I came across a Deloitte Insights article about eight critical issues for technology, media & entertainment and telecom (TMT) companies to do including re-evaluating of their business models to build a new future for business and society. The recommendation was that they should focus on agility and flexibility, be bold to try new things and acquire new digital capabilities.
What surprised me was why TMT companies, which by their very nature should in the position to drive societal change and be in touch with the latest technologies and trends, needed this sort of advice until it occurred to me that all organizations, big or small, have the need to keep adapting to stay relevant and none are immune to change resistance.
When it comes to change, many organizations focus on incremental change, finding better answers to operational questions and using evolutionary thinking to improve performance. Other organizations will identify new and better questions to ask so that they can gain new perspectives resulting in revolutionary outcomes.
The ones that are ahead of the game are the ones that continually monitor the environment, connect the dots and modify their assumptions to achieve disruptive change. Such organizations are constantly rethinking their roles in society to reshape their revenue-generation models. They redefine stakeholder customer relationships, re-examine value propositions and redesign experiences with new approaches to take advantage of advanced connectivity and the power of strengthened value chains.
This requires companies to conduct constant renewal of the knowledge and competencies of their teams. They need to bring their workforce along the journey with them to ensure no one is left behind. Some team members may need re-orientation and reskilling to gain new perspectives. As it takes people to create new paradigms, implement new business models and create disruption, some companies even set up internal teams to ideate and disrupt their own business vs. waiting to be disrupted by others. This is the time to review, re-strategize, repurpose and renew.