Driving and managing change will remain the number one priority

Few companies can avoid big, periodic changes in the guts of their business. Whatever the cause – market maturation, a tough macroeconomic environment, creeping costs, competitive struggles, or just a desire to improve.

For companies to survive and strive in today’s competitive environment, they will need to change quickly and successfully. Managing change has to be a core competence that can no longer be considered a discretionary “nice to have”.

Yet many organizations are falling short in the race to adapt:

• Change is inevitable and require companies to reinvent themselves – Blockbuster, once the dominant DVD franchise, has fallen into bankruptcy in an era of other video options. Who will be the next victim? Is streaming video now going to kill its predecessors?
• No company can nowadays afford to sit on their laurels – Germany’s biggest drugstore chain (high-street chemist) – Schlecker – has filed for bankruptcy. What went wrong?
• Wake up call – disruption is rampant – The Kindle ravaged the publishing business
• Blind to disruptive changes in the marketplace – Until the 1990s Kodak was regularly rated one of the world’s five most valuable brands. But now?
• Will collaborative consumption disrupt traditional business models – Time Magazine recently rated collaborative consumption as one of the “10 ideas that will change the world”

No wonder that driving and managing change will remain the number one priority for leaders according to a recently published study by DDI: Global Leadership Forecast 2011 – see illustration below: