Future security must not be something achieved at some point. Your company should be future-secure in the NOW, meaning already today. We live in a time when nothing is predictable any more and no company or job is secure any more. Many companies, especially SMEs, look to the future with concern.
What is future security? When a company is future-secure is determined by several goals. This article takes a closer look at selected but essential aspects. You can find a comprehensive masterplan for future security and numerous practical examples of what makes a company future-secure in Pero Mićić’s new book „Bright Future Business“ (to be published in the second half of 2022).
More future security through intelligent direction
Without a picture of the future, without a shared mission, positioning and vision, every employee makes up for themselves where the company is supposed to be heading. Because people do not tolerate this vacuum, or only with difficulty. So they fill it themselves with their own explanations and ideas. Everyone means well. So you cannot blame anyone.
The energy, time and mind of each employee form a vector, a directional force. If everyone has a different picture of the future in mind, it is no wonder that the vectors point in all possible directions. You may remember this from physics lessons. This team cannot really be productive, efficient and successful.
It hardly matters whether you have no picture of the future at all or whether it is too weak because, although written down somewhere, hardly anyone knows it or supports it.
Every future-secure company is based on a strong picture of the future that is understood and supported by the essential part of its employees. That means everyone aligns their efforts towards it. As Schiller wrote: it is the spirit that builds the body. It begins first in people’s minds, then it becomes reality. It begins first in minds, and then it appears in the profit and loss statement and in the balance sheet.
Meaningful mission
„We are accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable transport and sustainable energy.“ Elon Musk’s second major company has an almost modest-sounding mission, namely merely the ‚acceleration of the transition‘. This mission has in fact already been realised if we look at how strongly Tesla triggered a revolution in the automotive world towards battery-electric vehicles. Without Tesla, this necessary transition would certainly have happened much later. Tesla still has a lot in store with its energy business, namely photovoltaics and large-scale batteries.
Clear positioning
You have probably already heard of the ‚Blue Ocean‘. The special idea from this book is, believe it or not: don’t go into the bloodily contested ocean, go where no one has gone yet and the ocean is blood-free blue. Brilliant idea, right? Well, rather obvious. The call may be banal, but it is still extremely important.
Our client Warema, following one of our proposals, positioned itself not as a manufacturer of sun-shading systems but as a „sunlight manager“. In doing so, Warema largely removed itself from traditional competition and created its own category. With very tangible consequences. Because as a provider of sun-shading systems, you would not necessarily go to Scandinavia for a lot of business. But as a sunlight manager, absolutely, because then it is about getting the maximum quality of life out of limited sunlight.
Motivating vision
A prominent example is Amazon. They say they want to be the earth’s most customer-centric company. Less well known, but even more concrete, motivating and socially useful, Juwi puts it like this: „100 per cent renewable energy, decentralised and as quickly as possible“. Juwi’s main location is in Wörrstadt. Even so, Juwi at times received more than ten thousand applications per year, even when no positions were advertised. A motivating vision is literally magnetically attractive.
The future-secure company is strategically clear, motivating and uniquely positioned. Its future security is defined by clear answers to the following questions:
- What should our mission be, giving us greater meaning, guiding and motivating our team? Giving us a „Why“ and a „Purpose“?
- What should our positioning be, making our offering uniquely valuable for customers and giving us competitive advantages?
- What should our credible vision be, drawing us into the future, making us confident, and one we want to realise together with motivation?
- How do we create a future-ready and productive corporate culture with little effort?
More future security through strong competitive advantages in growth markets
Against the backdrop of the „sustainable economy“ and the ongoing pricing-in of external costs (e.g. the obligation to take back end-of-life cars free of charge), the idea will arise ever more often of selling only the effect and benefit of the product, but not the product itself. Not pesticides, but the fertile field; not gas, but heat; not kilowatt-hours of electricity, but light; not the car, but three years of mobility; not the printing press, but ten years of printing. Focusing on the effect and the benefit opens up entirely new possibilities for combining with products and services from other fields. Companies with a Bright Future Business do not focus on the product or the solution, but on the effect customers are actually paying for.
A future-secure company has built and protected strong competitive advantages in growth markets. Its future security is defined by clear answers to the following questions:
- Which business areas do we want to focus our efforts on now? What will we stop doing so that we spread ourselves less thinly?
- How do we develop our business areas to make them more future-ready?
- Which new business areas should we open up that fit our strengths and the future?
More future security through a future-robust business model
Publix Super Markets is the largest and fastest-growing supermarket chain in the USA, and it is 100 per cent employee-owned. Publix employs more than 157,000 people. The idea behind it: they turned their employees into co-entrepreneurs and thus expanded their company. In doing so, they not only created the necessary commitment for strategic decisions, but also made their company more innovative, productive and stable.
Focusing on your strengths and letting partners handle less important tasks is another proven approach. Apple, Nike and many other well-known companies produce nothing themselves. Their entire manufacturing operation is outsourced. They focus on development, design, marketing and sales.
A future-secure company has built and protected a productive and profitable system for peak performance. Its future security is defined by clear answers to the following questions:
- How do we increase the benefit of our products and services for customers so that they buy more and pay more?
- How can we scale and grow our business, even without more effort in traditional advertising and active sales?
- How do we become significantly more productive and profitable with new technologies and methods?
- How do we make it even harder for competitors to copy us?
More future security through effective leadership
At textile producer Gore, employees choose their own tasks within the framework of objectives and democratically appoint a team leader. There are no titles and no job descriptions. Like an amoeba, a unit is split as soon as it grows beyond 200 employees. Behind this is the concept of self-organisation. Self-organising units work with shared targets and are otherwise free in how they organise their work. Self-organisation is the opposite of command and obedience.
A future-secure company leads its team with focus and forward-looking direction and is attractive to top employees. Its future security is defined by clear answers to the following questions:
- How do we make ourselves even more attractive as an employer for today’s and tomorrow’s top employees, without excessive personnel costs?
- Which central activities will we implement in the next phase with focus and consistency?
- How do we lead our team more easily, more motivatingly and more effectively, without constant discussions and misunderstandings?
More future security for your company
Create your future-secure company! Not at some point in the distant future, but as quickly as possible. So that, first, you protect what you have achieved, and second, ensure that your company has a brilliant future ahead of it. That is how you attract the best employees, who will gladly and enthusiastically help shape your brilliant future. Whether you lead five, one hundred or thousands of employees, whether you are a sole entrepreneur, owner or managing director of an SME: you and your employees can and should have a brilliant future ahead of you!
I wish you a brilliant future!
Have a bright future!