Note from Art: no businesses were hurt in the writing of this post. Also, thanks to my good colleagues for agreeing to let me share a few of their thoughts and ideas in this post.  

Fresh off of my recent podcast interview with Geoffrey Moore on his new book, “Escape Velocity-Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past,” I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with my informal Board of Advisors (2 CEOs, 1 GM and 2 Consultants and all experienced leaders) on this very topic…building a new business while running the old one. With my thanks for their input and ideas, here are the highlights.

Discussion Highlights: 

-Slow to React: It was generally agreed that most businesses and most leaders struggle and fail at this endeavor of business reinvention. They often accept the need for radical business change too late and they move too slowly, passively and incrementally on the changes once the need is visible to all.  

-The View Gets in the Way: the CEO contingent offered an explanation…but not a defense for their fellow club members, indicating the view from their chairs of the needs and wants of customers and stakeholders (board, employees, investors), often suggests more incremental than revolutionary action. One CEO described her firm facing a disruptive situation and the board and investors pushing back, with a rationale of, “We invested in this business, not this mythical one you are talking about. Make it work.” 

“While the logic felt wrong, it was hard to overcome that mentality,” she added.

–Strong Leadership Required: All agreed that it takes strong conviction and true leadership to make what Moore describes in Escape Velocity as asymmetrical bets…investments on offerings and approaches radically different from the current ones.  “Most of us are wired to solve problems within the framework of our traditional thinking.  This world demands that we as leaders look at our business through different lenses and filters and sometimes that requires fighting through the dominant logic that our teams have used to succeed in the past.”

-Politicians Everywhere: the group offered that the need for radical change often begets a hyper-political environment, where land grabs and jockeying for position and resources often shift the focus off of the emerging business dilemma. Again, it was agreed that extraordinarily strong leadership was required to navigate this  volatile political situation and survive.

-Don’t Forget the People Who Do the Work: To a person, the group indicated that even if the need is visible and the top-level commitment made, the failure of senior leaders to build a coalition of mid-level leaders is often fatal to the attempt to change. 

What’s a Leader to Do?

1. Grow Your Paranoia: Andy Grove may have been right with his, ”Only the paranoid survive” mantra. The group encouraged the development of a healthy paranoia around the potential for the business to be disrupted. They suggested involving as many people as possible in environmental scanning and creating mechanisms for feedback and sharing.

2. Diversity Counts: Another participant suggested that diversity might be important. “Strive to build diverse teams…culture, background, experience and importantly, viewpoints. Your diversity might just save you when it comes to looking for solutions.”

3. Learn from Steve Jobs and Jack Welch: Invoke a bit of Steve Jobs and quit asking and start creating solutions for problems that people don’t know they have. The take-away: if your primary business planning tool is asking your customers what they need, you’re heading for an innovator’s dilemma event.  Engaging with customers is great, but beware falling victim to their natural myopia.

Another group member suggested that Jack’ Welch’s s approach to the rise of the internet via his “Destroy Your Business.com” program is an appropriate model for engaging the broader organizational population in a significant change program.

4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate: Follow Kotter’s advice on leading change and remember that “you cannot over-communicate” during these periods. In particular, create processes and events that keep stakeholders apprised of changing circumstances. If you’ve waited until the crisis lands to build some awareness with your stakeholders, don’t be surprised when they grow a bit testy and recalcitrant.

5. Recognize that Politics is a Full Contact Sport. Don’t underestimate rationalize away your need to play on the field of politics. Too many decisions take place in this environment, especially in larger organizations, for you to be unplugged.

6. Grow a Spine. If the situation calls for radical change and you’re in charge, it’s up to you to leave it all on the battlefield in pursuit of creating understanding and garnering stakeholder support for radical change.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

There’s nothing courageous about leading a business during good times where a rising tide effectively lifts everyone in the market. True leadership is forged in the fires of leading and managing and living through crises, including disruptive events. Perhaps the event doesn’t have to be your firm’s death knell, but rather a call to action in a new game of survival and success.