How to take your business out of the past and into the future

Looking to the future is vital for any business.

Complacency, failure to innovate and not anticipating customer needs are all common reasons why businesses fail. Future-proofing the business and thinking about what products and services tomorrow’s customers may want can be challenging.

But if firms want to build a sharp vision of how a future version of their company will service future customers it involves throwing away the rule book and breaking away from how things are done today.

This isn’t always easy and getting people on board with a different way of thinking can be an uphill struggle. However nothing will change if people cannot, or will not, change. The people in an organization are always the key factor when developing a vision of the future.

To this end business leaders need to empower everyone in the organization to execute a successful strategy for the future. They need to engender positivity, commitment, enthusiasm, trust, excitement, open-mindedness, and creativity across the organization.

Empowering people and making them part of something purposeful will in turn lead to them investing in making it happen. This is the only way a company can ensure its longevity and that they can meet the needs of the customers they don’t yet have.

Below are six key areas for firms to focus on:

Start at the beginning

Making a diverse range of people part of the future design process and engaging them in the process has enormous benefits, including more diverse inputs and better ideas. Also, the business builds a team of advocates and enthusiasts who are already invested in the future because they helped shape it.

Invest in telling the story

In smaller organizations it is easy to engage a significant percentage of the team in the process. In larger organizations, even a wide engagement might only touch a small percentage, so it is essential that everyone else is really bought into the vision and the strategy to achieve it. This relies on brilliant storytelling.

Creating compelling assets to convey the future vision for a company effectively, fitting within a broader narrative can be delivered with nothing but a webcam and microphone if necessary.

Humans engage with compelling stories, so hone a script that effectively captures where the business is going, why it is vital they get there and why everyone in the organization will be part of making it happen.

Give people licence to leave the past behind

It is not possible to lay out a bold vision of the future and then expect everyone to get there while still doing all the things they do today.

It is important to make space for them to contribute and they must be given licence to leave things behind and make new things happen. Sometimes that’s as simple as backing a decision to halt work on something that was a priority, but doesn’t contribute to what the future looks like.

Encourage the team to bring these activities to light, then explicitly bestow a licence on them to stop them or scale them back to focus on the future instead. This will build confidence in the team that this strategy is real and builds real momentum.

Give people the chance to shape their own future

Don’t pretend there won’t be impacts. It is better to address these head on and make it clear that the future is rich with opportunity for those who want to be part of it. Have honest conversations early and don’t sprinkle everything with glitter, plus be direct about the personal opportunities available.

The future may not be orange but it must always lead to more digital processes, with deeper digital experiences and fewer repetitive human-powered ones. That means new services, processes, and roles in new teams. Give everyone the chance to step up and make themselves a part of that, and support those that do, because the future will be built on them.

Don’t just default to current leaders to make the future business happen. Consider empowering people further ‘down’ the current organization by keeping an eye out for those who are attuned to the future ambition in early discussions.

Lead, then lead some more

Leaders in a digital business must be all-in. If there’s one characteristic that defines iconic leaders of the modern age it’s their ability to lead their organization on a bold – sometimes seemingly impossible – mission. This requires an abundance of leadership.

It’s a leader’s job to instil belief that a bigger, better future is an inevitable outcome and they must consistently demonstrate a commitment to achieving it.

If they don’t actively lead people through a transformation it will fail, because no matter how good they are as individuals, herds of people stall or drift off course.

Without constant re-communication of the purpose, vision, and strategy, even the best teams wander away from the path they should be on. The best way to keep everyone on-track is to engage them in the strategic narrative frequently and celebrate those who are doing important things to make it happen.

Recognize transformation fatigue

Moving the business into the future by driving a substantial organizational transformation can be tough. There will be endless bumps in the road and it’s essential to lead everyone past them.

Uncertainty is part of everyday life for any business in the digital age, but it is still not something that many people are that comfortable with. But if left unchecked, the transformation process will cause dips in confidence and will wear people out. Pace will slow and belief will falter. This is transformation fatigue.

Pay close attention to people. Keeping their welfare front of mind is vital because a happy, confident, energized team will get more done in a day than a burnt out team will achieve in a week.

Recognize people with praise. Reward them with extra time off and encourage regular holidays. Limit their work week, and give them plenty of support when they need it. Leaders need to focus on looking after their people, or transformation fatigue will put the brakes on everything the business is trying to achieve.

By focusing on these key areas business leaders can drive forward a transformation into the future. While this will lead to changes that might impact people personally, it is a business leader’s role to make the ‘to’ far more appealing than the ‘from.’

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