What we learned in the new world: how to empower people and companies

You are going to read about:

• The acceleration of uncertainties: five years in two months
• Four pillars of survival in the new world
• How to start with your company 

A few months ago, the issue was how to speed up companies to keep up with changes in consumption patterns, customer behavior and market dynamics with the growth - already dizzying - of the possibilities brought by digital. Fledgling companies and even new business models adopted by large digital companies balanced certainty of solid companies, which saw themselves in the need to further deepen their digital transformation processes. 
 
Today, this reality, which was already fast, accelerated even more and the uncertainty about tomorrow became the certainty of the day. And whoever wants to survive in the market should not be paralyzed in detailed analyzes of the current moment to try to elaborate plans based on what was worth in the past and that no longer exists. It's time to take action, and the best way to start is to forget old practices and target consumer needs, embrace true customer-centricity.

If society moves quickly in the wake of the crisis we are going through, it is the role of companies to monitor and understand these movements to deliver experiences that meet the new needs of their customers at the speed at which they arise.

But how to be prepared to deal with this speed and unpredictability? Below are some valuable points that can help your company aim for the right path. Let's go to them.

The 4 pillars of survival in the (new) new world

Amin and Solange have accompanied our clients since the beginning of their digital transformation journey and faced with them the countless challenges and opportunities brought by the current market moment; they highlight four pillars capable of sustaining companies and making them prosper, even in the face of adversity. 
 
1 - Innovate - The first need is to develop an innovation mindset. For this, it is necessary to take advantage of the capacities of its people, to be open to collaboration, to exchange ideas and to build collective intelligence. It is the power of that intelligence that will be able to discover new paths, to create the new one to deliver increasingly satisfying experiences for customers. 
 
"The great stories that I am seeing clearly speak of innovation. They have a character of originality, of creating something that did not exist. And the biggest difficulty right now is there. This is part of a strategic vision focused on the consumer, focused on the demand side."
Amin Nunes
 
"What drives companies out of this crisis is this ability to innovate and adapt very quickly, even in this period of uncertainty. The companies that are now well positioned are like this because they bet on innovation, while at the same time, they only looked inside, concerned only with their P&L." 
Solange Sobral
 
2 - Building antifragility - Linked to the ability to innovate, it is adapting with speed. In addition to resilience, antifragility is the ability to return stronger to each obstacle faced, constantly learning. 
 
"A really important pillar is the construction of antifragility. It poses key questions, such as a capacity for fast self-learning, to scale corporate learning to have a very fast speed of response."
Solange Sobral
 
This speed of response and the construction of antifragility will also depend on a corporate structure different from the traditional one, on an operation model more linked to collaboration, with autonomous and multifunctional teams, called squads.
 
"If you don't have autonomy in the teams, if you don't have decentralization in decision making, if you don't have confidence in your people, you won't have the speed you need."  
Solange Sobral
 
3 - Learning to work with scarcity and prioritizing - Facing the moment as a time of scarcity naturally causes companies to seek to use their creativity to find different paths. And that is a great lever to unlock innovation and build antifragility. 
 
Finding opportunities working in "scarcity mode" is one of the premises of Lean management philosophy, one of the main foundations of our company. With Lean, we learn to prioritize what is really important to our customers and to operate in a strained way, that is, producing only what is necessary. With this focus, Lean teaches us to work always in search of continuous improvement of processes, products, services, reducing waste to the maximum. 
 
"We are now in a time of scarcity and, looking at our experience with Lean, it is in scarcity that we extract our best intelligence. A time of scarcity places companies in the need to, in fact, think about their main options and invest in what makes the most sense from the point of view of their consumers. It is a great opportunity to break departmental structures and mental models to do something different. The survival instinct hits you faster when you have scarcity."
Solange Sobral 
 
4 - Learning to place bets and take risks - To act in the face of uncertainties, it is necessary to learn to take risks, to experiment. And experiment in short cycles, with speed, seeking to serve customers in the best way and continuously. 
 
"We are talking about changing the operation model and learning to experiment with short value delivery cycles, always looking at the customer's response. It's build, measure and learning. It is putting this into practice, it is not playing with innovation. It is, in fact, creating an operating model where you break your silos, break your production cycles and put your customer, in fact, at the center of the rapid cycle of experimentation and learning."
Solange Sobral
 
However, it is necessary to create a culture of experimentation, in which the focus is not only on extending the company's core, but on really innovating, on placing bets. New business models, new ways to bring solutions to the pain of its consumers. For this, it is essential to have the involvement of the board. CEO, senior leadership, the board must actively participate in this redesign.
 
"Navigating uncertainty is not among the practices of companies, it is not in the governance process. Most of them do not usually have conversations about it and also do not know how to build clarity in a scenario of uncertainty. But this is fundamental. What bets are we making here? What will this give us in the future? What is our audacious, interesting goal to build for both us and consumers? The companies in which CEOs and boards are changing the governance of the process of identifying strategic options are the ones that have these stories being drawn more clearly."
Amin Nunes

How to get started

As already indicated, these pillars, this new way of thinking and acting, must be supported in new corporate environments that are truly focused on collaboration, aiming at building collective intelligence. For this, it is necessary to change organizational structures, break down silos and prepare leaders for a new management model, more horizontal, humanized and open to collective construction.

Yes, these are profound changes, but they are the ones that will pave the way for your company to survive in the (new) new world. The good news is that it shouldn't be done all at once, but gradually. Prepare your leaders and your people for the change of look, for experimentation and innovation. 
 
It's time to place your bets! Choose a line of innovation and create hypotheses for solving the main pains of your consumers. Prioritize which ones are most likely to have positive impacts for both customers and the company. Then, set up multidisciplinary and autonomous teams, capable of working on these solutions from end to end, in short delivery cycles, validation and continuous improvement. Gradually, in a sustainable manner, this model is gaining scale within the company. 

To learn more about the best ways to face this (new) new world, contact our experts!

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