Racing Track or Rainforest

Having spent the last couple of days listening to the strategy development of various companies my mind turned to how our brains do see the patterns of our competitive landscape.

 

Management development programs often use words like "structured approach", "decision framework" and "situation analysis".  All implying that business is a structured finite environment, like a race track.  We know where it is, it is clearly defined and we just need to get around it faster than our competitors.  Record times come when we are pushed by our competitors.

 

For a moment, consider that the business challenges today are similar to a rainforest.  The environment is ever changing and those changes affect each other.  We already talk about the competitive "environment", the industry "landscape" and the "jungle" of options. When one species survives, others may dwindle, a change in an environmental factor (such as global warmer or high employment) sends one specie to extinction while another specie thrives.  Too little rain kills off the protected but others grow taller.

 

How much of today's challenges can we think of in the context of some of our most pristine yet complex environments.

 

    A competitor introduces a new product which spreads though your customers like a vine, strangling your opportunities.  Some adapt to it, others move to a new tree or perhaps cut the vine off at the base.

 

    Lightening strikes the forest canopy, allowing sunlight to stream to the forest floor.  Perhaps a government changes from pro-business to pro-worker.  Some species will be threatened, some will emerge from the darkness, some may go underground and the truly hardy species will evolve, adapt to the new environment and survive.

 

Management development programs need to develop the mind to identify patterns.  These patterns at first might just be a "feeling" needing more work to identify the source of the emotional response. 

 

Management today is not just a series of steps, it is more likely to reward the management species that has an affinity for their environment.  Our business opportunities with emerging Chindia, labour shortages and increasingly complex technology are more forest than flat bitumen racetrack.