
The consequences of failing to respond to changes in business are well-documented. Blockbuster did not anticipate the massive shifts in consumer behaviour enabled by technology and collapsed. Kodak ignored the rise of digital photography and went from a Kodak moment to a dead moment in less than a decade. Staying ahead of the curve and constantly thinking about the future is critical not just for survival but for growth.
Last year, I carried out an extensive analysis of successful businesses such as Amazon, Google, LinkedIn and Etsy. I wanted to find out the key success factors for each of these businesses. It became obvious pretty quickly. Whilst most of the players were focusing on “doing things right” through agile, lean and similar approaches, these successful players focused on “doing the right things” by focusing on customer experience and building new value for stakeholders. The combination of doing things right and doing the right things is what made these companies so successful. I went on to consider the organisational culture of these companies. Through this I identified three insights which could help any organisation in achieving the vision of “doing things right and doing the right things”:(1) Experimentation culture
They are not afraid of failure. From anecdotal evidences, Amazon and Google have a success rate of less than ten per cent in innovations. But what truly makes these firms is a result of both the 90 per cent and the ten per cent. To put it simply, the firms have to build and pilot 100 ideas to find the top ten successful ideas. The company learns from its mistakes – which is possible only through quick change. These companies rollout more than 100 changes in a day. The only constant is change.(2) Automation with NO OPS (No operations) mindset
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(3) Measure the right things
Align the key performance indicators and measure them alongside all of the key factors which impact on them. Such factors could be business outcomes such as revenues, delivery metrics such as lead time, brand indices such as equity health and customer impact such as NPS. It is important that we measure micro moments, by which I mean small key metrics to help in analysing change rather than merely the one big thing which is your KPI.Pinak Vedalankar is director of technology at SapientNitro.
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