The high risk of “wait and see”
Chances are your company is one of many taking a “wait and see” approach to one or more business issues right now. That position looks something like this:
“Should we redo our website? Let’s wait and see what the competitors do.” “Should we expand into a new market? Let’s wait and see what the economy does.” “Should we invest in this new technology? Let’s wait and see if it catches on first.”
On the surface, it makes so much sense, doesn’t it? After all, we’re dealing with a national and global economy filled with uncertainties … right? So many shifts in technology, so much rapid change on so many levels.
Not a good time to act, is it? Wait and see certainly seems less risky than sticking our necks out. Right? Wrong.
To wait is too late
These days, a wait-and-see strategy carries more risk than the action it postpones. Sometimes, a lot more risk.
Motorola, Kodak, and Polaroid all played wait and see with the shift from analog to digital. Blockbuster played wait and see with the move to online video. The major record labels played wait and see with the leap to MP3 and streaming audio. Hewlett-Packard played wait and see with the idea of digital pads. They all suffered wounds as a result, some of them near-fatal. The problem with wait and see is that if you wait, it’s too late.
In the past, you could afford to wait and see. It was harder for competitors to develop and deploy new offerings fast. There was time to watch new developments and then react. It was harder for newcomers, let alone established players, to completely change the game overnight.
Not anymore. Today we’re in a time of light-speed transformation. Today, new competitors can emerge rapidly, even from completely different parts of the globe. The barriers to entry are absurdly low. The ability to scale is equally fast. Anyone, anytime, can quickly become more relevant than you.
In a world where the game is rapidly transforming, taking the wait and see position can put you on a path of increasing irrelevancy or even rapid demise.
Transform to grow
Understand: transformation is vastly different from mere change. Barnes & Noble changed bookselling by creating the book superstore; Amazon transformed it. Blockbuster Video changed how we view movies; Netflix transformed it. Yahoo! ushered in the era of search; Google transformed it. Best Buy changed the retail environment; Apple transformed it.
Every field, every sector of society, is ripe for transformation. Take education for example.
As school begins this fall, Grandview High School in Jefferson County, Missouri, is moving away from printed textbooks and issuing their students tablets filled with ebooks. Students will use the tablets to take tests, do homework, and complete assigned readings. An Internet filter blocks inappropriate websites.
Students will keep their tablets (which will be updated) throughout their high school careers. When they graduate, they can keep them. This is a game-changing move, one that has already saved the school about $25,000. And many forward-looking school districts across the country are doing the same thing.
The tools to transform everything – even education – are there. The question is, are you using them?
The hidden costs of saying “no”
“Wait and see” is often rooted in budget concerns. Let’s say someone suggests your company redesign its website. You shoot down the suggestion: “No, we already have a website that works just fine.” Designing a new site would costs money, while playing wait and see avoid that new expense … right? Not necessarily.
Consider that what you can do with a new website today is vastly different from what you can do with a website that was created two years ago. The way you can design for mobile users, engage visitors, increase sales, track people, and improve your ranking with search engine optimization are all changing so rapidly that if your site is two years old, it’s obsolete.
In other words, taking action is the less expensive move. It’s more expensive to wait and see – and when you factor in all the opportunities you’ll be missing, potentially a lot more expensive.
His goes way beyond website design. Saying no to any new capability – embracing tablets for the enterprise, leveraging mobility in new ways, adopting new collaborative tools that can revolutionize how your teams work using the cloud to more rapidly deploy innovations – locks you into an obsolete past and prevents you from transforming. Meanwhile, competitors are taking action.
Stop waiting, start doing
In the late nineties, someone within Apple Inc. proposed the idea of opening Apple-branded retail stores. Apple could have easily said no. There was immense risk involved. The company had just emerged from some dark years and its future was far from assured. They could have looked at Circuit City and Best Buy and said, “Are you crazy? Why would we want to do that?”
Instead, they asked, “How can we reinvent retail?” They embraced a transformational mindset to redefine retail and extend their brand. Circuit City and Best Buy … not so much.
In a world filled with uncertainty, it’s easy to fall into a wait and see mindset. But saying “Not now” bears a cost just as high as saying “Let’s do it!” – if not higher.
Remember this: If you don’t do it, someone else will. They’re doing it right now!
Daniel Burrus, one of the world's leading technology forecasters, business strategists, and author of six books
Copyright 2012. Author retains copyright. All Rights Reserved.
