How to stay agile while working remotely

 Like most teams across Singapore, M1’s staff members made the shift to working from home during the circuit breaker period. Whilst it was a significant adjustment for all of us, it has been an exercise that has proven the importance of digital tools, cloud technologies and creative collaboration while social distancing.

To support our teams in continuing to work towards our goals, we’ve encouraged them to use a variety of technologies, including online collaborative tools that help staff members stay nimble through cross-team ideation and problem-solving while working remotely, and have provided educational workshops on remote working methods and techniques, such as SCRUM, which encourages teams to “sprint” while working on different aspects of a project together and ensure achievements are seen in weeks rather than numerous months.

In addition, all our teams working from home were equipped with hardware that included the software suite available at the office. Though a critical piece of technology for everyone, few software suites are a perfect fit for every employee and situation – especially when working remotely as a complete organisation for the first time. To bridge the new gaps our teams were experiencing in working from home, they worked together to tackle how best to fill gaps and communicate with each other. Through this, they have found innovative and fun solutions and share them with the wider team.

For example, our Digital Apps & Platforms  team, led by Nicole Cheah, has adopted a hybrid approach to enable her team’s mode of communication, track work progress and drive remote collaboration by using a blend of enterprise suite of software and social apps.

Still, teams are experiencing some challenges while working remotely. “I’ve received feedback that people felt as if they were trapped in a borderless time and space realm where they were unable to logout from work,” Nicole said. “The lack of division of ‘on work’ and ‘off work’ status because people were at home ultimately prolonged their working hours.”

To help her team balance their time more evenly and work sustainably, Nicole has encouraged everyone to work the usual office hours – which includes taking a lunch hour and respecting everyone’s time by not scheduling meetings outside of work hours as much as possible.

Beyond the challenge of balancing work and life when always at home, Nicole’s team also misses the social aspects of the office. “I do miss face-to-face interaction and informal conversations,” Lau Seng Keat, a team member from the Digital Applications and Portals team said. “I feel like in-person communication really helps to uplift the team spirit.”

To recreate the feeling of in-person interaction while social distancing and working remotely, Nicole and her team check-in with each other every morning to chat about work. They also have a dedicated channel for sharing non-work thoughts, articles, and memes, get together virtually on Fridays to wind-down the week, and have held birthday celebrations online.

This is just one example we can share and overall, Nicole and her team feel as if they are working well together and have been able to remain productive while working remotely over the circuit breaker period. “Our team is passionate about digitalization,” Nicole said. “We are adopting a growth mindset, and we believe in being the digital change agent to inspire our M1 teams to develop, grow and win as one team.”

We know there are still aspects we need to improve and therefore we won't be viewing these achievements as completed but merely providing insight for our next steps. Our new objective is that when we are able to all work in the office again many of the collaboration and productivity tools will continue to be used so that we realise a “win-win” outcome of personal interaction with some exciting new digital capabilities to support our team members and realise achievements on a more regular basis for the foreseable future. Our new approach to collaboration and transparency on productivity might have started from being “stuck” at home, however it will be one of the positive new capabilities for our team when we are back collaborating together as physical instead of only virtual teams.

Surviving a Digital Transformation

So let’s cover off the first question; “Why would I say surviving?” Let me put it as simply as this. Anyone that has experienced a digital transformation, or started to build digital capability within a business, will know that realising transformation through a digital lens is like operating on a patient to replace their heart and lungs while they run a marathon at the same time. (There is a building a plane while flying it too but I prefer the marathon analogy!).

Now, anyone in their right mind is going to say “Why on earth would you want to do that?” Again, simply put, it is out of necessity. No one transforms their business simply because they woke up in the morning and thought it was a good idea. It is born from an urgent need to evolve their business either from cost, competition or changing market dynamics.

Likewise, I am intrigued by the fact that many leaders feel going digital is as easy as building a new app or making a website interactive. However, when their shift to digital commences, they quickly realise it is a lot more than this, and actually that shift to digital is more about their own business’ way of working, instead of the technology they decide to deploy.

This is why a digital transformation makes sense. The move to a digital way of working, combined with the need to transform, makes for a common foundation because to realise either goal requires a business to actually change. However, if a business is not willing to change and make the proverbial “leap” into the new world, then the change that a business is embarking on will simply fail. It is irrelevant how much a CEO or business head is eager to change or evolve their business as it will always be the weakest link which will ultimately determine the degree of success. The weakest link could be a business leader who doesn’t support the change, a legacy supplier seeking to latch on worried they will lose their business, or it could also be the business setting guide rails so tight that it gives the program no chance to fail.

Yes that’s right – fail. In my experience, if you don’t fail you won’t learn what works for your business. It doesn’t matter how well you have planned your strategy for digital transformation, part of the excitement is trying new ways of working and new ways of serving customers. Some will work and others won’t, but this is all about designing your business for the future. At this point, there will be many senior executives who are reading this and say “Ah yes Nathan, learning is fine but my business can’t afford to fail. We need to grow and, as such, we will seek to leverage the expertise of consultants and System Integrator’s as they will already have gone through these learnings with other businesses and then my business will simply leverage from those … right”?

Naturally, there are many organisations out there offering to help businesses realise this digital change, with amazing stories on how they can realise the change and all of the places where they have seen it or, for the lucky ones, realised it for another business. Hence, it is an option for you to have someone transform your business and receive the end product, but as any digital native business will tell you, it will come down to your ability to not only go through one transformation, but to actually realise a greater degree of business agility and hence an ability to evolve your organisation to adapt to the true constant in our business world today, change.

It is very hard for any organisation to simply say we will do this on our own, change our way of working, retrain teams, create a new structure and introduce a whole new suite of technology and platforms. Hence, it is reasonable to be asking partners, integrator's and even software partners for support in realising the digital transformation outcome. The important word here is “support”, because the challenging aspect in this transformation is back to the business change that it is targeted to realise.

So what am I saying? Basically when you are embarking on your digital transformation, a) make sure you have identified the leaders in your business who are going to own this change, b) identify partners who can help you make that transition with a clear goal of having the ability to continue on with your transformation, independent of any partner as you establish a greater degree of maturity in the business. The objectives of a transformation will take time to realise. Putting a specific timeline on the deliverable can result in assuming a business has changed, but with a trail of destruction behind and a long tail of capability still in the old world. It’s like having had the heart and lung transplant and thinking everything is fine, but then realising you are bleeding internally which can lead to a slow painful demise.

However, by ensuring you build the capability within your business, the pace of that change can be constant, holistic and ensure no-one and no capability is left behind. Most importantly, that new internal capability will bring you a greater degree of agility as your business and/or the market continue to evolve. Hence, while you go through that heart and lung transplant, it won’t matter if that marathon evolves into a steeple chase or a cross country ski race, you and your business will have the confidence to front into that change, knowing the team has evolved to a new skill set. When I say skill, I am not referring to a digital skill, but an agility skill. To the point at which you may cause other businesses to look at their own heart and lung transplant as you go from being disrupted and merely surviving a transformation, to becoming the disruptor and ultimately start leading the marathon!

A Bridge Too Far

If you haven’t seen the film, it’s a classic and although the film is about a group of soldiers being dropped at a bridge further than they are supposed to, the part I relate most to business these days is the scene when they are asking what is on the other side of that bridge. No one knows, but someone is going to have to go over there. Of course no one wants to, but eventually a brave soul takes the steps to cross the bridge ready to try and blow up the bridge but fully expecting to be shot before they get there so he goes in with guns blazing. You will now be asking what does that have to do with people and technology. Put simply, the way we work can sometimes feel like that bridge too far.

In my own journey, I have worked in sales functions, led products and marketing teams and most recently, headed up operations – all disciplines that have a unique view on the business that they are tasked with supporting. From my time in sales, we focused on ensuring we could get the deal done and ask the products team to figure out how we build a product around it. In a products and marketing capacity, our focus was very much on understanding how we could best define the product and throw it over the wall to operations who will figure out how to build it. And in operations, it is the task of figuring out what has been requested and how this is going to actually work with the systems, tools and people a business currently uses. When an operations team then hands it back to sales – proud that they have been able to deliver the customer requirement with a marvelous “Ta-da it’s ready” to which sales may responds with a “That’s not what we asked for”. This is kind of like playing Chinese Whispers as a kid and giggling at how the message became so fragmented when it reached the start of the circle again. But in business we don’t tend to giggle – well not as much anyway!

For those of you familiar with the film “A bridge too far”, and equally familiar with these functions, you may be thinking a bridge crossing a river doesn’t do these differences justice. I would agree in fact that we sometimes view these as worlds apart instead of merely crossing a river. So let’s extrapolate this analogy. You aren’t merely trying to cross a bridge between functions, but actually we are asking people to don a spacesuit, board a rocket and cross a space bridge not knowing how they will be received on the other side or even if they will understand us. But don’t worry we are armed and dangerous with our own knowledge of how things should work in the business in order for us to do our job, right?

Start-up businesses provide a great learning for established businesses, in start-ups you simply don’t have a choice. You have to cross that bridge or otherwise see your start-up fail. And often in start-ups, it requires people who are working across functions in order to keep the business moving at pace. If the business loses momentum, market confidence can rapidly decline and in turn customers may be lost, resulting in a negative position for the business. Employees of a start-up have no fear because there is simply no time to be fearful or worry about how requirements will be misinterpreted. A start-up ensures these worlds overlap so as decisions are made quickly and together to ensure the business is on board with the outcome we are looking for.

I am sure there will be many of you out there thinking, but a start-up is easier they don’t have the scale we do, they don’t have the complexity of services and systems. Well who put that complexity there, or the systems that you are using? What if we could sit together and redefine what that way of working could look like? Forget who was the person who made the decision or who created the complexity, imagine a world where you could change the business model you work in, below are a few of my suggestions on how you can improve that collaboration.

Stop focusing on the customer and think about the one element you have in common no matter what your function is – the customer. It doesn’t matter if you are the lawyer, IT manager, finance manager, marketing manager or sales manager, this is the one aspect that any function will have in common. I would challenge anyone to identify a function that doesn’t impact a customer directly or indirectly. If you are going to say janitor then my answer is first impressions are everything – what if your customer visited a messy office or overflowing bins? What would that perception mean for your initial conversation?

Take a walk in the other team’s shoes – I will always remember a quote from my coach (you know who you are). In any discussion, no matter how much we disagree there will always be at least 10% truth in what the other person is saying. Pause for a moment and reflect on that concept, what could be that 10% from the other function, once you start there you may quickly find there is more truth or more importantly more alignment between your functions you are merely looking from different lenses toward the customer.

Define what is truly important. I am always amazed at the resolute stand we can make between functions to say we can’t change this or this is a deal breaker, with people left scratching their heads wondering where did that come from? Consider as a cross functional team what are key factors for success as well as failure for any activity undertaken. Agreeing these as a group provides guidance to a business and encourages ideation to be brought into a forum seeking to help realise the benefit vs. attending an episode of Dragons Den (Don’t know what it is … watch some of the video’s gulp!)

These are just a few examples based on my experience and I am sure there are many more suggestions from people out there, but the purpose of these examples is to get you thinking, looking out beyond your realm of influence and seize the opportunity.

What I am saying is this is a call for volunteers, volunteers to cross the bridge, unarmed, vulnerable and open to helping the other-side achieve their outcome with the knowledge of not what your world needs but what your world can provide. Take the leap and move to a role where you can challenge yourself to help another function succeed based on your diverse skills. In time, this bridge crossing will be two ways so when you are volunteering you will need to encourage others to follow your example and cross the bridge the other way. This mindset of adding value to encourage collaboration and ultimately drive the outcome the business is looking for namely sustainable growth and serving your customer, all of this resulting in a business realising that no bridge is too far. 

Lost in Translation

I love technology, but if there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is that it is really irrelevant how much you know about the functionality of a particular widget.   The decision to buy a service is no longer about how “shiny” or “rich” a service is, but how it can be relevant. We have reached a tipping point where the traditional buyers of procurement and IT are no longer front and centre in the buying decisions.  These individuals are being replaced by the Business Unit owners and customer facing functions, a shift which requires a fundamentally different type of conversation and one which is causing many challenges for numerous ICT related industries.

“Big bets”, or big changes, are increasingly a thing of the past, especially as ICT services become more on-demand. This change gives customers the ability to transform much easier than in years past. Therefore, businesses need to evolve their thinking toward a new approach of differentiation…one towards relevance as it pertains to the business and the new decision makers.  We need to shift our language from the bits and bytes to understanding the challenges and opportunities that exist and what it can mean for the business. As businesses start to become more granular and focused, on tracking outcomes from individual initiatives, their expectations from suppliers equally change.

One of the things I love about my job is the opportunity to listen to business owners regarding their ambitions for their business, their key challenges and where they would like help.  In speaking with them, I begin thinking about the role I can play for that person in translation and/or understanding of what he/she is trying to achieve and the solutions out there that could help to solve their business challenges. If you are going to be meeting new business people there are three key tips I would suggest you do ahead of time. First, learn about who you are meeting with, what are their priorities and key goals? Secondly, how do they actually measure success for their business and industry? Finally, how can you help them to bridge from your understanding of feature and functionality with the insights of the above?

Let me be more specific, I am not talking about simply writing a script to accomplish what I’ve suggested above. You need to truly embrace and understand these questions and make them part of your approach to doing business. If you are able to do this and can then change the way you have a conversation, this will leave you feeling like you have had a positive impact on someone’s life and or business. Now this is not to say I will stop talking about technology. I simply love technology, but I love it for the same reason I write these blogs. I want to know the impact technology can have on people and to understand how we as individuals can influence and shape the evolution of technology. Technology plays a growing integral part of our daily lives, from the watch on your wrist to the self driving car; our lives will continue to be impacted hence the need to understand how we want technology to add value versus trying to make the functionality of a new widget work for us.

 I am reminded by a great Simpsons episode (stay with me now) where a techie is attracted by Homer Simpsons offer of fast internet but when the techie asks: “I'm interested in upgrading my twenty eight point eight kilobit internet connection to a one point five megabit fibre-optic T-1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring ethernet LAN configuration?” – Now you could be forgiven for thinking and those things are what? - but in basic terms he is looking for an internet upgrade and one that will not require him to change any hardware at his home thus keeping his costs low so as he can visit the comic book store and buy more magazines (seriously!). Now of course the obvious question is, “well then why not say that?” I often find myself having to remind people that functionality is great but unless it has relevance to the person you are trying to sell to (or in the case of this Simpson episode – buy from) then there is not much point in starting a conversation.

In the case of Homer Simpson and similar for many businesses, there is a need for a new type of translator – one which can help people and businesses translate features and functionality to demonstrable business benefits, in the language of the customer or partner. This is something that I love to do and moreover enjoy seeing that “light go on” when the translation has been successful and everyone around the room gets excited about the outcome they are then working towards. Without these translators of the future, it is going to be akin to a meeting of two foreign countries, where gestures and pictures is all that is able to be used to explain anything which will ultimately result in a loss of translation moment and leave many people with that Homer Simpson expression as their only answer … “Can I have some money now?” 

Fail fast or suffer slow

Telstra recently released its Connecting Countries thought leadership report, which was based on a survey of some 4,100 executives across Asia capturing their views on best practices, challenges and overall business performance in the region. It was exciting to read that there were a number of management lessons that businesses can take with them as they seek to invest into Asia as well as an insight into the profile of an Asia Business Champion – one who doesn't only recognize best practices but also lives and breathes them.  While there were a number of takeaways from the report,  there was one which jumps out at me particularly as it relates to driving success in an Asia market place. One of the key management lessons for success in Asia was looking at the need to move forward with multiple growth strategies concurrently.

Now I have always believed that a person cannot multi-task (despite my numerous attempts to try!) hence this strategy could only ever exist for a large size business and not an individual or SMB. But the need to look at multiple strategies is important for international businesses to consider in order to balance the potential risk of one failing due to internal or market challenges. I must make clear though there are limits to running multiple strategies. A couple of years ago for example, one vendor shared with me their plans to run 25 new initiatives in parallel. Now I don’t care how big you think you are or how mature your strategy execution process is, but when you talk about multiple strategies to this degree it is simply a death warrant for the strategy itself and puts the business at risk of losing its way. I am glad to see that San Francisco based vendor has since realized this and re-evaluated how many initiatives it takes on at the one time.

Now when a business is looking at multiple strategies it needs to understand the levers it can use, for example how quickly a strategy decision can be moved into action and equally, how quickly it can be shut down. These days it is increasingly common place that a strategy is dependent on people, systems and communication. Now, we know we have the ability to redeploy people to other projects and – as hard as it can be at times – sometimes people choose or must move on , however for Systems and communication platforms we often have to make investments that tend to have a pay back only after 3-5 years,. This can cause a challenge as businesses then need to assess how they can mitigate risks to drive a strategy to a positive outcome. For this reason it is important for businesses to adopt what is increasingly being known as a “Fail Fast” principle. The Fail Fast principle looks at prioritizing initiatives that need an investment based on requiring limited capex and leveraging platforms that can be turned up quickly and equally turned off with very little delay post a decision, if it is not working.

Take for example the idea of replicating a solution into a new vertical, which  might require assigning people temporarily, adding  system capacity for marketing campaigns, tracking opportunities and managing customer deployed solutions. But what if all of this could be set up within weeks and taken down even quicker? Would that make you rethink your prioritization of business strategies and equally consider additional initiatives, knowing your investment risk is significantly reduced and not committing the business to years of investment? Well hopefully the answers to both are yes, if not then perhaps a multi path strategy is not for you (either that or you have money and resource to burn).

Historically this would have been a challenge; however the virtualization of IT and communications means that businesses are now more empowered than ever to introduce the Fail Fast principle into their strategy decisions. Now considering the feedback from the Connected Countries survey that businesses need to consider multiple strategies in order to achieve success – at the beginning of this article it would be perfectly normal to think this is only achievable by either very large businesses or for those who have learned through expensive or painful experiences of what strategies work and equally which don’t. However hopefully now you are thinking about how your business could introduce a multiple path strategy by leveraging the advancements of technology that exist today, combined with the key principle in defining which strategies to go after based on their ability to align to a fail fast approach.

We are not talking about transformation or changing the way your business operates. This is very much about understanding how a business can be successful in a market like Asia where the only constant is change. But there are clearly multiple market opportunities and with the right approach –  as demonstrated by the Asia Business Champions – combined with the right principles, businesses can create the environment needed to succeed by failing fast, which ultimately has to be a better approach than suffering slow and not reaping the rewards of a multi path strategy.

You can find the Connected Countries report at the attached link - http://www.telstraglobal.com/connectingcountries/?concountries=tgbanner

Leopards need to change their spots too

We associate Leopards with being fast, agile, and adaptive – something many businesses would love to aspire to or believe they have already achieved. However, think about that Leopard for a moment lacking the ability to maintain a sustainable pace, using up all of its energy in a very short period of time and spending a lot of its time resting to conserve energy.  Now doesn’t that sound more like many organisations you know of, expending large amounts of energy but finding that sustainable pace in a market of change?

In our work environment we increasingly find organisations that need to adapt to the changing market around them. But, I would propose that it is the constant adaption, customisation and “tinkering” of applications and systems that really restrict a business’s ability to do just that.

Consider for a moment how many changes you requested from your supplier to ensure your application or system would operate effectively based on your current ways of working. And now consider how frustrated you were at the supplier’s lack of understanding of your business needs. 

Next, consider what your company did when looking to adapt to market changes or a shift in strategy.  I am guessing – as tends to be the case – you invited in your suppliers and told them there would be a number of change requests required as updates to your applications and systems were needed to ensure they evolved with the needs of your business. What happens next is the response you receive from your suppliers is an extensive program of system changes, which are significantly more expensive than what you had expected. At this point the inevitable happens and we introduce that word that every strategy leader hates … compromise. You are then entering a phase of your business change where you need to balance the necessity of change with the market need to change against the cost. The end result is that the costs continue to increase, you don’t receive the changes you were hoping for and you ultimately end up setting up the business to fail, not fast mind you, just a slow and painful death.

I share this with you because, given the world we live and work in, there is a need for a fresh approach to business.  An approach which actually requires an organisation to change, a change in the way it works and not necessarily by overhauling existing systems and tools. As strange as it may sound it is increasingly crucial for businesses to avoid customisation as much as possible so they can adapt to the market quickly and avoid expensive system overhauls. Of course people will say “well hang on Nathan we need to customise those systems if the market is changing.” Well, I would challenge that there are two approaches businesses need to be taking to ensure sustainable growth in today’s market.

The first is by moving to standard components and interfaces.  With this, you are then able to consider vendor replacements. By forcing the use of API’s, or application interfaces, you can replace components much more easily without the need of a potential full rip and replace of all systems supporting a process.  This equally ensures your business can regularly validate the latest capability from CRM systems to Billing systems and even, dare I say, communication systems. How often have you found yourself frustrated just after launching a new platform, application or system that a capability had just been added that would have benefited your organisation?  Need I say more?

The second key approach is to look in the mirror more often.  Instead of the levers you seek to adjust being limited to third party components, look into your business at the people, processes and ultimately ways of working that you have established and ask yourself, how often have these actually changed over the years?  I am not talking about rearranging the deck chairs, I am referring to real changes in ways of working to ensure 1. that a business can maximise the opportunities that change can bring; 2. to ensure that sustainable growth is understood as the journey.

The first approach is strengthened by the introduction of cloud based architectures, which means you can consume what you need, and equally adjust to new market developments quickly. I appreciate some elements are more difficult to change than others but, by starting with a view that everything can be changed, this will ultimately create the right environment for success. Cloud capabilities have created new avenues for businesses to feel more in control of the risks their business chooses to take and equally the opportunity to leverage the latest technology at each step of the way.

The second approach is a lot more difficult because no one likes change.  Change can cause a stall in business performance and ultimately comes with its own risks. However, people will accept and equally embrace change, as long as you can articulate the benefit to the business. Whatever those change may be, understanding the business need first is the most important element.

Speed and agility are crucial business elements, but without simplifying the tools and ensuring the business adapts to the market change, all that an organisation will achieve is declining profitability and increasingly demoralised employee engagement. I am always intrigued by business leaders who share how confident they are about their business, but it is those businesses who recognise that being as agile as a leopard is not enough. Sometimes you need to change yourself in order to succeed and the tools round you may enable part of that change, but unless you are willing to change your own spots you may find that the speed you have is only enough to spin your wheels  and not to deliver the continued momentum.

Different Path same Destination

Our world is changing dramatically, Stock Markets have become more like Roller coasters, many businesses are now satisfied with sustainable business models as opposed to rapid growth and many technology companies are suggesting that hardware and software sales could be in for a difficult time. The result of all of this? Zero to Low confidence within businesses on their journey of business evolution as they continue on their journey in the increasingly global and competitive landscape. At this point I can already hear a few people wondering how this has anything to do with the common topic of my blogs, the impact of technology on the world we live in? Well it does, so let me explain.

Today’s businesses and technology are intertwined to such a degree that you can’t look at one without understanding the implications, limitations or even changes required to the other. Many CXO’s that I speak to lately are concerned with the balancing act they are facing – how do they invest in technology to ensure they can support their business requirements but at the same time manage a tight rope balance of cost vs. business benefit without knowing what is happening in the next 3 months let alone 3 years!

Many businesses are offering increased flexibility in their products but they are equally concerned with their own business models and outlook resulting in their own business concerns. On that basis it is time to throw out the guide book and reconsider business models for a new era, a period of sustained unpredictability as a vehicle for change. I have said it before in one of my blogs, we as individuals and society drive technology, we should not accept that technology will limit our own choices or for that matter determine our own path to success. Consider for a moment what would happen if we knew our oil would run out (I know not a pleasant thought!), we would adapt and look at alternatives to ensure our needs were met ensuring we could continue with our journey as we already are starting to do so!

Each and every business has a vision or a goal they are seeking to achieve over a 3 to 5 year period, many are concerned that the current instability in the market is placing that goal at risk. What is required is for businesses to reassess the path they are taking to achieve their goal. It may take longer, it may require acceptance that they are evolving from a straight highway to a windy mountain path, which requires a more graduated approach to ensure the business does not slip backwards as it progresses towards its goal.

Once we have identified the new path to achieve our goal and/or vision businesses can then look to what role technology could and will play in supporting the journey along that path. This is a crucial pause point, looking to technology in the same way as we have done in the past will simply result in reliving “Groundhog Day” (for those of you who don't understand that analogy watch the movie!). We need to look at the principles of what technology can provide in its simplest form and redesign the manner in which that technology is both delivered/implemented and supported. What I mean is we need to look at how we reshape the use of technology, from its commercial, integration and utilization aspects. Business are looking for new ways of working as they seek to break the cycle of change they find themselves in today with various factors pulling their decision making in different directions.

Technology can support businesses in continuing their journey to their goal by ensuring that communication and IT developments are not static and that they can be moulded to the needs of the business. The end benefit of this approach is a return to three year planning, an increased confidence in formulating longer term decision making and commitments … Why? Simply because if you know that your business can access levers across your organization from commercial, technology, geography and people in order to adapt to your changing business environment then your business will equally grow in confidence and will increasingly develop an inherent ability to adapt and anticipate market change.

On that note I leave you with two final comments – Stay on your path, your vision is the key to the sustainability of your business and remind yourself that technology is only an enabler. Accept that the path to realizing your goal may change and that it is your adaptability as a business that will result in the greatest chance of achieving success!