When Surrounded By Exponential Growth, "Wait and See" Can Mean Missing An Opportunity

Patience is a virtue. Throughout much of childhood, our parents and guardians instilled in us to be patient or to wait calmly for our turn at something.

Having patience is an important characteristic in everyday life, but as an adult -- especially if you are a business leader or C-suite executive -- too often does the concept of patience become a hands-off defense mechanism used to fight discomfort in facing change. The mindset that surrounds this behavior is known as "wait and see," where a company tries to simply wait out the storm of disruption patiently, hoping the status quo will remain intact after the clouds clear.

Take it from my decades of experience in helping both disruptive and disrupted clients: The wait and see mindset is extremely self-destructive thanks to the speed of digital disruptions, how competitors are leveraging them exponentially, and the rate of change in the general physical world that has always been constant.

Waiting for Change Is Self-Destructive

Assuming change will simply pass you by without impacting you or your organization is as foolish as thinking that, somehow, because you really enjoy sunny afternoons, night will never fall upon you.

Now, the darkness of evening encompassing you while you sit outside hoping the afternoon sun will stay exactly where it is in the sky may make you cold or make it hard for you to navigate your way back inside, but in this scenario, sitting and waiting is generally harmless. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for disregarding disruption and change as a business leader.

Sitting and waiting for inevitable change to come, assuming you will know how to pivot, is not being patient. No matter how much you and your colleagues believe that a brilliant idea will fall into your lap while you wait, that wait and see mindset is self-destruction in disguise.

Though if you can believe it, digital technology is not the only thing driving change, such as the disruption we have witnessed in the retail industry thanks to eCommerce. "The way things are" and the assumption that customers like the way the world works at any given moment may not be as rosy as you think, and this is driving more identifiable change than the technology itself.

All Companies Have Problems -- Identify Yours

Disruption is happening everywhere, impacting even those presumably secure industries that are already resting on their laurels without even realizing it. Considering eCommerce websites and applications, businesses in this sector are a seemingly unshakeable area of retail, immune to the level of disruption that they brought to the traditional retail industry, right?

Wrong! I hear constantly how customers of both small stores and large chains alike are complaining about online stores, but not because their products aren't available due to shipping issues. It is because the functionality of online shopping is struggling, and many have user-based needs that are not being fulfilled.

An example can be found in shopping for apparel items through a clothing store's website. A customer knows they want a hooded sweatshirt with a logo from their favorite band on it, they know the store has it, but the online store poorly displays what sizes are in stock, what color options are there, and even when the customer puts it in their cart, the checkout process fails.

Customers' needs change by the hour and even by the minute in some cases! When a company feels blindsided by changes in the industry -- which are most often brought about by customers' needs -- it is likely because they don't think their customers have any problems with their service, or that they have no internal problems. Trust me, they do!

All companies have problems, and the smallest ones leave open gaps in your foundation that will be preyed upon by disruptive, Anticipatory organizations that have a solution. This in turn appears as "change" to you and your employees. Enough leaks in a boat will cause it to sink, no matter how strong of a material it is constructed from. But the positive reality is that most of those leaks haven't damaged the hull of your business just yet -- you still have time!

Giving Self-Disruption a Try

I once heard a great quote from an entrepreneur: "Don't focus on what will put your competition out of business. Instead, figure out what will put you out of business, and then do it!"

When it comes to disruption and change, it is better to self-disrupt than to self-destruct! Ask yourself: What will put us out of business? If the answer to that question pertains to faulty processes that have never been remedied or problems you are ignoring internally and externally that customers frequently complain about, you are hitting the self-destruct button on your organization.

Being honest with the issue brings to light a new, more opportunistic question: Why don't you do what will disrupt your business nearly to the point of closing up shop?

What you are doing is identifying a Hard Trend future certainty that will impact your organization. What's more is that you are most likely not the only business or organization that would be blindsided by that disruption you identify from that question. Getting in front of it first and driving transformation by being Anticipatory will keep you safe and can even end in a massive transformation in your bottom line!