First things first. Don’t say you didn’t see them coming. Your current business challenges.
Peter Sheahan says any good, well-intentioned business leader knows their company’s challenges: the burdens of today and likely obstacles of tomorrow. He says when an executive says they didn’t see a disruption coming, what they really mean was they didn’t know what to do about it. They didn’t proactively prepare to meet their challenges head on and now they’re scrambling to position their company against a competitor or market shift that’s blasted their status quo.
During his keynote presentation Wednesday at the National Trailer Dealers Association (NTDA) Convention in Tucson, Ariz., Sheahan, best-selling author and founder at business strategy firm Karrikins Group, was blunt, “I’ve never worked in an industry that said they got disrupted by a challenge they didn’t know … Change is really slow, and then it’s not.”
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Sheahan says the reality is most market disruptions usually grow on the periphery of an industry for many years before bursting through, and too many companies just sit and watch it happen.
“When we act like a change is happening to us, we act like a victim,” he says. “But it’s happening anyway. Maybe instead of acting like it’s happening to us, we can say it’s happening for us.”
Sheahan says to do that, you must be open to transformation. He says companies don’t transform, people do, and they take their businesses with him. He also notes growth and transformation is a psychological journey first, strategic second and leaders go first.
“Are you willing to change the way you think about certain things?” he asks.
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On Wednesday, Sheahan offered three steps for leaders willing to transform, and shift their focus from maintaining the status quo to seeing where it’s going “and help the customer get there.”
- Tell yourself the truth: Sheahan really hammered this point, telling the audience that leaders must shift their position from being aware of impending change to actively leading and creating market shifts. He says far too often leaders will spot a disruption coming but will fail to react to it because it seems too far away or its impact on their operation is minimal. He says that the wrong approach, too inert. “Don’t confuse awareness of what’s changing to actually changing.”
- Put tension on your organization: Sheahan says this is another hard task for business leaders, and is doubly challenging when looking into the future than fighting off a current disruption or market abnormality. He says employees recognize change is necessary when addressing a current problem but can lack the foresight to see the next battle on the horizon. “Choose a burning ambition over a burning platform,” he says.
- Go first: Sheahan says this step becomes easier after the first two are completed. He reiterates the importance of moving your focus from “protecting the status quo to doing the hard work of creating the future.” In the trailer dealer space, he says this could be improving customer communication or order platforms, overhauling sales practices to leverage new technology and more. What matters, Sheahan says, is keeping your attention on the customer and what want and may expect in the future.
