Great Leaders Stay Ahead of Trends

Source: CPA Success

The following includes experts, reproduced with permission, from a blog entry by Bill Sheridan.

The biggest reason great leaders fail, says futurist Andrew Zolli, is that they fail to detect the weak signals of disruptive change on the horizon.

As Exhibit A, I give you Anheuser-Busch. In “Dethroning the King: The Hostile Takeover of Anheuser-Busch,” Financial Times reporter Julie MacIntosh examines the internal culture and politics that led to the brewing icon's takeover. For years, CEO August Busch III was focused solely on crushing rival Miller and dominating the American market. He was so focused on that one goal that he failed to ask a simple question: What happens next?

The answer would be found beyond American borders, but Busch failed to pay attention to beer's expanding global market. But his rivals paid attention, buying or merging with foreign beer makers and gobbling up sizeable pieces of the global pie. By the time A-B noticed, it was shut out of the M&A action – and ripe for a takeover.

Here's what Andrew Zolli told me in 2010:

“Our normal metaphors about innovation are all about breakthroughs, change, things that are different, a radical reframing of an industry. The reality is that most innovative work is incremental improvement. It's about staying ahead of trends as opposed to reacting to trends.

“We need to begin to adapt to a world in which we engage the very top of the organization in a conversation about embracing a different kind of risk portfolio. That means having an established set of processes in place in which you have no expectation of return. You understand that you make investments not just for operational excellence, but for learning and adaptation. Those things are inherently uncertain, but if you begin to do them at a small or medium scale, they can yield tremendous benefits.”

For the complete article, read “Trouble's brewing on the horizon. Pay attention.”

From CPA Success, the blog of the Maryland Association of CPAs, www.cpasuccess.com, May 23, 2011.