The Dow Jones started as an amalgamated list of the top companies in the world. Today, they are the 30 companies that are some combination of the biggest and most respected firms in the market.
The original Dow Jones Industrial comprised 12 companies, including American Cotton Oil; American Sugar; American Tobaccos; Chicago Gas; Distilling & Cattle Feeding; General Electric (GE); North American; Tennessee Coal Iron and RR; U.S. Leather; and United States Rubber. Other than GE, all the original companies selected as top in the world by Charles Dow in 1896 are extinct.
Research on the causes of death of these companies primarily comes back to a lack of change mastery, a clouded awareness of the times, and that their success created a lack of urgency.
Look at Apple. They have won the technology race of this millennium by radical innovation. They know how to pay attention to what is coming 1, 5, or 10 years from now and make a fun, beautiful product in response. The iPod or iPad not only changed how we consume music and mobile work, they created entire categories. Then, they didn’t die with the iPod, but quickly innovated to the Air-pod and lead that market. While you are still happy with your current iPhone, they are urgently working on the next innovation so that before anyone can come up behind them and eat their cookie or before you have time to get even slightly bored, here comes the new iPhone or Apple product.
Apple is not only a change-master, radical innovator, and aggressively aware of the times – they are URGENT! According to one Harvard professor, it is the lack of urgency that continues to kill some of the largest (and smallest) companies in the world. A modest pace or full-out complacency can create an Ice Age for many, if not most businesses.
In his book Urgency, Harvard Business School Professor John P. Kotter states: “Urgent behavior is not driven by a belief that all is well or that everything is a mess, but instead that the world contains great opportunities and great hazard.” Urgency is a determination to get moving and start winning now (actually yesterday).
Urgency is not “stressful” or “rushed” – it’s structural. One of the first elements of success I teach my clients is setting up an urgent structure. This is a system of procedures that by their very nature creates urgency in the staff, patients or customers, and the leadership. Urgently moving forward is also not a frenetic activity.
In one of my most successful businesses, it became clear the team had grown complacent. We were very busy, so just getting through the day seemed like a noble effort worthy of great reward. However, I could smell the downturn. If you’re not innovating, automating, creating, and generating momentum, there is an odor. That odor is the scent of your coming Ice Age—your extinction. Creating and keeping momentum requires urgency. ”It’s good work done yesterday—despite what are often imperfect conditions.”
FEEDBACK IS NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS
A priest and a rabbi attended a boxing match together. Before the start of the first round, one of the fighters went through the Catholic practice of crossing himself. The rabbi asked the priest, “What is that for?” To which the priest replied, “It’s not for nothing if the boy don’t know how to fight!”
Set in your mind that you will build a culture of continual improvement, become more skilled, and learn how to fight. This means:
- Create a code of standards.
- Formulate process metrics that help you to continuously monitor performance and identify future improvement opportunities.
- Don’t change and grow for the sake of change and growth.
- Don’t lead through pure intuition. Detect trends in the market place and make decisions that will move the needle (Create cutting edge services, approaches, and products that are desirable and will sell).
- LEARN: To be an Apple and not the extinct Distilling & Cattle Feeding or Tennessee Coal Iron and RR; think more intentionally about your own assumptions and beliefs. Whether you know it or not, your approach now is based on a current, limited set of goals and decision-making rules. As you consider the future, you have to modify your approach weekly, find ways to more “urgently” speed up the time to your next destination, re-define the market, and create a level of organizational learning that approaches the world’s problems and meeting the needs of the people that will change the space you work in forever.
Have fun saving the world
Dr. Ben
