What is The Next Big Thing in 2019?
2019 is going to a be great turning point for all businesses. We are going to see huge changes in business organisation, focus on innovative business models and customers are going to be extremely surprised by new products and new smooth customer experiences. We are going to use data in whole new way and generate more profit and have happy loyal customers.
While this is how the prediction should sound like for 2019. This is as true as it has been for the last 20 years that I have been consulting. A very small percentage will succeed to move forward, a lot will fail partially or go completely out of business, and the rest will just maintain status quo.
Irresponsible Leadership
Why? The reason is the lack of leadership from CEOs and boards. The vast majority of leaders don’t take the right precautions and decisions to adopt their business to the future ahead. The focus is too short-sighted, that goes both for the leadership and their organisations that they are not driving forward. Risk analysis are used to predict when to change position. Initiatives from middle management are made to create powerpoints and reports that will secure the next experience entry on LinkedIn. Nobody is doing anything that is not best for themselves. All precautions and decisions are taken within the frame of “What am I risking?” A small step, have a small risk, so a small step is the most likely step that will be taken.
There have been so many wake up calls with big well-known cases as Netflix and Uber, where they out of nowhere challenge existing business models and completely changes the market space and knock-out big solid businesses. Still those cases don’t seem to make a change in the Leadership model, they don’t seem to really to sink into to the awareness of the top-level leadership, so business as usual continues to be the driving spirit.
The Successful Leadership
The Successful Leadership would not look at the company’s numbers first, they would look at the company’s culture. They would assess if they have created the frame for a culture of innovating the business beyond their own term in the company.