20/20 Foresight
Many business leaders need
to improve their perceptual acuity. Here’s how you can develop the ability to
look around corners — and become a catalyst for change.
The immense
uncertainty that today’s business leaders face is something truly unique. In
its scale, ferocity of impact, and ubiquity, it is different — by orders of
magnitude — from anything I’ve seen before. We’ve been living with
uncertainties forever, of course. What’s new is structural uncertainty. It is
structural because the long-term, irresistible forces now at work can explode
the existing structure of your market space or your industry, putting it at
risk of being drastically diminished or completely eliminated. If you are
unprepared, the massive changes these forces bring are like sudden bends in the
road. They appear, seemingly without warning, to convey you away from the
future you envisioned for your business. But in a world that is projected to
add a minimum of US$30 trillion of GDP in the next decade, where human needs
and wants are both multiplying and changing, structural uncertainty also
creates myriad new needs, new industries, new businesses, new business models,
and new market segments.
Taking control of
uncertainty and successfully steering your organization through frequent bends
in the road is the fundamental leadership challenge of our time. And it will
call for a distinctly different type of leadership than the one you were
trained for and are likely currently exercising. The advantage now goes to
those who don’t just learn to live with change, but who create change. I call
these people catalysts.
Instead of waiting and
reacting, catalysts immerse themselves in the ambiguities of the external
environment, sort through them before things are settled and known, set a path,
and steer their organization decisively onto it. They seize upon a force or
combination of forces — for example, linking a demographic trend with an
existing technology — and conceive of a new need or a total redefinition of an
existing need, often with a new business model in mind. Unconstrained by
conventional wisdom, creative thinkers paint a detailed, specific picture of
what the new company will be. Then they take the organization, along with its
external constituencies, on the offensive.
Of the skills required
to thrive as a catalyst, the first — and perhaps most important — is perceptual
acuity. Although the phrase rarely appears in accounts of business
breakthroughs, perceptual acuity often turns out to mean the difference between
success and failure. Perceptual acuity is the psychological and mental
preparedness to “see around corners” and spot potentially significant
anomalies, contradictions, and oddities in the external landscape before others
do. It is your human radar for seeing through the fog of uncertainty so you can
act first.
Some people are simply
born with it. Ted Turner, for instance, is a catalyst who was blessed with
exceptional perceptual acuity. “He sees the obvious before most people do,” as Robert
Wright, the former president of NBC, told an interviewer. “We all look at the
same picture, but Ted sees what you don’t see. And after he sees it, it
becomes obvious to everyone.”
Turner had ventured
into TV by buying a small UHF station in Atlanta in 1970, soon after taking
over his father’s billboard advertising business. He saw the possibility of
combining satellite transmission and cable networks into a national network
before the enabling technologies and regulatory mechanisms were fully in place.
The plan was to beam signals from his tiny local station to a satellite,
then download them to dishes across the country and transmit the captured
signals to viewers via cable. Turner wanted a national license, but the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) granted licenses only for local markets.
Turner pressed
Congress to intervene on behalf of giving consumers more choice. Soon after,
the FCC approved Turner’s proposal for a national license, and his local
station was instantly transformed into a “superstation.” Turner found clever
ways to fill the hours with programming, such as the now common practice of
running old movies and TV shows. He bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team to
provide more programming. Next, he asked why consumers had to get the news at a
set hour, typically 6 p.m. Why not make it available at any time, day or night?
And so was born CNN with its precedent-setting 24-hour news format.
CRUSADERS
IN ACTION
A catalyst, someone who creates change before
others fully see the possibilities, can be a gadfly. One example is Ralph
Nader, an energetic critic of American business and politics for 50 years.
Nader’s 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed (Grossman), was a
pioneering analysis of automakers’ failure to think about the safety of their
products. The storm that followed changed the expectations of consumers and
government regulators about product safety. Nader’s critique thus created
multibillion-dollar opportunities in a totally new market segment under the
rubric of safety systems.
Ruben Mettler, a longtime CEO of the
automotive and aerospace company TRW, was a catalyst who was inspired by
Nader’s insights. TRW’s defense division was widely recognized for its
technological innovation, and Mettler saw that some of its technology could be applied
to passenger restraint systems. The company made the necessary investment and
became the world leader in vehicle safety. It became the number one supplier of
airbags and other safety systems to Ford and a major supplier to GM. Safety
concerns also created a huge opportunity for DuPont, which developed a
methodology for safety-focused cultural change and helps companies worldwide
improve their practices.
Today, safety instructions appear on a galaxy
of products and in places. When I was serving on the board of Dallas-based
Austin Industries, a leading regional builder of structures and airports, we
discussed safety as a regular practice; Austin’s safety record became a
competitive advantage in bidding. Unsafe at Any Speed is close to being a
picture-perfect example of the two sides of structural uncertainty. Whereas the
big car companies saw it as a threat, other players recognized an opportunity
and went on the attack. And the book’s larger message became woven into society
as a whole.
—RC
Building Perceptual Acuity
You can cultivate
perceptual acuity by watching catalysts and adopting the disciplined practice
of looking over the horizon and searching for new ideas, events, technologies,
or trends — things that an imaginative person could combine to meet an unmet
need or create a totally new product. As your acuity sharpens, you’ll spot
catalysts more easily and begin to see the world as they see it: as full of new
possibilities and opportunities. The key is to train yourself to stand back
from your business and its environment. In particular, look for the larger
significance of anomalies, contradictions, and oddities — that is, things that
depart from or challenge familiar patterns and differ from what you’ve known or
believed previously. Then you need to imagine what the new shape of the
landscape might be if what you’re seeing is a signal of powerful change — and
importantly, imagine how you might take advantage of the shift.
Practicing perceptual
acuity is now part of your job and will raise your value as a leader. And in
fact, building it is less a matter of carving out time than of exercising the
focus and discipline to watch and listen for different things in the ordinary
course of your day, all through the year. Change doesn’t wait for your annual
planning cycle. It’s important to go through the process of trying to identify
the seeds of change and catalysts frequently. Structural changes are often
misdiagnosed as operating problems when they first surface, so it’s a good idea
to involve people at many levels of the company to help spot those changes.
There are several
tools you can use to develop perceptual acuity for yourself and your
organization in this way. One of the most valuable is a simple exercise at the
start of any staff meeting. Allocate the first 10 minutes to learn about and
discuss anomalies in the external landscape. Ask a different staff member at
each meeting to present to the team a structural uncertainty or bend in the
road in another industry. Discussing who is taking advantage of the bend in the
road or the uncertainty, and who is on the attack, widens the lens of the whole
team, attunes their antennae, and helps them become more insightful. Most
importantly, it alters their attitude toward change — and gives people
permission to suggest changes in their own business.
Steve Schwarzman,
chief executive officer of Blackstone Group, the giant private equity firm,
uses a form of this social tool at his Monday morning meetings. Those attending
Blackstone’s staff meetings are connected on a daily basis to people at the
highest levels of government, to investors, to leaders in diverse industries in
countries around the world, and to sources of information about what is coming
in the future. Schwarzman asks everyone at the meeting what is new, what they
are detecting, and who the catalysts are. With a time lag of no more than a
week, this group gains extensive knowledge about what is going on in the world,
which in turn helps them contemplate what they can do to shape the game of
their business and go on the attack. They can see structural uncertainties,
especially those tied to the inherent instability of the global financial
system.
Cultivate Perspective
Test your perceptions
by talking with other people, especially those you suspect have opposite or
divergent views. Surrounding yourself with people from different levels of the
company, from different industries and backgrounds, and with different
cognitive bandwidths and attitudes about risk taking helps you see the same
world through different lenses. The seeds of change that could make a company
or industry obsolete usually hit one product or market segment first. So middle
managers, who are often close to the customers and to supplier networks, should
be honing their skills at developing insights about how the external
environment is taking shape just as much as those in positions at a “higher
altitude.”
In addition, senior
executives should look outside the organization. When “Clare,” an executive in
her mid-40s, became CEO of a company with $10 billion in revenue, she took the
initiative to find four other people about her age, also newly appointed as
CEOs and running global businesses. Each had a different personal background
and worked in a different sector of the economy: consumer products, Wall
Street, information technology, and industrials. They continue to get together
four times a year for dinner. Each group member also has access to varied
insights from their diverse boards of directors, direct reports, suppliers, and
friends. Their meetings and informal conversations between get-togethers serve
as a sounding board for each to cross-check thinking, and provide a foundation
for superb foresight. By making it a habit to seek out and listen to people
whose expertise or endeavors give them insight into external change, they
create a multiplier effect, magnifying one another’s perceptual acuity.
Another way to develop
your perceptual acuity is to look in the rearview mirror. Spend time with
colleagues and look at a big external change that hit your industry or some
other industry sometime in the past 50 years. Dissect that change. What were
its seeds, and who were the catalysts who caused the change? Take, for example,
the shift to personal computers from mainframes and minicomputers, which
obliterated highfliers like Digital Equipment Corporation and Wang
Laboratories. Try to be specific about who and what caused that shift to happen
— and why the losers failed to see the significance of what was happening.
These kinds of discussions take time and mental energy, especially at first,
but they are an important part of your work. You will get better and faster
over time, and be able to detect things sooner.
Listening for Risk and Change
General Electric
manufactures, sells, installs, and services its products in countries with
unstable governments that are at geopolitical risk. In contrast to many
companies that seek to avoid risk, GE stipulates that risk is a part of its
business model that should be managed, and that the company should be paid for
the risk it takes in its business.
GE’s water and power
business unit, headquartered in Schenectady, N.Y., operates in some 50
countries in areas considered high risk, such as many parts of Africa and the
Middle East. The unit sells items that often cost hundreds of millions of
dollars and represent long-term investments by customers. The lion’s share of
its revenues, profits, and investments are not based in the United States. To
have an edge in managing the risk and taking advantage of the opportunities,
Steve Bolze, president of the unit, receives weekly information from each of
those countries, carefully analyzed and synthesized. He makes a habit of
studying these reports and looking for early warning signals and catalysts, and
he spends time with people in those countries, listening carefully.
“In terms of dealing
with uncertainty, there’s nothing that substitutes for a personal visit,” he
explains. “Having ongoing relationships with people in that country helps you
understand the ongoing drivers there. Helping customers solve their problems
also helps us understand the context.”
Bolze’s perceptual
acuity is paying off: His unit’s margins, market share, revenue growth, and
cash generation are now the best in the industry. He has emerged as a leader
who can anticipate bends in the road and win in highly risky areas.
One of the most
skilled individuals in the world at listening for external context is investor
Warren Buffett. At a recent CEO summit convened by Microsoft, I was joined at a
lunch table by Buffett and eight other people. We talked about our sources of
knowledge, and Buffett told us that he reads 500 transcripts of investor calls
each year, where all the presenters state their views about their company and
industry and what they anticipate in the future. In general, his practice is to
let people run the individual businesses of Berkshire Hathaway; he watches for
changes across industries that might prompt him to shift the resource
allocation in the portfolio. Since Buffett has been practicing this for
decades, his acuity has become highly honed in detecting signals and catalysts
that are over the horizon, an impressive skill given that his portfolio of
businesses spans a significant portion of the national economy.
Ask “What’s New?”
Jack Welch, CEO of GE
from 1981 to 2001, had a habit of trying to find out what really was new from
the wide variety of people he met, and perking up when he heard something
fresh. One day in the early 1990s, I ran into him on an elevator at the Hyatt
Regency in New Orleans. I said, “Good morning, Jack.” He looked at me with his
piercing eyes and said nothing. Suddenly he asked, “What’s new?” I shot back a
three-word response to his two-word question: “Zero working capital.” To that
he said, “Are you trying to sell me some consulting? Did you make it up? Who
does it?” He was skeptical but not dismissive. I then gave him details about a
company I knew that was using zero working capital in the manufacturing,
assembly, and delivery of products, thus freeing up cash to invest in growth
(and at the same time improving customer satisfaction because it enabled the
company to make items to order). Welch called the CEO of this company and took
a business unit manager with him to spend several hours learning the details. He
then sent his executives to visit the company’s plants. Welch ultimately set a
goal for using zero working capital and initiated a course on it at
Crotonville, GE’s executive education institute. By the time Welch retired, the
approach had saved GE several billion dollars in cash, which could be used to
fund growth.
A lengthier but more
precise way to open discussions about what’s new is by asking, What practices
and underlying assumptions are common throughout our industry? Those
commonalities are a source of systemic risk. One example is the remarkable
similarity of mortgage lending practices before the financial crash of 2008–09,
when credit standards were uniformly lax. The overleveraged housing market was
observable. If you see a similar buildup of some kind, consider what could
light the fuse. For mortgage lenders, it was loss of confidence in the
financial instruments that had been created to spread the risk of bad loans.
Form scenarios of what might happen and watch for signals that the buildup is taking
further shape. Who could be the catalyst for a good change, or a bad one?
Watch, Read, Repeat
When you watch video
news reports, pay close attention to how society is changing and what new
consumer behaviors are emerging. Social issues get picked up quickly by the
media and are sometimes followed by increased scrutiny or regulation as they
work their way into the political sphere. Clinical drug trials, for example,
became a hot subject in India in 2012 when some political leaders noticed
concern about the number of deaths associated with them. The rhetoric
escalated, corruption accusations were hurled against some doctors, and
activists filed a public interest lawsuit alleging the use by global companies
of Indians as human guinea pigs. The public and political debate led to tough
new rules adopted in 2013, which squarely laid responsibility for any injuries
or deaths from the drug trials on the shoulders of the testing company. The
government may have overreacted, but momentum had built to the point where
leaders felt compelled to act vigorously.
When reading books and
publications such the Financial Times, New York Times, Wall
Street Journal, and Economist, look for what surprises you,
what is an anomaly. My technique is to first read the roughly half-page “Lex”
column on the last page of the first section of the Financial Times.
I read Lex with a sense of curiosity about what is new, what I didn’t know,
what might be the start of a trend. There may be days and weeks in which I find
nothing. But when I do find something intriguing, I reflect on what it might
mean and for whom. Who will be on the attack, who on the defensive, and why? Is
there a game changer here? Asking these questions in response to whatever you
read will increase your capability to identify signals and catalysts that might
create bends in the road.
Continually
stimulating your thinking and self-reflection is a critical aspect of building
and maintaining your attacker’s advantage. By pinpointing the sources of
uncertainty, defining a path forward, and making the necessary frequent
adjustments to steer your organization along it, you will see that uncertainty
is not something to fear. On the contrary, by immersing yourself in it, you can
discover possibilities for creating something new and immensely valuable. The
more you embrace uncertainty and practice the skills to deal with it, the more
self-confidence you will develop and the better prepared you will be to
lead.
by Ram Charan
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00351?gko=
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