Eddie Botes

In a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world, business is in a constant state of flux. It’s important that leaders and organisations today can change, flex and adapt to the VUCA world around them to succeed.The increasingly speedy, rocky and complicated landscape in which we operate, one with the new challenges of changing workplace demographics, globalisation and disruptive technology, leave more unknowns than ever before and moves at continued pace, changing the playing field altogether. Every organisation is confronted with persistent, recurring problems. They often fall back on obvious solutions such as applying new technologies, recruiting experts or improving communication processes. In most cases, this is done in a hierarchical way with the top layer of management being responsible for finding the right solutions. An adaptive challenge allows problems to be identified more accurately and involves the entire organisation in the search for possible solutions.

How do some companies manage to compete and thrive year after year in a commoditized environment? It’s not because of what they offer, but rather because of how they offer it. It’s how their people work together, how they treat their customers, how they interact with suppliers and the personal standards of excellence people set for themselves that set them apart. If you want to be in the game, quality products or services and competitive pricing are the minimum requirement to compete. These are relatively easy to copy. The real sustainable differentiation will always be behavioural. Of course, in today’s rapidly changing world where businesses are being disrupted by many different factors we should always be experimenting and innovating, finding better ways to improve our products and services. It’s just that we need to be absolutely clear that these actions are merely minimum requirements to be in the game.