Update: Winners and Losers in the Hyper-Digital Era, with John Rossman (Business, Data, Leadership, Future)

brands. Ironically, a lot of them out of the Pacific Northwest. Here, a number of gold standard brands who went from being lauded in the pinnacle within their category to like a substantial business challenge that they have, right? So the brands I'm thinking about, think about this set of gold standard brands, Starbucks, Boeing, Nike and Intel, right? Very different sectors. All of them a different sort of situation, but they clearly have suffered from a combination of

what I think are kind of two factors. One is they get kind of trapped within their own business model, and they're just incrementalizing themselves to the next thing. So that's kind of the innovators dilemma. And the other is a cultural thing, of like, what their expectations are in the business between themselves, and that's kind of a culture of mediocrity that hasn't become just accepted. It's actually become the

standard within a number of kind of healthy companies. And I think that that combination is really the challenge that I address in the pig, the lipstick in the playbook of champions, of being both trapped from our own success and not seeking high performance, both for our business and for the way that we work. And so that's the specific problem. But I wanted to get it out. It's a free resource ebook. It is a playbook. We outline specific things to do that I think are both practical, but

they're underplayed. They're understated within most organizations, but a couple that I think are super powerful and simple. So there's three sections of the book, building the foundation, chasing perfection, taking big bets under building the foundation, one of the key plays is about people, and I think everybody starts with the wrong place when they think about getting the right people in the organization, helping them be successful. Because everybody

thinks it's about like the person, and I disagree. I think it's about a thoughtful design of the organization and what the job is that needs to be needed. And so many companies haven't really thought through, you know, for this role, for this team, for this core capability, or a company, what's the job that's needed now and going forward. How would we define it? What do we think kind of the consistent goals are going to be? What's the decision making criteria and scope of this? What

are the key metrics that we imagine this role having? And what do we think the the non obvious skills and background and actions? Attributes that would help somebody be successful, even if you have somebody in the role today and you want to help take their performance from good to world class, rethinking what the job is, is a super powerful way to help that person achieve those goals. But it goes so underplayed in companies, and this is not a big exercise to

do, you know, and everything, but companies don't do it. So that's an example. Here's another one, and it's kind of from the chasing perfection section of the book, which is all about, like, how do we run a great business today, and how companies design and use metrics to actually get the signal of where aren't we good enough from a customer experience or from an operational standpoint. Today, I was a partner at Arthur Andersen. I was a green belt. I'm an industrial engineer by

education. I thought I knew how to use metrics for impact, and I learned a whole graduate level course at Amazon, and it's been kind of one of the consistent things I work with clients in my keynotes on since then, is like metrics and how we use them. And there's two parts that I'll talk about here today. One is like, just how you design metrics, and it always has to be a balanced scorecard of metrics, right? You can't have just like one metric.

You need efficiency, you need quality, you need cost metrics, right? And it's the design relative to those. But then the second part is like, what do you do with those metrics, right? And so I always talk about, make metrics a verb, right? They're not a thing, they're not static, they're a verb. And the and the action that we take is, how do we discover the signal, not to pat ourselves on the back, but to see where there's opportunity

to chase perfection? And that was, I think, the design of kind of the metrics meetings, and the tone and the tempo and the purpose of those meetings is an absolute game changer for teams and companies that can turn metrics into the fuel that a improve the business for today, but it also it's like going to the gym. If you do this all the time, you're going to get the idea that fuels the next section of the playbook, which is big bets, like, how do you actually innovate and transform?

fuse tying them together. And the three mega forces are a disruptive technology, which is, by itself, a highly disruptive factor. But the second one is just as disruptive, which is the aging of our population, the ability to attract, retain and get better leverage out of out of our skills and out of our people, is going to be a core competitive advantage. Because if you are just going to try to, like, continually hire and compete, you're going to be at a competitive disadvantage. So

that's the second major, major force. Mega trend is, you know, the aging of a population and how scarce skilled talents can be. And the third is the overall indebtedness of our country to entitlement programs and to surfacing our debt, and that's going to create downward pressure for capital, so you're going to have to be both efficient for your capital, but it's also a calling, which is for our country to win, we have to innovate, and that innovation comes from all of our companies.

It doesn't come from somebody else's place. It comes from our place. And so those three mega forces together are going to create a vortex that creates both an opportunity and a challenge, and there's going to be a bunch of new winners. There's going to be a bunch of new losers in what I call the hyper digital era. And we you can't wait until you go, Oh, now I get it. Now I really need to change. You need back to kind of the athletic metaphor, like you need to get good at how you go.

About innovating and transforming. It is an organizational capability. And so the best attribute you can always have is some patience right time to do these things. And so if you wait until you see the signals of kind of slowing growth, customers who don't love us, competition, that's that's kicking us in the rear. Now you're under pressure. Do it from a position of strength and growth. That's the time to build the capability of like, building the next businesses, innovating

better, delighting customers better. That's the championship way.

other way around. It's We the People, right? We the People grant the government these powers. It's not the other way around, right? That's why it's an important call to action to me, if our plan is to wait for the government to address and

fix the situation, I'm not optimistic about that. That's why I think, especially small, mid sized, large companies, they need to see it as part of the mission of like, our company needs to play a role in how America is more competitive and more innovative, because that's how we keep our great democracy going. And so don't wait for the government to fix it. That's never a great idea. I think that, you know, I'm optimistic that they're going to start tackling some of this. But

that's not the whole playbook. The playbook is our businesses need to play a role in this. One of the phrases I'm fond of is that complaining is not a strategy, right? And so what do we do with these observations today, in our business, in our team, in my life, that's what I'm always interested in, is action.

better. I know I need to evolve my my operating model. I know I need to understand kind of this, this trial and error, experimentation mindset, but there's very little that actually for senior leadership and the teams that serve senior leaders. There's very little that actually says here's things that you the senior leadership team need to do different and

the team that's driving this transformation. And so there's a lot written for kind of the individual contributor and the team leader around agile methodologies experimentation, but we couldn't find anything Kevin McCaffrey, I'm referring to and myself. We couldn't find anything that's like, here's what senior leaders need to do. Kevin ran new business incubation for T Mobile. I got to be the senior innovation advisor, working with them for three years. This is what we had

to do AT T Mobile. Was our challenge. Wasn't like this tactical process of like, how do we explore, you know, new business models for T Mobile. It was helping the senior leadership understand how they needed to adjust or recalibrate, how they make decisions, how they allocate resources, how they spend time on these businesses and opportunities of the future versus their operating expertise in running

today's business. And the biggest mistake that senior leaders make is they think that because they're really good operators and they understand, they've heard these concepts of innovation and experimentation, and so like, okay, I can do

that. It starts from a belief system and an understanding fundamentally of what that is about and how to go about it, and if you apply the same tactics, the same belief systems, the same things that made you a great operator into this playbook of experimentation and major transformation, you will fail at it. And that's why we wrote the book. Big bet leadership is to for senior leaders and the teams. Serve senior leaders to really point out to them, these are things

that you need to do different. Again, it's a very action oriented book, not theoretical. And that's what is missing in most books about innovation and transformation, is it's like, yeah, no duh, I need to change and I need to be competitive, but tell me what I need to do differently today as a senior leader to help make that happen. That's what we tried to answer in this book.

through your three futures. Exercise of putting these practices into place, it won't think for you. It won't do the work for you, but it is an incredible companion to help you see different framing, different phrasing, different options that you have out there. And so it really is a kind of a turbo button to help you speed your way through thinking this playbook through for yourself. I think there's more for us to do there too.

combination of for senior leaders and team leaders. How do I actually address these two core challenges that we identify in this business manifesto, which is a kind of being trapped by our success, that's the innovator's dilemma, and B, kind of suffering from accepting mediocrity, but leveraging AI to help you do that better. And how do I incorporate AI into

everything that I do within an organization? That's what being an AI first company is about, and I think it's both kind of small tactics that you take, but it's also about re envisioning and leveraging AI. And so I think it's a combination of kind of business strategy leadership, but leveraging these very real and dynamic, fast changing capabilities that generative AI and other technologies bring to us. Because it's like a new internet. It's like, oh, now we have electricity. Like, it truly

is a fundamental capability shift and again. Like, don't wait until it's too late. You gotta get comfortable, both individually and as a company, in how you leverage these things to make change happen.