Systematization Process - Phase 3: Initiate a Revolution
Posted by James Cooper
Revolutionise Your Business With Technology
Find your new Technology Advantage, the Edge that will see you leap frog the competition!
Phase 3 of the mimosaPLANETTM Systematisation Process is; Initiate a Revolution. Revolution? Strong word? Yes, you bet it is... "Kaizen", the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement that helped propel Japan from post WW2 ruin, to become the worlds' most prolific manufacturer till the early 1990's, is old news and no longer enough. In 2008 and beyond we live in a world where a company can find new technology and go from nothing to a giant in years, with it changing and effecting the very environment in which everyone operates. Your options are to embrace it and find your own Technology Advantage to thrive or cling to what you know now and start to struggle as you watch your business become extinct.
Quantify This Word Dribble Please....
Ok, where's the proof? It's all around you! I can see two ways this is happening currently;
- Current Industry Revolution: In every industry there are companies creating a revolution, going against the status quo, doing things in a new way, delivering better solutions. Think Dell in the 1990s. Before Dell, IBM sold heaps of PCs through the normal distribution channels, you know, things like... a direct channel for big corporates, a merchant channel (retailers) for Joe consumer, and partner channel for companies. Dell came along and totally revolutionised the distribution model by providing mail, phone and internet ordering abilities to ‘build your own pc' and have it shipped to you in days at a fraction of the cost.
- New Industry Creation: This is a fascinating area, companies that are creating the industry, not just doing things in a new way, but actually creating value where previously there was nothing. Think Microsoft creating the software industry when IBM was the king pin of the computer world. Think Google creating the paid-per-click search advertising industry and becoming the biggest threat to Microsoft and the big 4 Advertising Agencies and media companies.
Methods To Find Your Technology Advantage
- Surf the Net; when it's focused on strategic research it's not a distraction.
- Take an interest in new ideas, concepts, & technology; if you continue to learn new things you'll be much more prepared to do battle in the present and future, if you don't learn anything new, well you're perfectly equipped to handle a world that no longer exists!
- Talk with ICT people; many information and communication technology people get to see the future often years before others, shouldn't you be at least having interesting business discussions with people like this?
- Network with other business owners from outside your industry; chances are you'll find someone doing something cool, then... just ask; "how can I apply this idea, this concept to my business to get a huge edge?"
Warning, this can all be very hard at first. Sometimes ICT people and technology websites seem to speak another language, heck they actually do, but if you persevere and learn enough of the basic jargon you'll start to build a picture of new possibilities, of new concepts, of different applications of these concepts and capabilities.... Once this happens you'll start to "get it"..... you'll start to get the huge value to be had from finding your own technology advantage. A technology advantage that will have you and your business revolutionise your market... whether your market is your suburb, your city, your country or the world. Heck there are even enough ideas going on around the world for you to just apply them in your local market and see a huge advantage over your local competition... you don't even need to revolutionise the world if you don't want to, just revolutionise your business and you'll do way better than before.
From Idea to Initiation
What will likely happen is you'll end up finding 10 new ideas that are really cool and you can see huge advantages in implementing them in your business. But the challenge is resources to get the project started and implemented... you'll need to decide which of these ideas will turn into a project that ‘improves' things and which ideas will ‘revolutionise' things. Focus on the one project that is earth shattering .... The ‘MIND-BLOWING PROJECTS'... and ditch the rest.. see what I mean by reading my previous article on MIND-BLOWING PROJECTS >> .
The Main Point!
Technology changes everything! It always has done and it always will do. Year after year the way of doing things changes, results change, outcomes change.... This means businesses that do things (read, all businesses) must change. The biggest difference now is that phases on planet earth in the past were thousands of years; the Bronze Age, then hundreds of years; the industrial revolution, then decades; the plastic age, now it's years.... We are beyond the Information Age now and everything is speeding up... above all else FIND TECHNOLOGY TO REPLACE PEOPLE & YOURSELF... this is technologies role to do people out of a job!!! This is a GREAT thing, it means your business has become efficient, that person should be put to work in your business doing higher value work... adding value in a way that a machine cannot. Machines have taken over dozens and dozens of blue-collar roles in the last 200 years.... so as humans we respond ... we re-focus ourselves in higher value jobs (white collar) ... increasing the education people have to make decisions... now we are seeing machines make these decisions for more and more white collar jobs... so we start to see another refocusing of people... in the area of design and innovation and creation of new concepts... in the area of development.
This week's Action Points...
Embrace it and thrive!
