Titanic Syndrome and 3 steps for reinventing your business

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If we look at the past and take the fortune 500 companies from the original list of fortune 500, a whopping 88 percent of those companies have disappeared, they have sunk, and they are no longer here. They either went bankrupt or were acquired. And if we look at the forecast by BCG (Boston Consulting Group), they predicted in January 2020, that about one-third of all publicly traded companies will disappear in just five years.

The reason for companies’ failure to sustain and thrive is their inability to reinvent themselves.

In today’s blog, let’s understand the importance of reinvention and also the steps for implementing the reinvention framework.

Reinvention used to be a one-time project when the world was less volatile and more certain in the 20th century, but in the 21st-century world, reinvention is not like putting on a wedding once in a lifetime. It’s more like taking a shower on a regular basis. If we don’t take a shower on a regular basis, we begin to stink.

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The same is the case with your business. If you don’t take a regular shower and reinvent your business or your career, the business begins to stink. We need to proactively reinvent before the crisis. If you don’t take shower, you will stink. If you don’t reinvent continuously, your business will stink. That makes it very clear the need for reinvention and also how it helps the organizations.

Reinvention is a science and practice of life, it helps people and businesses to thrive in an uncertain and volatile world.

Reinvention is a system that allows you to safeguard against any kind of disruptions, crises, or changes in your marketplace, in your career, and preserve and sustain life in your career, in your company, and in your product portfolio.

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Reinvention today is a growing professional field and we see chief reinvention officers showing up in corporate settings, consulting settings, but also at the government level.

Businesses need to anticipate change, design change and implement change.

Leaders have to build a culture in which reinvention is celebrated and perceived as a positive thing in your company.

Remember, that change is not here to punish you and change is not your enemy. It’s a beautiful opportunity to let go of things that no longer serve you, to let go of assumptions, skills, and tools that maybe are no longer relevant but, most importantly, it’s a beautiful opportunity to discover a new version of yourself, and that is the ultimate freedom.

The moment you make change your friend, you make reinvention your superpower, you become a person with the ultimate freedom to constantly create a new version of yourself, so make reinvention your friend.

In the United States, the state of North Dakota was the first one to introduce the Chief Reinvention Officer(CRO) of the state. So, it’s becoming a full-on profession, in today’s age of rapid speed, constant disruptions, and constant uncertainty, you cannot do both jobs i.e. preserve the current business and the current cash flow while building a new one.

This is too much for one person to handle, so while the traditional executives are working on preserving the current business, the Chief Reinvention Officer, usually with their teamwork on the future and growing the new versions of the company.

At every point, your company has a portfolio of projects, processes, and solutions that are being tested and developed to assure that you have a future and no matter what disruption is coming your way, you’re prepared proactively, not just reacting to COVID 19, not just reacting to new technology, not just reacting to new competitors, but noticing those potential risks and opportunities in advance and grabbing them before anybody else notices them. That also means that we need processes. Processes need to be reinvented from time to time else businesses will become irrelevant.

Take the case of UPI adoption in India, in case if small-time vendors didn’t reinvent themselves and create a UPI account for themselves on their smartphones — they’d have lost their business during COVID-19

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This post is based on our conversation with Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva on the topic of reinvention, she also shared the following 3 principles to summarize the need for reinvention to help the businesses thrive in the VUCA world.

Without a real grasp of value creation, reinvention is not possible — it’s all about new and improved ways of creating value. Think about how to add more value to your customers through your products and services by reinventing the way you deliver! Value creation and business modeling are at the heart of real reinvention mastery!

The frequency with which our reinvention must take place is staggering. Essentially, we must become a new company every three years. In fact, we must reinvent so frequently and so radically that the traditional roles and processes inside of an organization cannot keep up.

Some companies develop Titanic syndrome not via arrogance or strong attachment to past success but through the inability to recognize that things might change suddenly. All of us are creatures of habit, and it is so tempting to think that things will stay as they are. Instead of looking at strategy as a rigid plan, create a format and process that allows for continuous reinvention

Titanic syndrome is a corporate disease in which organizations facing disruption bring about their own downfall through arrogance, excessive attachment to past success, or inability to recognize the new and emerging reality.

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We adore our products and services, we love or hate our processes, and we celebrate or cry over our financial results. But value seems very abstract!

What value have you created last week?

Not to your company.

Not to your business unit.

But You.

Simple question, right?

Hope you’ll not find trouble answering this.

Would love to read your comments or feedback!

Please find the link to #TGV178 full interview in the first comment