From turnaround to miracle and intro 21st century disruptions

With all exponential technologies growing so fast and going across industries I expect a lot of disruption for many industries the years to come . So far it is happening mainly within the Information Industry where all is digitalized but we see already expansion to Industries with hard assets ( e g Hospitality >> AirBnB , Transportation >> Uber ,.. ) where the enabling Information and Networking technologies are dematerializing and demonetizing industries by leveraging third party assets .

In this article I will focus first on the lessons learned from a company transformation that ended to deliver amazing results :

When a company is loosing money and cannot make its business model work needs many things to be changed . This normally takes a few years .when a company ( multinational , 3 continents) shareholders ask for a badly needed turnaround after a few failed ones and end up with a transformed company in all aspects ( shareholders reduction , better products , better processes , delivery time reduction , new upstream and downstream partners , competitiveness , new strategy ,.. ) + acquiring another company + undergoing due diligence and establish a JV with fortune 500 company ALL within 12 months then this is what I call a miracle.

Here the focus will be to explain what you need to make such a transformation happen . This was my 6th company transformation/turnaround after 5 more as participant , member of a management team in the lead of a transformation or as CEO leading the transformation.

What we learned , a Team Effort :

- Starting from customers talk personally to as many people across the whole value chain . Decide within max 60 days the key changes needed.

- Assembling a core team with the best people available for the task is priority

- Drastic , complex and fast turnaround can only happen with a good team of top professionals having the right experiences

preferably from a different industry , are determined to succeed , are able to think out of the box and are lead from an inspiring and disciplined leader.

- To achieve breakthrough focus on only 1-2 key business attributes is not enough . You need change of multiple business attributes e .g

Speed , Better partners , Better People , new customer interaction process , New Digital marketing and supply chain technologies …. >> NEW Business Model if applicable.

- Shared Mindset that “if something can be done it will be done” .

- The Turnaround Leader + Team needs to be determined to follow the plan even if it is needed to disturb individual shareholder interests .

- Bringing fast better people on board and after changes in processes and strategy many of the existing employees decide to leave themselves as the new environment does not represent them.

- Software and systems/solutions thinking becomes more and more important in our networked world.

- Learning by establishing fast feedback loops from market to the company is vital for success

- Leadership to inspire and focus people behind a much bigger vision/purpose than themselves is key

- Embracing more and more digital marketing , better company wide digital collaboration tools , reaching out to the community of partners / beyond and leveraging third party assets are essential for achieving results.

- Ruthless Focus on Execution of the plan including the planned iterations with fast feedback loops the essence to deliver.

These were the key lessons and below 2 more for the JV period :

- A JV needs autonomy to deliver .To seriously Innovate cannot be done within an established company which protects the established core business model without full autonomy !

- Finally we inspired and nurtured many employees and managers that started with low level of exposure and learned so much with such a wealth of experiences within 3 years time period ! In such a business setting you learn in 3 years what you need 10 years in a big corporation

Intro what will happen the coming years with all Exponential Technologies

Here my focus will be to give a short introduction of what will be needed in the future as the new exponentially growing technologies ( Artificial Intelligence , Crowdsourcing , Robotics & Drones , Big Data & Data Analytics , Sensors , mobile , Digital Encryption & Currencies , 3D printing , Genetics ,……. ) start going across almost all Industries ( e g Entertainment , Transportation , Medical , Financial , Education , Communication , Manufacturing , Energy , Military ,… … ) .

At the same time big companies using the new technologies start to expand their businesses to other industries ( e g Apple >>> Cars , Google to cars and space , ….. ) creating soon new Industries . Smaller companies as well

having easier access to many new technologies will be able to develop faster adjacent solutions or even enter new industries .

The result will be :

- A very competitive and faster by day business environment - Creation of new Industries from merging of old ones with addition

of new elements - Creation of tremendous wealth and abundance - Many companies will almost monopolize their market- Many new niches will be created - Many companies will need to reorganize and transform themselves

to survive and thrive

For a few of the above subjects and what will be needed to create transformation within the new Exponential Technologies environment I will come back with a new article shortly.

Thank you very much and as always welcome comments and dialogue.