Business Transformation

Last Friday, April 28^th, we joined a Board Masterclass in Copenhagen, hosted by Steen Buchreitz Jensen and the Scandinavian Executive Institute. The session was facilitated by the authors of the book Reinvention From The Boardroom, Jim Hagemann Snabe (Chair of Siemens), Mikael Trolle (Board member Zibrasport Equest), and Jesper Lok (Chair of Vestergaard). 

They talked about why business cycles have shortened, and why it has become increasingly difficult to predict the future. The challenge facing every board is the need to simultaneously perform (ensuring to protect the business and extract optimal value) and transform (ensuring creation of new value for the business and society). However, according to Korn Ferry less than 14 percent of executives have the capabilities to both perform and transform. Both executive and non-executive directors are challenged to re-invent themselves to fulfill their value-adding role in an uncertain, radically disrupting, and fast-changing environment. Jim Snabe shared how he drove business transformation when he was the Chair at Maersk, helping his executive leaders to create the next business direction by asking them to identify the current and future growth & profit pools. To make it happen, he stressed the importance of a compelling purpose, courageous leaders and different KPI’s for ‘perform’ and ‘transform’. 

At Caracta we share many of the same starting points, sometimes using different language (like exploit/explore instead of perform/transform). However, the discussions with our board peers in this session made us realize that we focus much more on the ‘how’. Our book Boardroom Creativity describes both how to apply creativity to design the future of your business, and how to develop your own creative intelligence (only 33% is in your DNA!). The best way to predict the future is to design it.

Is your company able to both perform and transform? Do you have the courage to design the future of your business?