Change vs. transformational management

You might ask me, ‘what’s the difference?’

Change management, in my mind, has always been about making small shifts towards the strategy or taking baby steps towards the vision and shifting our behaviours and perspectives in small, manageable increments, pretending like we have time… Lol, time is not playing that game anymore, it’s speeding up with exponential speed.

As the past is becoming more and more irrelevant as we zoom towards robotics, AI and the IOT, which will wipe out middle management – think how a platform like Uber got rid of the people who booked the taxis for us, or how we make most of our bookings for flights online through a platform and not with a human – the examples are endless.

But this is what digital 2.0 was about, welcome to digital 3.0 or the transformational age where the staff or lower management jobs are going now as well – Uber has just begun testing its driverless cars, which will be transporting us everywhere, real soon at a 10th of the price of what we paying presently, in fact the Japan 2020 Olympics is stating that a large percentage of the taxis transporting the athletes and staff will be done by driverless cars.

This is 3.5 years away and as the time is speeding up will make it feel like 6 months in the 1990s.

So, welcome to the transformation age – where the sector we operate in will become only an aspect of how we do business.

We need to be jumping into sectors that we are not familiar with in order to stay relevant i.e. Nike added digital arm to its departments or Levi’s going digital with Google to create the smart jacket.

© Somsak Sudthangtum – 123RF.com

The best way to explain what we need to do with our business is by using this example using the humble coffee bean as the test case:

We had a commodity – the coffee bean.

Then a brand like Nestle made a product with it and called it Nescafé and sold it in retail stores.

Then you could buy this bean as service – coffee you get in a restaurant.

Then Starbucks arrived, creating an experience around coffee.

But the real transformation arrived with Nespresso – they transformed how we buy, store, make and dispose of coffee.

They transformed the whole concept of drinking coffee.

How are you transforming your business and the sector you play in?