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it is not (price) competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the source of supply, the new type of organization…competition which…strikes not at the margins…of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives. —Joseph A. Schumpeter,
“Sooner or later, something fundamental in your business world will change.”
As late as 1931, Charlie Chaplin was still fighting the move to sound. In an interview that year, he proclaimed, “I give the talkies six months more.”
“Okay, Sergeant, let’s go.” Our instructor played this scene over and over to illustrate a superbly enacted instance of building up the determination necessary to undertake the hard, unpleasant and treacherous task of leading a group of people through an excruciatingly tough set of changes—the moment when a leader decides to go forward, no matter what.
I doubt that it required a lot of study to conclude that the Modified Final Judgment that led to the breakup of the old AT&T was a monumental event.
Most of the time it’s not like that. Most strategic inflection points, instead of coming in with a bang, approach on little cat feet. They are often not clear until you can look at the events in retrospect. Later, when you ask yourself when you first had an inkling that you were facing a strategic inflection point, your recollections are about a trivial sign hinting that the competitive dynamics had changed.
you can’t judge the significance of strategic inflection points by the quality of the first version. You need to draw on your experience. Perhaps you remember your reaction to the first PC you ever saw. It probably didn’t strike you as a revolutionary device. So it is with the Internet. Now, as you stare at your computer screen that’s connected to the Internet, waiting for a World Wide Web page to slowly materialize, let your imagination flow a bit.
If you are a senior manager, you probably got to where you are because you have devoted a large portion of your life to your trade, to your industry and to your company. In many instances, your personal identity is inseparable from your lifework. So, when your business gets into serious difficulties, in spite of the best attempts of business schools and management training courses to make you a rational analyzer of data, objective analysis will take second seat to personal and emotional reactions almost every time.
If you’re wrong, you will die. But most companies don’t die because they are wrong; most die because they don’t commit themselves. They fritter away their momentum and their valuable resources while attempting to make a decision. The greatest danger is in standing still.
you can’t change a company without changing its management. I’m not saying they have to pack up their desks and be replaced. I’m saying that they themselves, every one of them, needs to change to be more in tune with the mandates of the new environment. They may need to go back to school, they may need a new assignment, they may need to spend some years in a foreign post. They need to adapt. If they can’t or won’t, however, they will need to be replaced with others who are more in tune with the new world the company is heading to.
It turned out that this manager knew all along what he wanted to do, but instead of giving that direction to the committee, which he could have, he was hoping to engineer a bottom-up decision to the same effect. When the committee came up with the opposite recommendation, he felt cornered. At this late stage, he tried to dictate his solution to people who by now had spent months struggling with an issue and had firmed up their minds. It just couldn’t be done.
