Understand The Changing Business Landscape - Stop Playing Office!

“One of the immutable pat­terns of his­to­ry is the rise and fall of great pow­ers. Those that sur­vive are the ones that adapt as the world changes.” — Stephen Kinz­er, Award-win­ning journalist/​author

One of the phras­es I often say to CEOs and exec­u­tives is ​“Stop play­ing office”.

You may imag­ine a kid sit­ting at her dad’s desk, pre­tend­ing she is run­ning a com­pa­ny, but this is no game.

Time after time, I’ve seen CEOs and exec­u­tives believe the same sto­ry: That you do busi­ness by being in the office — buried in meet­ings, ana­lyz­ing spread­sheets and Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions. That’s admin­is­ter­ing a busi­ness – not dri­ving a business.

Get out, see your cus­tomers, talk to your employ­ees, watch the com­pe­ti­tion in action.

I recent­ly worked with a CEO whose busi­ness in anoth­er coun­try was not per­form­ing well. After a series of live­ly debates, we agreed they would spend the next six weeks on the road, and at least half a day of most days, with their front­line people.

What they found was very dif­fer­ent to what they thought should hap­pen or had wit­nessed in a fly-by visit.

By being in the field — touch­ing, feel­ing, lis­ten­ing and see­ing — they real­ized a lot had changed from their orig­i­nal vision. There were many sim­ple to basic to mod­er­ate things, that, once changed, made a notable impact on the per­for­mance of the busi­ness. It was clear that, and although their spread­sheets reflect­ed their lack of expect­ed per­for­mance, the time in the busi­ness showed them exact­ly why and how to fix the issues.

A Chang­ing Busi­ness Landscape

Dur­ing a recent vis­it to New York City with my daugh­ter (such an amaz­ing time!) I saw how quick­ly the world is chang­ing. We vis­it­ed three stores I’ve nev­er heard of — and don’t exist in Cana­da — but this 14-year old knew exact­ly where she want­ed to go.

She knew these brands inti­mate­ly – through her friends in dance, and from YouTube and Instagram.

I was shocked that these stores seemed to be the busiest we vis­it­ed in New York — full of teenaged girls, drag­ging their par­ents behind.

The first stop was DŌ, a place that sells raw cook­ie dough like oth­ers sell ice cream. (I had the orig­i­nal choco­late chip and it was amaz­ing.) The girl beside us wore the iden­ti­cal back­pack to my daugh­ter that we had to hunt down at anoth­er store in New York. She also wore a neck­lace from Brandy Melville and I bet her make­up was Glossier, both of which were on our must-do list.

Glossier was packed inside, with a line­up of over 50 peo­ple on the side­walk. They didn’t even have street-lev­el frontage. A stair­way led to a sec­ond-floor space hum­ming with ener­gy as young cus­tomers tried out an array of prod­ucts. Orders are tak­en on an iPad and your bag arrives on a hang­ing con­vey­or belt sys­tem. My daugh­ter had to stop at four dif­fer­ent spots to get her pic­ture tak­en – just like every oth­er girl there who had seen the same pho­tos on Instagram.

I enjoy a great retail expe­ri­ence and have worked with many retail­ers, but this was eye open­ing. Their busi­ness and mar­ket­ing were delight­ful, and it was obvi­ous why they were so suc­cess­ful with their young customers.

The world is chang­ing, and if you want to be ahead of the curve – in any busi­ness — make sure you aren’t ​‘play­ing office’ too much. Get out there to see how new entre­pre­neurs shape expe­ri­ences their cus­tomers love. What’s hap­pen­ing on the front line is the best indicator.

The Chal­lenge

• When was the last time you and you team spent more than 30 min­utes on the front line of your busi­ness — and, ide­al­ly, with your customers?
• When did you and your team last spend time observ­ing oth­er inno­v­a­tive competitors?
• When did you last go on your own field trip, to any innovator’s space that appeals to your cus­tomers? To places you wouldn’t nor­mal­ly go that appeal to young cus­tomers who are half or a third your age?