you need to very clearly paint this vision from the outset. Without having clarity over this vision, you will also struggle to set the direction for the business.
“The best way I've found to open that aperture – without losing the focus – is to bring together a data-informed narrative that includes signals on brand relevance and saliency, consumer engagement, where consumer trends are going, along with quantitative marketing attribution (imperfect as it may be). Marketers are fundamentally storytellers, and it is incumbent upon us to shape a more nuanced story of what drives short- and longer-term brand success. Then, it's all about having a CEO and board who can take that in, and believe in it too.”
Marisa Thalberg, EVP, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer, Lowe's
Look at the 3M example that we shared earlier in this chapter. Board members clearly set the vision for the company when they decided to focus on knowledge rather than products. This key principle translates into cultural behaviours within the business that filter through to every person who works for and with you. In starting here, you're ingraining this behaviour and empowering your employees to start building a culture that reflects what you're trying to achieve. It's like a waterfall effect and it all starts from effective communication from leadership.
The aim is an adaptive organisation that can transform motion into progress
As a business, you might be working towards transforming your customer experience, but what we want to help you achieve is becoming an adaptive organisation. Why is that distinction important? Because there is no end. As we said earlier, this isn't a linear process with a final destination; it's a constant evolution.
The peppered moth that we talked about at the beginning of this chapter embodies that concept. Not only did the moths living in highly industrialised areas become darker in colour as their environment became polluted by the soot from factories, those same populations of moths have since returned to a lighter colour because a lot of the pollution that existed decades ago has been cleaned up. That species has continued to evolve to adapt to its current environment. A business is no different.
As a leader, you need to have a transformative mindset, which means that you're able to reframe your dream or vision for the business when required. Amazon's AWS service is a great example of this. It was initially developed as an internal system to manage Amazon's own infrastructure, but it quickly became clear that the technology had a multitude of applications that could be useful to a range of businesses. As a company, Amazon looked at AWS, recognised an opportunity to productise and monetise it, and then reframed what that meant for their business. Amazon adapted its offering and altered the direction of its business in the process.
Another way to look at this is through the analogy of buying someone a fishing rod versus teaching them how to fish. Imagine that each of the villages along a river represents a business. What often happens is that the people in one village look across the river and see that all the people in that other village are well fed. They look closer and see that they have fishing rods, so they go out and buy the same rods.
However, there is a difference between having the fishing rod and knowing where to find the fish, what bait to use, and how to start reeling them in when you do get a bite. Knowing how to fish is very different from having a fishing rod. What the people in that first village need to do is learn to fish, not buy fishing rods. Within business the same principle applies.
It can be easy to look at a competitor and think that if you have the same tools as it does, you'll get the same results, except this ignores all the knowledge that your competitor has. Our advice is to learn to fish instead of rushing to buy fishing rods, and our hope is that this book will help you to do that.
We often see businesses making this mistake in relation to technology: when an organisation will decide to change its technology because other businesses around it are doing the same. However, it's important to consider that changing your technology might not lead to the results you want. You have to ask whether you're using the technology you have correctly, how you can leverage what you've got, and whether you're driving the right value. Can you adapt how you're using your tools, rather than just throwing them out and buying new ones? Sometimes you will need new tools, but don't buy them because your competitors have them. Learn how to fish and decide if you need a rod or a net.
If you go to www.motionintoprogress.com, you can complete a simple online questionnaire that will help you frame your purpose and identify what direction you need to be heading in.
Highlights
The bottom line is that every business needs to continue to adapt and evolve throughout its life or it will die. You can no longer have and follow a single strategy; businesses need multiple strategies that they execute at the same time. To be able to execute multiple strategies simultaneously, and to do so effectively, you can't necessarily continue to work the way you always have; you need to continuously adapt.
Each organisation needs to focus on building and strengthening its change muscle so that adaptability is built in. One of the keys to successfully adapting is a leader's ability to clearly communicate that big picture, which sets the direction of travel for the whole organisation. We also have to keep in mind that there is no end to this process.
“It's never not day one” is a famous quote by Jeff Bezos. It comes from a letter that he wrote to his shareholders in 2017, 20 years after he started Amazon. In that letter he explained that there are four days in a company's life: day one when you're relevant, day two when you're in stasis, day three when you're irrelevant, and day four when you slide to death. He stated that his role as CEO of Amazon is to make sure that “It's never not day one.” How do you make sure that you're always at day one? By adapting.
Note
1 1 Michel Robert Strategy Pure and Simple II: How Winning Companies Dominate Their Competitors, McGraw-Hill Education, 2nd edition (16 November 1997).
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