The one-sentence summary
Turbulence is the new normal – get used to it and develop early warning systems.
Want to buy the book? CLICK HERE
WHAT THE BOOK SAYS
- Turbulence is now the norm in business, so the Chaotics management system aims to help companies minimize vulnerability and exploit opportunities fast
- Panic tactics such as staff cuts, price reductions and slashed investment don’t work, but early warning systems do
- Factors that cause chaos are technological advances and the information revolution, disruptive technologies, the rise of the rest, hypercompetition, sovereign wealth funds, the environment, and customer empowerment
- The best response is “skill, will, till”: increase spending on new customers, have a culture to go against the trend, and have some resources to invest
- Companies need to be responsive, robust and resilient: The most common mistakes made are:
- Stretching to attract new customers before you’ve secured the core
- Cutting marketing
- Neglecting the 900lb gorilla (everyone knows you’re in trouble, so admit it)
WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT
- Chaos inflection points can render a strategy obsolete over night
- There are processes and diagrams that you can map out and enact
- Business leaders need to see change first hand, eliminate the filers that stop them finding out fast, accept the inevitability of strategy decay, and drop their reliance on a two-playbook strategy – one for up markets and the other for down. The chaotics system has three components:
- Detect sources of turbulence through early-warning systems
- Respond to chaos by construction of key scenarios
- Select strategy based on scenario prioritisation and risk attitude
- Anyone can ask the critical questions:
- What have been our past blind spots?
- Is there an analogy from another industry?
- What signals are we rationalising away?
- Who is skilled at picking up weak signals and acting on them?
- What are our mavericks and outliers trying to tell us?
- What future surprises could really hurt or help us?
WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH
- It is reasonably serious stuff, so there is no levity to sugar the pill.