Don’t cut yourself off from your future, lean in to it….

The economic balance of power is shifting from the industrial model to the digital model via disruptive technologies, savvy customers and the need to reduce costs.

There has been a huge transition that is still playing out; analogue to digital has disrupted for good the mass market, the way we make money and who has control now.

Mass production saw the introduction of making lots of the same product and created a culture of “can I have that? But instead of changing the products to meet the needs of customers, they changed what customers desired — mass marketing/media was created.

Then people started asking “What does it cost?” Now we are in a space where we are don’t want the same products or service as everyone else we want customisation or indeed personalisation. We are asking instead; how does this make me feel? Mass marketing and mass products are coming to an end, the emergence and dominance of technology is facilitating and embracing cost effective personalisation as a competitive advantage.

Now we need to think more than ever about what we are doing and how we are making people feel — both our customers and employees in equal measure. With this comes something really exciting, you can build, develop and grow a business based on a fewer number of customers who just have a deeper relationship with you.

Digital is subverting the old order.

Many businesses are making the mistake of protecting what they have got. What was once scarce is now abundant — just ask design agencies and photographers. When major change takes place though, revolution is the only way forward. Reinventing, reframing and re shaping is what is required. It seems right to be doing what everyone else is doing. But that’s just not sustainable anymore. Deploying a red ocean strategy will only create lots of huff and puff for stagnation. Explore blue ocean strategy, it will get you more of what you want.

Assets in the 20C were all about physical buildings, physical location and having privilged car parking spaces. Today a business plan without the website/app being mentioned as the central hub of engagement and transactions, is one not prepared for differentiation. Don’t even bother reading the financial forecast section — waste of time. As Ahmed and Olander mention in their book, Velocity “Without a platform to manage and nurture every interaction with its consumer, a company has no spine.” Don’t build lovely offices that are perfect, just build stuff people want.

Effectively your new premises, the hub of everything you do, the place and space your customers and indeed your employees spend most time with you is on your website, or it will be in the future.

Unfortunately far too many strategic decisions are convenient ones not compelling ones. There is no longer a sense of entitlement. You don’t have one. You are only as good as you were yesterday. You can’t apply traditional thinking to a digitally driven world. Good enough isn’t good enough anymore.

The future is about how you combine the human experience with the digital one by answering the question; how am I/we making this persons life better?

One of the most significant lessons I learnt as a youngish (28) consultant was from my boss. He sat me down in our modest offices in the centre of the fastest growing city in the UK at the time and said “Never ever get complacent. Never, the moment you do you have lost and so has this company and so have your clients.” Flipping good advice.

I see a lot of companies that have become comfortable. Fearful of making any change, that’s nothing new. It’s just more critical these days to consistently, everyday to keep futurising your enterprise.

Driving things forward for colleagues. Praising exceptional work, changing stuff quickly when it’s not right. Not providing pastoral care to talent - that’s just a patronising management technique that creates a parent child relationship, when today we need peer to peer cultures. It means just invigourating environments that blows employees socks off literally every day.

Becoming digital first means that you don’t have to spend enormous amounts of time and money trying to come up with the perfect solution. It allows you to execute and idea very quickly and then co create its evolution with customers and employees alike. Start thinking about a minimum viable product. Launch then learn.

I’m not saying you need to become a digital company that is dominated by all things technology where you become a slave to it. Not all all. However, I do strongly believe that you need to drive your business towards being more than digitally competent, indeed, I think if you can execute a digital first strategy exceptionally, you will be guaranteed success and sustainability in an ever increasingly uncertain world.

Gatekeepers and brands are losing their hold on power. One of the biggest issues facing business today is the fact that core products and services are being digitalised, yet business is still structured around physical products.

All this is far more of a problem for business than it is for its customers and talented colleagues. Remember they have infinite choice.