Sustainable Disruption……a new growth model for businesses

• They have made their business model hard to execute
• Their operational costs are volatile and most often over budget
• They have a leadership vacuum
• There is significant disconnect between their business development efforts and actual feet on the street sales
• Their brand is diluted due to lack of focus
• They lack thought leadership
• They miss thinking about the client’s customer
• They blame India and China for labor arbitration

• If you can’t articulate your business model in two pages or less you have a problem.
• Commoditize your business not your customer experience. This flat lines your operating costs and lets you focus on front-end issues.
• If your key leadership team (c-level) is not willing to be fired for not meeting year end metrics/goals you have a problem.
• If your brightest biz dev folks are your best sales people why aren’t they out selling?
• True brand building is picking one or two key disruptors that the whole organization can rally around.
• Make the rules that the market will follow.
• “Third-Box” thinking. Your client’s customer is more important that your direct client.
• With annual 8% economy growth numbers in countries like India - stop complaining and figure out a way how you will meet the demands of billion plus consumer base.

How do you create sustainable disruption?

• Identify market disruptors that will benefit your organization
  This is a simple yet powerful exercise that focuses on looking at market drivers and coming up with a business model that will put your current organization out of business. Ask your leadership team “what are they going to screw up in the next 6-12 months?” It’s a very hard question to answer but one that needs to be addressed if you want to generate growth via untraditional approaches.
• Act precisely and effectively to leverage the disruption
  Once the disruptors have been identified it’s extremely important to execute at three levels – people, process and technology. Just as computers have operating systems, organizations have Human Operating Systems which need to be upgraded consciously and regularly. For disruption to stay sustainable the business processes and supporting technology needs to be updated. Most often organizations make the mistake of blindly jumping into new technology and/or process improvement fad which are counterproductive. It’s better to leverage a commodity model when executing a disruptive strategy i.e. focus on front-end of the business and commoditized back office functions like HR, IT, Finance, Supply Chain etc. Execution is critical because the best successes came out of flawless execution not flawless strategies.
• Gear up for the next disruption
  Just thinking long term is not good enough anymore. Organizations need to think about next generation disruptors i.e. changes in the market place from players who don’t exist today. For example it is very likely that India will become THE economic super power by 2020. While most of the progressive nations have spent time reflecting and gloating on past economic successes, countries like India and China are slowly but steadily disrupting the global economic model one programmer at a time. The reality for US firms is not how to keep from losing jobs to India but how can they be disruptive so they can leverage fast growth economies in countries like India and China.