Sparkling Brands & Strategic Marketing,
Coca-Cola North America
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In our roles, we have been privileged to work with some of the most respected business leaders in the world. These leaders have been kind enough to share their insights with us, and you will see some of their thoughts throughout the book.
Our adaptive leaders
Whilst we had some contributors share their thoughts anonymously, we wanted to thank them and all the individuals below who have shared their thoughts in this book:
Paloma Azulay, Global Chief Brand Officer, Restaurant Brands International
Aaron Bradley, VP of Technology & Innovation, Wella Company
Benjamin Braun, CMO, Samsung
Wendy Clark, Global CEO, dentsu international
Nicholas Cumisky, YouTube
Craig Dempster, Global CEO, Merkle
Doug Jensen, SVP – GTM & COE for Analytics & Activation, Estée Lauder
Nicola Mendelsohn, CBE, VP GBG, Meta
Nick Ratcliffe, Customer Experience Director, Volkswagen Group Ltd
Paul Robson, President of Adobe International, Adobe Craig Smith, Chief Brand Officer & Co-Founder, Decidable Global Ltd, and Former Digital Commerce Director, Ted Baker
Marisa Thalberg, EVP, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer, Lowe's
Deborah Wahl, Global CMO, General Motors
Margaret Wagner, EMEA President, Merkle
Jennifer Warren, VP Global Brand Marketing, Indeed
Shelley Zalis, CEO, The Female Quotient
Our adaptive families
We would like to thank our families for the support they've given us. They've been there through the late nights and the long weekends, being both our samples of one and to ground us when needed. Our wives have kept us going and our children have done their best to keep the noise down whilst we've been working! We definitely wouldn't have made it through this journey without them.
Our adaptive readers
We would also like to thank you, the reader. Our aim was to provide something that was useful to you with a flavour of fun and a sprinkle of our personalities. We hope that the blood, sweat, and tears that we've put into this book (please don't let that sway your opinion) is as enjoyable for you to read as it was for us to write.
INTRODUCTION: ROCKING HORSES DON'T BELONG IN BOARDROOMS
“Don't confuse motion for progress. A rocking horse moves all day but goes nowhere”!
– Alfred Montapert
Picture a child sitting on a rocking horse. She is laughing as she sways back and forth. Maybe she is pushing the rocking horse to go faster, encouraging it by shouting phrases like, “Giddy up!” As you watch the child enjoying her ride on the rocking horse, you smile. She is safe; she is happy, and you know that regardless of what her imagination is telling her, she is going nowhere (in the physical sense). You leave her to her game, confident that you won't look out of the window to see her galloping across the garden on her rocking horse in half an hour.
You would certainly think it odd if you walked into a boardroom to see the CEO, CMO, CTO, or any of the other directors sitting on a rocking horse. However, all too often, businesses have boardrooms filled with metaphorical rocking horses; they just don't realise it. They don't always distinguish between motion and progress, or know how to turn the motion they are generating into progress.
Charting progress in a modern business world
The business world today, especially after black swan events like the 2008 financial crisis or the global COVID-19 pandemic, is characterised by an increasingly big number of known unknowns. It seems clear that the past is probably no longer a safe basis for predicting the future, and much of what we have learned and been taught may well have limited relevance to our future decision making.
The competition feels like it can come from anywhere, and time is definitely no longer on your side. As Rupert Murdoch said (in 1999!), “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow”.
To not only survive, but to thrive in the new world is a constant challenge that requires businesses to fast become the masters of many things. Agility (speed) and adaptability (ability to change) have become strategic differentiators, giving those businesses that can rapidly adapt and build a muscle to respond to change a massive advantage.
“The speed and availability of data, technology, analytics, content, and platforms is creating this perfect storm where we can finally capitalise on the opportunity presented by the total customer experience in a way that we just couldn't before. If brands are not on that journey to that complete and total customer experience across those dimensions of sales, service, commerce and marketing, they just won't be around in the future.”
Craig Dempster, Global CEO, Merkle
Some businesses have the advantage of already being in this state (let's call them the leaders). Others are undergoing massive transformations to close the gap and either attain or regain this state (let call them the followers, who are playing catchup). However, to do this requires sustained and directed momentum, or motion, but motion alone will not give you the advantage. The advantage comes from turning motion into progress.
This might sound simple enough, but often this is more difficult to achieve than it first appears. The result in many businesses is a great deal of motion that adds little real value and instead wastes precious time and resources, and may even contribute to a loss of competitive advantage. The opportunity, as we explain in this book, is to turn that motion into progress. To do that, you need to connect the three core themes of the business ecosystem, which we are calling the principal, the crew, and the season.
The race to the top
Our favourite analogy to describe what a business needs to do in order to turn motion into progress is Formula 1. Behind the fast cars, daring driving, and excitement of race days there are three key components at work: the principal, the crew, and the season.
The principal of each team sets the direction and leads from the front. The crew needs to collaborate and work together to constantly improve the car, its engine performance, drive the car, and find ways to shave even 0.1 of a second off the lap time or length of a pit stop because that 0.1 second can mean the team's driver wins the race. Then there is the Formula 1 season, which lasts for much longer than a single race.
