, team or company moves in a certain direction and when things change they struggle to adapt to the change (…a body in motion will remain in motion etc …)

Don’t for a second think that Blockbuster, Nokia, Kodak and many others went bust because no one inside their organisations realised where the customer was heading.

Of course they knew (I worked closely with Nokia as it was happening), they just couldn’t change the direction of the business due to momentum.

So the challenge in transformation is less about seeing where the future is heading (Nokia and Kodak saw it and it didn’t help) and more about the ability to build adaptability in businesses and know how to change or transform when needed.

So what are some of the key variables of transformation that I think are important to consider? (I’ll bundle them up otherwise we will be here forever)

SCALE - How big and complex is the team, department, or business we want to change?

MINDSET - How adaptable are they in the first place? How responsive? How busy are they or overwhelmed by work?

SIGNIFICANCE - How big is the actual change we need to achieve? Is it a minor adjustment or a significant restructure? Or a critical product/market shift?

CHOICE - Are we proactively driving it or responding to an external force that is giving us no choice? Are we desperate?

INVESTMENT - How much time and budget do we have to invest? Are we in a rush or have plenty of time? Can we actually access the resources we need?

Understanding these variables and achieving the right mix will result in an increased capacity to transform and chase the customer.

In fact, getting good at this guarantees the long-term viability of a business.

This model is useful to articulate and communicate across the business the levers and impact you have when it comes to business transformation.

Play with this model and ask yourself:
Can I split the change in stages?
Can I access more resources?
Can we buy more time?
Can we reduce the significance?
Can we increase our choices?
Can we change the mindset?
Etc etc etc

What are your thoughts on this? Have you detected it in your organisation?
Hit reply and share with me!

Yew!

Gus

My recommendations:

Just like in physics, where a body in motion tends to stay on its path until acted upon, your career might also follow its current trajectory—unless you decide to be that force for change.

Don’t let momentum decide your future.
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