‘Future-proofing’ drives me nuts
“I don’t like giving predictions…The future is something we build.”
Tim Berners Lee speaking at last week’s IPExpo.
If even those who massively disrupted the world (the creator of the World Wide Web) don’t like to predict the future then how on earth can you ‘future-proof’ your marketing, IT, or wider business? And if we can’t predict the future then what can we do to embrace it?
What’s changing?
Probably the two areas in any business that are transforming most rapidly are the marketing and IT departments. All driven by the digital transformation of business – how we invest and use technology and business models to engage customers.
In marketing circles, there is a lot of talk about the future.
- Is there a role for marketing or is it dead?
- Should Marketing and IT merge? Should the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or the Chief Information Officer (CIO) become the new Chief Digital Officer (CDO) (Gartner predicts that by 2015 25% of organisations will have a CDO)?
- Do marketers have the right skills or, as this article suggests, they’re nervous that they don’t?
But is it about organisational structure and skills, or mind-set and culture?
Are we ready?
I recently came to the end of a brilliant self-development course, Conscious Leader, that is run for Cisco by Red Hat People . It was brilliant because it wasn’t a training course but time to understand what my impact is on individuals, groups and teams. Could I change that impact? How do I manage myself to be the best I can be – the most curious, adaptable, and open to change?
It made me think about how we adapt our organisations to change. In our fast moving world we need to be lighter on our corporate feet. Large organisations can sometimes be a little slow to adapt. However, create a culture where employees are:
- open to change;
- curious about the future , and
- confident of their ability to work in new situations, across teams and take on new skills.
Add in leadership that has the same approach, with a great deal of trust in each other, and vision.
And you create an amazing fleet of foot and adaptive organisation that can move mountains. Let alone take market share and deliver profit.
That’s not to say that we ignore investment in skills, and technology but for organisations to be ready for whatever comes next then employees must be ready to.
