Building Escape Velocity to move beyond the pull of the past

How do company’s build the escape velocity to move beyond the successes and pull from the past? Geoffrey Moore’s Stanford video is hands-down the best use of an hour of my weekend.

We have examples of companies that failed to do so in time. Think Blackberry – from a 20% market share in 2009 to less than 0.05% in 2016. Why does it happen and how can organizations avoid it?

Moore argues that when companies focus too much on performance, they miss out on building the power to become the industry leaders that other companies envy.

He provides a great analogy – right now if you pollute the air, it’s free. And as long as it’s free people will continue with the behavior.

But unless we think about replenishing the failing system – that’s exactly what will happen.

He talks about how consuming power in organizations is similar -from successes that are currently working.

Additionally one gets compensated for consuming power for my performance.  Not for creating power around a new strategy.

“Now, the interesting thing is, in a mature industry you can do that for a long, long time. General Motors consumed its own power for 40 years. Eventually, it ran out of power.

And the performance metrics don’t track against that. So we need to replenish power if we’re going to go for the long-term

When you consume power and don’t replenish it, you’ll see it going to one and even below one as you get into trouble. And so what happens in a world in which we don’t consciously manage power, is we continue to put anxiety and pressure to perform, perform, perform, but every quarter it’s a little harder to do than the last quarter”

The talk has two parts – the first focused on what boards of organizations should look at differently. And the second, what folks like your or I can do differently within our organizations.

Also, I thought this was equally applicable to individuals – not just organizations.

Do give it a listen! Highly recommend

Video: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/videos/reach-your-escape-velocity-entire-talk/

Book  : Amazon Link

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Ranjani Mani

#reviewswithranjani

#strategy

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