The New Future: Strategy is fundamentally about how you are going to deliver unique value

Organizations today operate in a highly dynamic business environment, which is compounded by complexity and uncertainty throughout society. For the foreseeable future, business leaders will need to master the disciplines of uncertainty.

Today’s news is not very good. Every time we think we are on the silver lining of the recession, we are thrown into another cycle, hit with another crisis, and told that it will only be a few more months before all this changes.

Unprecedented monetary stimulus, government guarantees and capital injections appear to have largely ended the short-term crisis that brought capital and credit markets to the hospital. But it’s not clear what will happen when the patient stops taking their medication.

For the first time in a year, most say that economic conditions in their countries are better now than they were in September 2008. While the global news is good, there are stark regional differences; executives in developed Asia are generally the most optimistic, and those in Europe the least.

Yet most executives around the world share the prevailing skepticism of consumers: When asked to name the biggest threat to future economic growth and the growth of their own companies, most are concerned about the low consumer demand and lost business due to low costs. competitors.

It is at times like these that tremendous competitive success can be achieved. It is at times like these when companies can change their position in the market. It’s times like these that leaders can become followers, and followers can become leaders, because we’re in a period where now everything is going to open up and unfreeze. The cheap ones are getting better, the best ones are getting cheaper. Cheaper, better and faster is the new normal.

There are changes in lifestyle: people do not go to the cinema, but watch it at home; not eat out, but eat at home. People no longer go for the premium skin care products or maybe Starbucks.

Alternative sales channels (kiosks, home shopping, Internet retail, service stations, automatic sales and direct sales) have been introduced frequently.

The world population will grow, whether we like it or not, from the current six and a half billion to close to eight billion by 2030. And that will not only give more people, but also, as their standard of living improves, create other opportunities for the products to expand.

It is very clear that this world has tremendous challenges. The challenges of poverty, water, global warming, climate change.

The worst strategy mistake is to compete with your competitors in the same thing. You want to find a different kind of value that you can offer to a different set of customers. Strategy is fundamentally about how you are going to deliver unique value.

Technologies like high-speed Internet, mobile broadband, and GPS are enabling new ways to deliver value to customers. Not too long ago, the options for anyone who needed a car were to buy one, lease one, or rent one, by the day or by the week. In each of these alternatives, the car was likely to sit unused on a lot or in a garage for long periods of time. All of these models provided great comfort, but at the price of great inefficiency.

With the advent of new technologies, another model emerged: car sharing. Instead of buying or leasing an entire car, customers buy only the number of cars they really need. It could be an entire day’s worth or just an hour. The car is there when they need it, and someone else uses it when they don’t.

White Ocean Strategy does not represent the world of competition but the world of abundance in which you can share.

Good service is not enough. Shoot customer satisfaction. A constant drive to improve.

You know, what YouTube was yesterday is Twitter today. Twitter, a brand that has reached an estimated value of $1 billion since its founding in 2006. Like other social networks, Twitter faces a dilemma: It’s easier to sign up users than it is to monetize them. Personal accounts are free, and the microblogging site has yet to establish a proper business model.

Taking a step in that direction, Twitter is establishing paid business accounts. Founder Biz Stone assures companies that they can still use Twitter for free, but paid accounts will provide a “special layer of access” that includes comments and statistics.

Microsoft now has to worry about the rise of cloud computing, a wave that Google intends to take full advantage of with its upcoming Chrome OS. Tomorrow’s competition for operating systems from Microsoft (and Apple, for that matter) is waiting in the wings. Google recently began “lifting the veil” on Chrome, an operating system that will allow computers to run programs over the Internet and through a web browser, an approach called cloud computing.

Google has good reason to go down this path, of course, as it owns the world’s most popular search engine. While today’s PC users rely on cloud computing to access information over the Internet, users’ files still largely reside on the machine’s hard drive. Google’s approach is to have all programs and data stored on servers and available to each user through the Internet.

Leadership is all about influence and character. The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must go without one, go without the strategy. Leaders must be able to think and do.

An effective follower is a critical and independent thinker. Characterized by mindfulness and a willingness to act, effective followers are capable of self-management. They are willing to accept responsibility, serve the needs of the organization, challenge authority, participate in change, and even leave the organization when necessary.

The path to servant leadership lies not in trying to fix or change others, but in working to change and improve ourselves. ‘Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change themselves.’

To cope with change, the leader must be:

o They passionately believe that they can make a difference. They visualize the future, creating an ideal and unique image of what the organization can become.
o Look for opportunities to change the status quo. They look for innovative ways to improve the organization. In doing so, they experiment and take risks.
o Foster collaboration and build lively teams. They actively involve others.

If you look at the Gandhis or the Mandelas and the Mother Teresas, they exhibit a form of leadership that is very attractive, which is putting the interests of others before themselves.

Dalai Lama, who once said: ‘If you seek enlightenment for yourself only to improve yourself, you have missed the point. If you seek enlightenment for yourself by helping others, you have a purpose.’ That is the style of leadership that we increasingly need in today’s world.