In our recent book "Radical Business Agility", Hans Amell and I describe both the exciting megatrends that are moving us forward, as well as the perfect storm that is brewing on the global horizon. Since its publication, the list of individual storms, each of which could trigger a crisis by itself, has grown even larger. We are currently witnessing the greatest list of threats towards western civilization we have faced since the Great Depression and World War II!
Here is an updated, yet still partial list of large storm warnings:
Geopolitical Turmoil
With the Ukraine situation, the increasing tension over Taiwan’s fate, as well as ongoing tensions in the Middle East and Africa, each one of these could escalate and cause chaos and more bloodshed. The resulting impact on your products and market may be the least of your concerns.
Real or perceived threat of more pandemics
The fears of disruption due to Covid-19 seem to be losing their power, but there are many threats still out there. Each of which is now amplified due to the continuing weaknesses brought on by the forced lockdowns we just experienced. Many of the other threats on this list increased, due to the actions taken for Covid-19 so far.
The Green Agenda
The plans to go “carbon neutral” in the next decades (before a viable and affordable source of replacement energy is in place) are already disrupting the supply chain and power grids. This looks to get worse before it gets better.
Supply Chain Breakdowns
Threats to farming and transportation, plus the increase in energy costs are already causing supermarket shelves to be less crowded than at any time in the last few generations. Also, a large majority of the most critical and sophisticated computer chips, needed for many necessary products and defense, come from Taiwan. Any disagreement with China could spin quickly out of control. Again, impact on your market may be the least of your worries.
Global Stock Market Peak?
We have just witnessed the longest downtrend in world markets since the Great Depression. With history as a guide, this too will probably get worse before it gets better.
Finance costs rising with Interest rates
It is currently “risk-off” in the financial markets as government, corporate and private debt continues to increase. No news here. The news is that, after 40 years of nearly continuous sinking interest rates, culminating in negative rates, the price of borrowing is now increasing. It will cost more to borrow.
Increase in time, frustration and money for administration
If you have tried to move money, open a bank- or trading account recently, you have become familiar with the KYC or Know Your Customer and AML Anti-Money Laundering rules and regulations. Finance organizations are becoming increasingly scared to do even simple transactions without enormous, costly and time-consuming background checks. More time spent on admin means less time spent on sales.
Any one of these, or other triggers could cause chaos throughout the world, not to mention your business. The question becomes how can you prepare for even more chaos so that you and your organization survive and thrive during the coming years of increased uncertainty?
Get AGILE!
The more you can increase your ability to quickly respond to changes in the market, the better your chance to survive and even thrive in these challenging and unprecedented times. Here are just a few suggestions of what you can do to increase your business agility.
Increase your customer loyalty
Maintaining and expanding your base of customers who can, "warmly and spontaneously recommend your products and company", is the cheapest way to market and sell. Simple steps to improve your customer’s loyalty are:
Better customer communication
This can be done via better training offerings, better feedback loops and anything else that improves your ability to listen with all your senses to each customer’s needs, wants and wishes and serve them better from this knowledge.
Becoming more attractive
This means doing away with all forms of customer capture so that your customer no longer feels forced to do business with you. This is riskier, but long term, it will force you to be sharper and word will spread fast if your customers notice a distinct and attractive difference.
Support, honor and inspire your employees and colleagues
Even though the job market is beginning to show signs of tightening, having a happy and motivated staff is more important than ever. With decision-making delays, lay-offs and salary-cuts increasing in probability, it is important that you strengthen your team’s spirit via each individual. There are simple steps that cost little or nothing.
Increase you corporate training initiative
The pace of development keeps expanding exponentially. Making sure your team keeps up to date with the latest knowledge and competencies will both insure increased customer loyalty and demonstrate your honor for and commitment to your personnel for being the best.
Also, training is an extremely trusted and useful two-way communication channel for marketing internally to employees and associates, as well as to customers.
Increase your cash-flow
An effective way to exercise more control over the money you can use is to begin using a Rolling Budget. This provides you with more flexibility to move unproductive money to more productive departments and projects. The yearly budget originally comes from agriculture. If you are not involved with farming it may well be worthwhile to mold your budget around your product and service cycles instead of the changing seasons.
Setting up a Dynamic Navigation System or DNS
Although business "dashboards" have been popular for over a generation, they are still, for the most part, backward looking. We have developed a system, which we liken to a pilot-house on a ship. It respects your historical data, while focusing on giving you real-time or up to date feedback on the current situation. It forces you and your management team to look towards your business horizon. It provides you with information needed to not only make quicker and more grounded decisions, but also creates a more agile management atmosphere where there is no longer any excuse to "think about" the choices before acting decisively. Although using a DNS in your company may upset those married to "Business As Usual", it will not only spotlight them and their less-than-agile behavior, it will also encourage them either to change that behavior or move on to a more comfortable job.
There are many other simple, yet effective Business Agility tools and methods that can add to your future survival and success. Please take a look at our book and we at CAG International and our colleagues at Haig Barrett and Oclas would be very happy to communicate further with you and your management group on the best ways to start.
Board Member Catalyst Acquisition Group, Minerva Group
Kurt Larsson is an American who has been living in Sweden since the late 1980s. With a background and degree in Finance, he has sold everything from Automobile tires in Houston, Texas to retail banking delivery systems in over 20 countries. He has driven his own educational consulting company, Expanding Understanding, for more than 20 years. His niche is transforming consultative business teams into collaborative ones.
To do this he specializes in effective selling, leadership and customer service practices, focused on more conscious and efficient use of the most important communication tool we have, our body language. His skills work perfectly in line with transforming management, sales and customer service teams from a transactional to a collaborative business model where customer loyalty is the prime goal. He has now become an active member on both Catalyst Acquisition and Minerva Groups’s Board of directors. He has written many articles on Ezine, his own blog and is also co-author with Hans Amell of the book: