Business half-life.

The speed at which things can happen is halving, and halving again, the wider implications of Moore’s Law at work. In such an environment, where is the value in static annual planning cycles, bi-annual sales meetings, 3 and 5 year plans when we cannot forecast what will hit us next week?

The premium on flexibility, and agility is continuing to increase, and to survive and prosper, it seems to me that there are three strategies that need to be implemented:

1. Work cross boundary, function, geography, technology type, customers profile, all of the above, and all at the same time. The tools to do this are now readily available, what we lack is the understanding and leadership required to implement and leverage their capabilities.
2. Redesign processes, to automate, outsource, or crowdsource, the regular and definable actions, the ones that have become “commoditised” and focus attention on the things that add value, the unusual, and difficult. It is usually the case that the ideas that lead to those insights are between the ears of your stakeholders employees, customers, suppliers, leaders in other industries, so ask them
3. Do both of the above quickly: very, very quickly, your time just halved again.