8

SUCCESS STORIES: WHAT IT TAKES FOR THE LONG HAUL

We’ve talked about the bits and pieces of what it takes for an organization to successfully shift focus to maintain relevance in a rapidly changing marketplace. We’ve talked about the warning signs, the leading (and lagging) indicators of a need to shift, how to prepare, pulling the trigger, and the role of leadership. Before we put all the parts and pieces together, illustrating by way of a quintessential in-market example how it’s done, we want to emphasize one skill that we have not yet emphasized but that we found necessary to shift ahead.

We’ve been discussing and dissecting the fact that the greatest challenge organizations face today is how to stay competitive and categorically relevant given the accelerating pace of change. We’ve made the point that it’s not change that’s new. It’s the velocity of that change that is new. Information technology has made it possible for a company to be launched and, three months later, have a huge valuation without any need for raw materials, manufacturing, or packaging. Products and services that were on the cutting edge even a year ago have fallen off the edge today. More patents are filed with the U.S. Patent Office than at any other time in history. A sleek home companion by the name of Alexa can order us coffee, find us the latest episode of our favorite podcast, and start our car on a wintry morning, all without leaving her perch on the family room bookshelf. A car will park itself when we get to the office. To succeed in this environment, organizations must possess the ability to see what’s coming, to seize opportunities and capitalize on them, and to dodge threats at the same time—all with speed and assurance.

And, therein, we believe, lies the preeminent shift-ahead skill required for the twenty-first century: the ability to “see and seize” while the world spins around faster. The implications are financial, of course: How do you maintain competitive advantage without disrupting daily operations? You’ve got to deliver the numbers. But the implications for not staying in front of marketplace dynamics are also social, cultural, environmental, and geopolitical. Any organization that is not constantly seeing and seizing the moment, continuously adjusting to changing contexts and conflicts, is at risk for obsolescence. Yearly strategy development cycles are certainly well intentioned and still obligatory to set a general course. But the reality is that no matter how well you plan, it’s likely you’ll have to keep adjusting your plan.

This ability to “see and seize” was the central theme in the conversation we had with Steven Gardner who, with his partner Tom Nelson, founded the ad agency Gardner Nelson & Partners, Inc.

“What’s different about the age of the Internet is the speed at which categories go through convulsive change,” Gardner said at the beginning of our discussion. “In a rapidly changing world, the greatest skill that a businessperson must have is the ability to see and seize an opportunity. Some people can see an opportunity, but they do not have the insight or executional ability to act on it. Most people tend to be more transactional . . . people who can implement when directed, but who lack the vision to see the opportunities inherent in change. I had the great fortune to work with Steve Jobs, who is perhaps the most extraordinary example of a single individual possessing the ability to see and seize opportunities. Steve was fond of a simple two-word saying: ‘Artists ship.’ What he meant by that was that you can be the greatest artist in the world, but if you don’t actually make something—‘ship it,’ in manufacturing parlance—who cares? Jobs is the most profound businessperson of his generation. He fundamentally changed five or six industries, given his ability to see and act on opportunities. From computers to printing to music to phones to entertainment to film, he was able to see a market need that was not intuitively obvious to anyone else. He had the skillset to see and make it happen.”

“Look at the Mac,” Gardner continued. “The positioning was ‘a computer for the rest of us.’ The insight? Instead of making people learn programming languages to communicate with computers, why not design a computer that is easily and intuitively understandable to the average human? In the case of music, he recognized that MP3s are superior formats for listening and sharing music, but the distribution system was based primarily on piracy. The opportunity he saw was far less about the bits and bytes of technology, but more about figuring out a licensing and a distribution mechanism that would allow everyone to buy into the idea of legal MP3s. He recognized this and, in doing so, revolutionized the portable music category. Then, of course, the iPhone. Most phone manufacturers viewed their product as a phone to which they incrementally added functionality. Steve Jobs knew how to ‘think different.’ To him, the opportunity was to make a very small computer that had a myriad of functionality . . . including the ability to make telephone calls.”

Gardner went on to suggest that the way business leaders should approach a repositioning project is to actively look for change. Look for the most dynamic factor in a given category, a critical change in the consumer, the world, or the culture, as that will enable the marketer to leapfrog and redefine the category. It requires the mental discipline to see opportunity versus current reality. “Look at Uber,” he said. “Someone at Uber was smart enough to say, ‘Gee, we could use the combination of mobile communications and GPS technology to reinvent the stale old business of taxis and car services.’ That insight enabled them to rethink the taxi business based on private vehicles and on-demand availability. It’s a great case of someone looking at a business model—the taxi business in New York City—and asking how to make it better.”

Gardner went on to suggest that the way business leaders should look at the marketplace is to ask the question, “If you knew your company was going to start over, how would you reinvent it?” What would you do differently? What is changing about society and what impact does that have on your product and your brand? The companies that succeed today are those whose managers are actively trying to understand what is changeable in their business and get to it before others do.

“There was a catchphrase a few years back: ‘Dell or be Delled.’ It was another way of expressing Intel founder Andy Grove’s statement that ‘only the paranoid survive,’ relative to the chip industry,” Gardner said. “If you don’t disrupt your category the way Michael Dell did, by doing the impossible [in Dell’s case, lowering costs through customization, not standardization], someone else will. I don’t like to think of it as paranoia, but as opportunity.

“I have always told our clients that there is actually a very simple definition of market leadership: You must figure out what the most people want the most, and then deliver it better than anyone else,” he continued. “Sometimes the best way to take on an entrenched leader is to cause a fundamental change in the consumer’s benefit hierarchy; to redefine what is most important to the consumer. And, in fact, the easiest way to do this is to take a step back and ask the big question: What is changing about the world, the society, the culture, the technology, attitudes . . . because it is in those changes that you have the opportunity to restructure how a consumer thinks about your category. In our work, we’ve come to recognize that the defining skillset a business manager needs is the ability to see and apply change. You have to be able to disrupt your own industry to stay ahead of the curve.”

The ability to see and apply change opportunistically is such a simple premise, but obviously very hard to do. If it were easy, there would be no reason for business school courses in change management. In our conversation with Gardner, we also noted that it was ironic that during the period we were writing this book, Alvin Toffler, a writer who was among the first modern futurists, passed away. In his bestselling book Future Shock, Toffler cautioned that the accelerating pace of technological change would make us all sick. He described future shock as the “shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a period of time.” While a bit stark and apocalyptic, he also asserted, more constructively, that “you’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so all the small things go in the right direction.” To our mind, this is a much more positive way of framing the situation.

For all we’ve written about the need to shift to stay relevant, and the fundamentals underlying the process, victory in the charge to stay relevant will definitely belong to those organizations inherently conditioned to think about the big things while literally doing the small things. And, more than that, doing those things right and doing them quickly. Those for whom “see and seize” is simply a matter of business as usual will be those who succeed; they are the organizations whose leadership, culture, and financial wherewithal enable them to make small shifts along the way, executed brilliantly as a result of the clarity of focus on their mission. Much more effective and efficient than having to make a dramatic shift in degree or direction, it is the optimal business model for a world in which the acceleration of change—not change itself—is the key challenge.

Lest you think this business model is for the newly emerging, entrepreneurial sorts, that is not the case. This see-and-seize way of doing business is at the heart of two companies discussed in the first part of this chapter. They are iconic organizations, both long-standing category front-runners. Each was founded by an entrepreneur who excelled at the ability to see and seize opportunities. Each leader had an innovator’s DNA, which became part of the cultural DNA of the entire company. As such, each organization has been able to stay relevant over the course of many years and myriad market fluctuations without the need for a seismic shift. Rather, they have what it takes to have been able to shift as needed along the way. Here are their see-and-seize stories.

MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL:
From Root Beer to Resorts

The spirit of invention and entrepreneurship has been part of the Marriott organization since its founding when, in 1927, J. Willard Marriott and his wife, Alice, drove from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Washington, D.C., to open one of the first A&W root beer franchises. Recognizing that people could also use a hot meal in the cold Washington winters, they started the Hot Shoppes Restaurant chain. Seeing that people who flew out of Washington’s Hoover Airport would appreciate the chance to take along some food for the journey, they seized on the opportunity to start up an airline food services business offering boxed lunches to passengers. And, in 1957, seeing the Pentagon building going up across the river in Virginia, they realized that many people would be visiting, so they made their historic shift to the hotel business with a “motor hotel,” which was managed by their son, J. W. “Bill” Marriott. He, in turn, saw the rise of international tourism and, in 1969, opened the company’s first international hotel in Acapulco, Mexico. Marriott also saw the rise of cruising as a vacation choice and became the first lodging company to enter the cruising business through a partnership with Sun Line. Then Bill Marriott saw that business travelers had a completely different set of requirements than those traveling for fun, and he developed the Courtyard by Marriott chain in 1986, and went on to develop or acquire a host of other hotels (Ritz-Carlton, Fairfield Inn, and Residence Inn, among them) to appeal to the diverse needs of various target segments. In his more than fifty years at the helm, Bill built Marriott into a global lodging company with more than 4,300 properties in more than eighty countries. The company is now led by Arne Sorenson, just the third CEO in the company’s history and, obviously, the first without a Marriott surname. That said, Sorenson has held a number of positions within the Marriott organization over the years, so is very well acquainted with the Marriott way of doing—and growing—business.

Bill Marriott inherited from his father more than just the ability to see and seize business opportunities. He inherited a set of guiding principles for running these businesses—principles that remain embedded in the company’s culture today. In a 2013 interview with Steve Forbes (which can be seen on YouTube) about his life in the industry, Bill commented that every CEO talks about the importance of people¹:

It is this very people-first culture that adds to the organization’s ability to see and seize opportunities. That thousands of Marriott associates are tapped into what makes a great guest experience is a factor in the company’s ongoing relevance in the industry. These associates are constantly on the lookout for what amenities and upgrades would enhance the Marriott experience, for situations that require upgrading or refreshing, for what makes guests happy and, conversely, what doesn’t. It’s a built-in course-correction, self-correction mechanism of the most personal order. It’s a company of firsts because everyone is always tapped into what guests want—or don’t want.

We had the opportunity to speak with Stacy Milne, who has been with Marriott for over twenty-five years, most recently as the vice president of portfolio marketing and strategy. “The strength of our company is that our associates go the extra mile for our guests because they are emotionally bought in. This is not a one-size-fits-all business,” she said. “It’s people-based, it’s occasion-based, and our culture is built on embracing change. It’s something that was passed down from J. W. Marriott to Bill Marriott, and on to all of our associates.” She shared with us a phrase that people used about Bill Marriott’s management style: “‘His feet never touched his desk.’ He was always out on the road looking at all the details that could make or break a guest experience. He has visited every single Marriott hotel, inspected more than 1,000, always talking to associates and checking to see if they are happy, if their attitude is positive, if the rooms are spotlessly clean, assessing the quality of the food, assessing the policies. He was picking up new ideas all the time.”

Going back to Paco Underhill’s philosophy on leadership and culture, which we wrote about in Chapter 5, Bill Marriott always kept his “desk” closest to the customers, and also to his employees. He walked the walk, and as a result he could see and sense what shifts were required along the way for staying a category leader. He could also assess where and how Marriott could play and win. As an example, Milne told us, “We’re always looking for ways to combine technology with the heart of the company. We won’t roll out a technological enhancement until we know it works. We stand for operational excellence in all areas. We’re constantly innovating in all areas. Take our loyalty program, for example. We were the first hospitality company to form a multi-brand loyalty program,” she said. “We know our guests stay across a number of hotels, so the more brands in our loyalty program, the greater the lifetime value of our guests. The Marriott app gives them a way to interact with us on a regular basis. My mother calls this new generation the ‘heads-down generation.’ People are always looking at their phones. We needed to figure out how to operationalize all sorts of digital experiences across our 6,000-plus hotels. And we don’t do this alone but, in the spirit of our culture, we do a lot of co-creation with our guests—taking into account their feedback and preferences along the way, so each experience can feel personalized to them. Whether it’s using your phone as your room key or a vending machine filled with healthy options, we look at all the possibilities and determine what it is we can roll out that will provide the greatest benefit for the most people.” In other words, Marriott is out to see and seize.

A campaign to make travel more brilliant—or as Marriott marketing puts it, “Travel brilliantly”—was launched specifically to engage a younger audience, the millennials, if you will. Its initiatives amplify the brand’s dedication to leading the future of travel, reflecting a lifestyle of travelers who seamlessly blend work and play in a mobile and global world. From technological innovations such as mobile check-ins and check-outs and the At Your Service app (by which you can literally text your service requests to hotel associates) to redesigned lobbies and “Greatrooms,” the campaign and its executional touchpoints are meant to disrupt the idea that a hotel is bound by its four walls. It shifts the emphasis to the traveler, bolsters dialogue with guests, and as Milne said, engages the traveler in creating the Marriott experience.

As Milne told us, “Dedication to the customer shows in everything we do. Innovation has always been part of our story. We continue to help shape the hospitality industry. We continue to challenge the status quo and anticipate our customers’ needs with new brands, new global locations, and new experiences, both technology-based and otherwise. The core values of the company make us who we are. We put people first. Our founder’s philosophy was that if you take care of the associates, they will take care of the customers. Giving people opportunities to grow and succeed is ingrained in our DNA.”

Inherent in Milne’s description of the culture is that Marriott employees are given not just permission but encouragement to call out and act on what they see as opportunities for change—for the small, ongoing shifts that can make a big difference to the guests they serve. There are as many pairs of eyes surveying and ears listening for what will enhance the guest experience as there are Marriott associates. By virtue of their principles and their own actions, J. W. and his son, Bill Marriott, embedded a simple way for the organization to focus on what’s important to their customers, ensuring that they continuously remain relevant. Aware of the fact that, in an organization as large and as customer-centric as the Marriott organization, you can’t rely only on the CEO to see and seize the moments for innovation, Marriott father and son built a culture around embracing the inevitability of change, at the same time empowering everyone to become part of the “see and seize” process. As Bill Marriott said to Steve Forbes during his interview, “Competitors are watching us and copying us, but we’re out ahead of them. To stay in business for almost eighty-five years, you know you’re doing something right.”

FEDEX:
Keeping the Purple Promise

As the story goes, in 1965, as a Yale undergraduate, Fred Smith wrote a term paper outlining a system to accommodate urgent, time-sensitive shipments such as medicine, computer parts, and electronics. He received an average grade. Luckily, not being deterred by the tepid response to this paper, in 1971 Fred Smith went on to found Federal Express, the global leader in the overnight shipping industry. As noted on the company’s website, on the first night of continuous operation, 389 Federal Express team members and fourteen Dassault Falcon jets delivered 186 packages overnight to twenty-five U.S. cities, giving birth to the modern air/ground express industry. By 1983, Federal Express had become the first American company to reach revenues of $1 billion within ten years of start-up without a merger or acquisition. In 1990, it became the first company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the service category. In 1994, it launched Fedex.com as the first transportation website to offer online status tracking, enabling customers to conduct business via the Internet.

Then, in 1996, Federal Express became FedEx, in a well-considered shift intended to move the company away from the word “federal,” which sounded almost governmental in nature, not to mention U.S.-centric. A key objective was to signal the international scope of the brand’s business. FedEx did this. Perhaps more important, however, was the evocative association the faster, sleeker, more efficient-sounding FedEx name sent to people within the organization. While customers and everyone else were using the word as a generic verb to signify overnight delivery, it sent a powerful internal signal that FedEx was a company committed to leading the industry in getting things where they needed to be—reliably and on time. It refocused and clarified this core brand idea in a way every employee could understand. FedEx is a fast, super-efficient brand.

The FedEx logo has become a ubiquitous part of the global landscape: distinctive purple and green, purple and orange, or purple and red, on vans, trucks, airplanes, and sidewalk envelope drop-off bins. It’s a logo that telegraphs instantly “The world on time,” a line that pretty neatly sums up the brand’s promise. As unmistakable as these vans, trucks, and airplanes have become, however, it is the people behind the logo that are the ultimate signal of its strength as a brand. From Fred Smith to every one of the over 300,000 employees, people drive the brand’s reputation and its ongoing relevance in the marketplace.

As a service brand, FedEx relies on its people to ensure the promise of the brand is kept. Adopting the name FedEx gave it an almost intuitive way to signal to its fast-growing roster of employees that they were the keepers of the brand experience. Over more than four decades, FedEx has built a portfolio of innovative solutions connecting customers to more than 220 countries and territories. That’s 99 percent of the world’s global gross domestic product sources. Just as J. W. Marriott and his son saw and seized opportunities to keep their hospitality business in a perpetual state of relevance, giving employees the same charge, so, too, does Fred Smith, but in the overnight shipping industry. From the get-go, he has empowered his employees to be partners in identifying ways to keep their company ahead of the curve in the category. As he has said in more than one interview about the company’s continued success, “No one can do anything by themselves at scale. You’ve got to be a team player.”

At the March 2017 BRITE conference in New York City, FedEx vice president and CMO Rajesh Subramaniam spoke proudly about how FedEx has built a strong company culture that is consistent for all of its 400,000 worldwide employees. This culture is based on what FedEx calls “the Purple Promise,” which states, as Subramaniam explained, “I will make every FedEx experience outstanding.” It is a statement that represents the FedEx commitment to place customer needs at the center of everything the company does, and that prompts everyone who works at FedEx to continuously look for opportunities for shifts in initiative that will help them better meet the requirements of their customers in a fast-changing market. The Purple Promise is a mechanism, yes, but also an inherent part of the FedEx culture that vests everyone in the organization with the responsibility and privilege of making things “outstanding” on a daily basis. It prompts everyone to “see and seize” opportunities. Every employee believes in this promise and is trained to bring it to life in every customer interaction.

“From day one, our number-one employee, Fred Smith, understood the importance of our people,” Subramaniam told the BRITE audience. “He understood that success starts with the people on the front lines, the drivers, the customer service agents who deliver, in equal part, every day. He knew that if you make your expectations clear, if you reward and recognize the right behavior, success will follow. It didn’t matter where these people were—Toronto, Taipei, or Timbuktu—the FedEx language was the same. Our culture is the bedrock on which our brand and our company is built.”

FedEx has taken a relatively simple idea—a commitment to excellent customer service—and focused on it intensely and consistently over the years to create a differentiating experience that has transferred from 186 packages to millions of packages a day, from a single visionary employee to over 400,000 worldwide. As Subramaniam put it, “What if going above and beyond was the baseline, not the exception?” He explained that all employees know that they have an active role in making each customer’s experience with the company as outstanding as possible. “It’s more than a package we deliver,” Subramaniam said. “When we deliver medical supplies to Nepalese earthquake victims, we deliver hope. When we deliver an e-commerce package during the holiday season, we deliver joy. We all understand the powerful idea that we connect people with possibilities.”

Of course, the challenge as it is for most brands is brilliant and constant execution of the promise. The larger the organization, the more difficult the executional challenge. While there have been a few instances of drivers not living “the Purple Promise,” for the most part the company’s culture delivers. Subramaniam could easily share the FedEx brand strategy with the BRITE audience because he knew that, while it’s very easy to copy what somebody else makes and maybe even the process for making it, it’s nearly impossible to copy what they are and what they believe in.

We spoke to Monica Skipper, vice president of brand experience marketing at FedEx, who leads advertising, brand, and sponsorship programs for the global document, package, and freight transportation giant. At the beginning of our conversation, she expressed her thoughts on branding, a topic that she said many people needlessly complicate. “You’ve got to know who you are,” she said. “What is your unique value proposition? Then, whatever you say you are, you have to make [that unique value proposition] happen with actions and behaviors that support it. That’s how we work to deliver on one brand promise. It requires us to constantly think what will make a customer experience better. It is our customers who define the experience, and as the world evolves the definition evolves.” Skipper elaborated on the notion of needing to assess the FedEx experience through a much wider lens than ever before. “The totality of experiences in the marketplace set customer expectations. As the world of e-commerce opens up, people are comparing us to apps, which can tell me the driver is ten minutes away, or to the pizza delivery guy who texts that he’ll be there in fifteen minutes, or to Amazon, which has my package on the front step the afternoon of the day I order it. There are so many more ways we have to think about how to constantly innovate in order to align with customer definitions and expectations of [service] quality. We have to continuously shift to meet a shifting marketplace. When the marketplace shifts, we have to be ahead of it. The only way to do that is to be constantly looking.”

We asked Skipper how the company assesses potential. “When it’s the right thing for the customer, FedEx takes the right steps. Whether it’s build or buy, we have a history of doing the right thing at the right time. It starts with the chairman, Fred Smith, who has embedded in our culture a way of looking ahead in order to act on something before it’s too late.”

FedEx certainly has a history of revolutionary initiatives that have taken many forms: the first PC-based automated shipping system, later named FedEx PowerShip; FedEx Tracking, which allows customers to keep tabs on the status of packages in transit; and the first all-electric trucks to be used in the U.S. parcel delivery business. In another first, starting in 2017, FedEx will launch the use of alternative jet fuels that feature sustainable ingredients including algae, tree pulp, and scrub brush. As its corporate website states:

Proof point to our point. The ability for an organization to see what’s ahead, to quickly recognize and efficiently seize game-changing opportunities that are to the advantage of all constituents, are the preeminent skills required to stay relevant in today’s fast-changing environment. FedEx, like Marriott, has these skills. Both organizations have an inherent mechanism for seeing and seizing, which is what fuels their continued strength and allows them to make small shifts as required. They also have the ability to execute these shifts brilliantly while keeping a focus on their core identity, what they stand for in the marketplace. Each organization was fortunate enough to have been founded by a leader with not only (peripheral) vision, but the wisdom to ensure that vision became a driving force in the organizational culture. FedEx and Marriott come by their see and seize abilities naturally.

Of course, there is part of every success story that goes untold. When you move as quickly as you need in order to be able see and seize, you will inevitably make mistakes. Way back in 1984, before the widespread availability and use of fax services in homes and businesses, FedEx launched Zapmail, offering fax transmission to expedite delivery of documents. Despite their attempt to quickly “seize” this opportunity, the market moved faster and fax machines became so inexpensive and pervasive that any individual business could afford its own equipment.

The ability to see and seize, to shift and focus, is not the norm for most organizations, wherein these skills must be learned. As in so many initiatives in business and in life, the theory is simple to grasp. The implementation is a far more difficult task, as so many of the stories in this book demonstrate. The challenge of seeing what’s ahead is hard enough, let alone having the peripheral vision required to see what may be coming from the sidelines. While throughout the book we’ve discussed the various tactics, both analog and digital, that organizations use for gauging the future and the implications for their future, one of the best and most obvious tactics of all is simply getting out and getting to really know the audience you serve. Talk to people, not in formal focus group settings, but where they live and shop and take their kids to get ice cream. Ask what interests them, what worries them, what delights them, and what daily challenges they face.

Seeing is just the first part of the challenging equation; seizing is the second. It is knowing when and if and how to take action when you see an opportunity, and being able to execute the necessary shift efficiently and effectively, and credibly. Many organizations have all the tools and resources they need to discern what the future may hold. However, they are either financially or culturally unable to do anything about it. It may also be a matter of inertia. The word “seize” is associated with passion and energy and motivation. Carpe diem (seize the day) is a phrase wonderfully brought to life in a scene in the movie Dead Poets Society, in which Robin Williams, portraying a passionate, energetic, and motivated teacher at a boys’ prep school, implores his young charges to make every day extraordinary. To do this takes desire and ambition.

But let’s get back to the “how” and the matter of credibility. In addition to everything else, as we’ve shown throughout this book, organizations that are successful at shifting have self-knowledge. They know what is fundamental to their character. They know what they stand for in the minds of consumers. And they know they must keep a sharp focus on whatever this fundamental is as they shift to stay relevant.

Dov Seidman, attorney, founder and CEO of LRN, a company that helps companies shape winning organizational cultures, and author of HOW: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything, told Allen, “We’re living in a world that operates differently, and the winds in this world are more intense. It’s hard not to get swept up in this wind and just go where it takes you. You have to do the difficult, internal work to identify what’s true about yourself and keep one foot rooted in whatever this is,” he said. “If you don’t, you might find yourself in a place other than where you want to be. I like to think about it like a pivot in basketball. You put one foot solidly in place and literally announce where you stand, and then you can take the other foot and place it where you want to go, a direction that reflects a new appreciation for the conditions, for what’s working and what is not. It’s deliberate, it’s intentional, and it’s bold.”

It’s also necessary, which is especially true today, when not only are the conditions changing so quickly and intensely, but consumers can see clearly how organizations are behaving when confronted with these conditions. Transparency gives organizations no other choice than to focus on their values. You can see what’s happening, you can shift with every new gust of wind, but you have to apply the internal fortitude to stand up to the winds of change and go where you know you should go, not where the winds want to take you. You must shift ahead.

Putting It All Together

There are no secrets or magic formulas. There are, however, five key dimensions against which an organization must exhibit strength, and they are critical for seizing what you see. We interviewed people representing about 100 organizations, from a wide array of categories, for this book. Some of them were successful in shifting; others were less so. Nevertheless, all could attest to the fact that these five dimensions were essential elements in being able to see and seize.

1. Financial wherewithal. The first dimension against which an organization must exhibit strength is having the necessary financial foundation, the basic rocket fuel to support the effort for the long haul. Many organizations start this journey with good intentions, but underestimate the financial horsepower required to get them where they want to go. It may be that they started the process early enough, in good financial health, but either didn’t anticipate breakdowns or setbacks along the way that would require additional funding, or that the process would go on much longer than originally thought. In addition, many organizations cannot manage investor expectations or establish realistic goals, making it necessary for them to reevaluate objectives, which affects credibility and eventual outcomes.

2. Cultural disposition. The second dimension against which an organization must exhibit strength is having a culture with a can-do attitude, or at the very least a leader who can institute and maintain a positive cultural vibe. In all success stories in this book, the organization was primed to succeed. Everyone knew his or her role in making it happen and was given the tools and the appropriate support. While it is always easy to get discouraged, cultural optimism is essential to overcome obstacles. In all cases in which success was achieved, there was a sense that everyone in the organization was “in this together.”

3. Clarity of focus. Your organization can have an abundance of both cash and optimism, but it needs to be laser-focused on where it wants to go and why. Most organizations cannot make multiple bets or hedge their bets on the future. The goal must be simple and clear and memorable, and it must be more than to make money. Everyone must understand what the goal is and understand how a given action aligns—or doesn’t—with bringing it to life.

4. Executional excellence. All organizations that successfully seized what they saw were able to take their concept and turn it into reality in a way that met, or exceeded, the expectations of all stakeholders. Their efforts were seen as credible and game-changing, from both inside and outside the organization. The road may be paved with good intentions, but there is no partial credit, no almost there, when it comes to a successfully executed shift of focus. If you can’t make it happen, it doesn’t matter.

5. Leadership. Finally, we have discussed the critical nature of leadership extensively throughout this book, allocating an entire chapter to the topic. To undertake a successful shift, there must be a leader at the helm who is not just forward-looking but has peripheral vision. Such an individual does not just see down the road, but can see from multiple directions. This person must be able to simplify and crystalize the mission and communicate it to the many stakeholders involved. This leader must be able to exemplify the mission in a credible fashion, not just give it lip service. The leader must be able to tolerate uncertainty and keep the troops in a positive frame of mind throughout the process. To borrow from Star Trek, this person must have what it takes to “boldly go where no man has gone before,” at least no man (or woman) in the organization, and demonstrate a personal commitment to driving the endeavor forward.

To more fully bring these summary comments to life, we present an example of an organization that absolutely exhibited strength against the five dimensions required for a successful shift ahead. It is not a large publicly traded company or a small cash-infused entrepreneurial enterprise, but rather, a public library: the Greenwich Library in Greenwich, Connecticut. A public library is a fitting concluding example because, for many of us, it represents the repository of all knowledge acquired in our formative years. Like all libraries around the world, the Greenwich Library faced the challenge of how to stay relevant in the digital age, given the impact of technological disruption in media, scholarship, and education, along with the challenge of modernizing in the face of ongoing budgetary constraints. That it had multiple constituents was also a challenge: the public it served, the librarians and other staff, the state-funding agencies, the local donors, and the board members. The focus of its efforts was to activate an extension of the traditional services and programming that libraries have always offered, by responding to the needs of the community.

GREENWICH PUBLIC LIBRARY:
Successfully Shifting Ahead in the Age of Digital Information

We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture.
—American Library Association

What are your most memorable experiences with a library? Depending on your age, it might be when you were given your own library card, along with permission to take out new books every week. Maybe it was in high school or college, when you took refuge amid the stacks of books, seeking a quiet place to tackle your assignments. Perhaps it was accompanying your four-year-old to the library’s children’s room to share in the pleasures of a favorite book being read aloud by a kind-hearted librarian. If nothing else, libraries bring to mind both books and sanctuary. While providing books—and sanctuary—was a standalone function for centuries, libraries have had to evolve with the digital age to meet the changing needs of their users.

There are over 17,000 libraries in the United States, a ubiquitous part of the American landscape serving as a resource for millions of people. But given the incredible transformations in technology and the behaviors these transformations have produced, the characterization of the library as a “resource” has shifted dramatically, relative to the evocation of books alone. Based on a Pew study, free access to computers and the Internet has become nearly as important to users as borrowing books. Beginning with the digitization of library catalogs between the 1970s and 1990s, libraries have added digital capabilities while continuing to provide book lending and literacy services. According to a 2015 American Library Association study, 97 percent of public libraries now offer Internet access in the form of free onsite Wi-Fi, 98 percent offer some form of technology training, according to the report, and around 80 percent of institutions in the U.S. provide assistance with online job hunting services.² A large majority use social media like Facebook or hi5 to connect with patrons. A great many of libraries offer new recreational and content creation opportunities. They lend everything from musical instruments to gaming consoles.

Today, society is in the midst of a tremendous shift in the way Americans consume literature as well as the way they access and share information. While there is romanticism attached to the traditional imagery of libraries as hallowed halls lined with books, this image is not necessarily reflected in reality. One school that Joel recently examined for his kids, the Grace Church School in Greenwich Village, touted the fact that it scarcely had any books on its library shelves. Nevertheless, one thing that has not changed is that libraries continue to play a central role in providing free access to information and ideas. They are hubs for “free communication,” in all formats. For example, in place of books, the Grace Church School Library had more computer terminals than an IBM warehouse.

While many stellar libraries across the country and around the world have successfully shifted their focus to meet the challenges of staying relevant to their users, one library in particular provides a textbook example for our purposes. The Greenwich Library in Greenwich, Connecticut, undertook its shifting by exhibiting strength against the five dimensions we highlighted. To help us tell the story, we reached out to Nancy Better, a founder of SmartMoney magazine and former president of the Greenwich Library’s board of directors.

“Greenwich Library is over a century old and has become the hub of intellectual and cultural life in our community of 62,000 residents,” Better told us at the beginning of our conversation. “We circulate 1.2 million materials annually. Greenwich Library is actually the busiest library in the state of Connecticut, outside of Yale and the other universities. If you live in Greenwich, if you work in Greenwich, if you’re a student in Greenwich, you can have a library card and enjoy all of our resources for free. It’s quite a substantial facility, with a main library and two physical branches along with a virtual branch, given the proliferation of digital materials. A lot of people interact with our website more than they actually come through our doors, but that’s the sign of the times,” she said. “The notion of what makes a great library is changing very rapidly in the twenty-first century. We know all libraries still need books, but the question of how you serve your patrons in a time of unprecedented change is complicated. If you continue to think that a library is a shop of books, then a library could seem antiquated. Our librarians are here to help people navigate the world of information, no matter what format that takes.”

Relative to the process of shifting its focus to move beyond the traditional concept of what constitutes a great library in the twenty-first century, Better went on to explain that Greenwich Library leadership saw the need for a formal strategic plan, which they began to explore in 2011. Despite the library’s tradition of excellence, they recognized that they couldn’t be complacent. They needed to plan for the future and keep pace with technological and cultural trends in order to maintain their relevancy to the population they served. Their early-warning signals tuned them onto the advances in technology that had major impact on the continually changing dynamics of how people access information and interact with one another. More than that, an unstable economy affected the services people need from a library, challenging them to do more with existing resources and to make smart investments. The increasing diversity of the Greenwich population meant that the library had to be equipped to serve a broader community with a wider range of interests.

“Patron needs and technology only continue to change,” Better said. “That this technology also changes how people use the library poses additional challenges. They want quiet spaces, but they also want group collaboration spaces. They want a study space where you can set up a bunch of laptops and maybe remotely work with people via Skype. We are constantly sifting through, constantly staying on top of what our patrons want and what they need—and figure out how to do it without breaking the budget. We need to identify how to hedge and place our bets in terms of investments. It’s exciting work, and it’s thrilling work, but it’s also very demanding work. Today’s technologies and global outlook are creating new kinds of interactions, and new avenues are constantly developing for collaborative learning. Through the 2012–2017 strategic plan, we aimed to preserve our legacy as a ‘Community Treasure’ and to give our great community the great library it deserves.”

Better told us that the Greenwich Library embarked on the strategic planning process to study and respond to key issues facing the library. The plan, which established a long-term strategic framework for the library’s ongoing efforts, identified five key areas for action to position the library to build on its strengths to meet the evolving needs of the community: Collections, Technology, Lifelong Learning and Enrichment, Service and Community Space, and Community and Connections. Here is what each entailed, as outlined in the strategic plan:

This is a long and robust list of efforts, to be sure. They were based on copious research, strategic analysis, and not least, forward thinking. The library team started by identifying its strengths, recognizing that the ultimate measure of their success would be whether they had positioned the organization to better meet the continually changing needs and interests of the Greenwich community, both present and in the future. To determine the library’s place in the community, they began with a community asset map—an inventory of the businesses, organizations, and institutions that constitute a community. The rationale was that by identifying the social, material, and intellectual assets of its community, a library discovers a local network or resources to help broaden its impact and contribution.

The Greenwich Library strategic plan was developed with a full understanding of its position in the web of community assets that strengthen and support the community, focusing the library on its role and identifying opportunities for collaboration with community partners. The plan, the catalyst for its shift focus initiative, was unanimously adopted by the library’s board of trustees in June 2012, after an eighteen-month-long process that included a community-wide survey, focus groups, a trustee survey, a staff survey, and countless hours of evaluation and analysis. It was titled Connecting Our Community, an apt descriptor of its clear focus.

Relative to framing this story—and its outcome—around the five key dimensions against which organizations must exhibit strength in order to succeed in staying relevant, we asked Better to respond directly. Her answers:

So, what does it look like on the other side of the Greenwich Library shift? While a number of the priority projects were launched and are being positively embraced (which we’ll get to in a minute), Better emphasized, “It’s a work in progress. This is not a onetime situation. We have a continuous feedback loop. Constant change makes it necessary for us to be constantly reimagining and reenvisioning. We will continue to keep our focus on ‘connecting the community.’ It’s sort of a bold stroke, saying we see the library as the center of the community, where connections are formed. But everything we do is with the intention of enhancing the connection to resources, materials, the programs, the staff, and all that happens at the library. More than ever, people see us as a sort of community university—a center for intellectual and cultural activity, a hub for information and learning. Connecting people is a constant focus.”

That said, Better also told us that, at its core, Greenwich Library is a library, a place for books, albeit a place for books that eyes its competition not as the library down the street, but rather Apple stores, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, universities, and of course, Google. As all successful organizations do in a dynamic marketplace, Greenwich Library had to widen its competitive lens to meet the needs of its patrons. “The book collection is still at the center of what the library does,” she said. “We have to be respectful of that. At the end of the day, people want a library to have books. What we’re now doing is working at digitizing materials that aren’t available digitally anywhere else, so they’re unique to our library.”

Beyond digitizing materials, further enhancements in technology were also among the priority initiatives implemented as a result of the strategic plan. Technology is an ever-present and evolving factor facilitating every aspect of library work, and these other priorities have ranged from relatively simple changes, such as the addition of self-check-out kiosks, to more robust initiatives like BiblioCommons. It was at the suggestion of the librarians that the Greenwich Library invested in this software (the first public library in Connecticut to do so). BiblioCom-mons is an online catalog that virtually transforms the library’s essential online services, from website to card catalog to calendars of events that connect the community to needed information as well as each other. It has become the foundation for the patrons’ online experiences at the library. It enables functions such as intuitive online searching, e-book integration, library staff recommendations, and the ability to create a community around the library collection. As Better put it, “BiblioCommons can take you way beyond the borders of your own library. It’s been a game changer, enhancing the library experience to a great degree.”

With the underlying purpose of “connecting the community,” access to other technological resources, along with the appropriate training, is another of the short-list efforts that have been instituted at Greenwich Library, for both staff and patrons. This is to ensure that all patrons have the tools and skills they need to use technology, be it for education or for recreation or for job searching. Beyond having what librarians refer to as a “digital petting zoo,” an area with an array of computers, iPads, Kindles, and other e-reading devices, the library offers ongoing technology training sessions and facilities. It even has an Apple-like genius bar for non-Apple users. In addition to the formal staff who take on the teaching responsibilities, the library has created a program so that teenagers can come in to help patrons (and older staff!) learn how to use the devices more easily and intuitively. It is among the many programs established to foster shared learning, to enable patrons to become more facile with technological resources, and to bring generations together. Greenwich Library is the only source in the community for free print and digital material, in terms of free access to the Internet and other tools, and free training in usage of this technology.

Addressing the ongoing cost of these enriched technological resources, Better said that “in terms of budgetary oversight, we have to constantly evaluate emerging technology rather than immediately adopt every leading-edge product. We figure out how to test products and services so as to ensure we are getting the most bang for the buck. We try to incorporate technology in a mindful way in response to the needs of the community, but keep our position as a good steward of financial resources.”

To further meet the changing needs of the community, another of the library’s immediate executional priorities was altering the interior of the library to better reflect how patrons use the spaces today, and will use them going forward. The goal has been to make spaces more flexible and readily adaptable to different activities. “We want to be as nimble and as facile as we can be relative to the physical space,” said Better. “Given the fluidity of the marketplace and technology, you can’t build with forever in mind. We need to embrace flexibility, even from a structural point of view.” As she explained, think of the spatial requirements as a barbell. At one end, there are quiet study rooms, private traditional library spaces where people can work on the great American novel, write their big papers, or update their resumes. On the other end are great communal spaces where people can collaborate and share and work on projects with other people. The library is in the process of working with an architectural firm to reenvision the footprint.

A look at the Greenwich Library’s website is indicative of the depth and breadth of its offerings. From the digital library to its extensive research resources, from programs for children, young adults, and seniors to its Oral History Project, from health information to its language and music programs, it is a stellar community asset. While always a “town jewel,” the recognition that the library had to shift its focus in a substantial way to stay relevant to the community was indicative of its understanding that complacency is not an option in the face of today’s ever-changing conditions, circumstances, and opportunities. For over eighteen months, the management team at the library, together with staff and patrons, endeavored to identify and understand the evolving needs of the community leading to the catalytic strategic plan.

As Better told us, “We’re constantly trying to keep pace with the needs of the population. At the end of the day, it’s all about relevancy. The question we keep asking ourselves is, How can we be more relevant to the needs of the population we serve? . . . We are always learning from our patrons. Every year things shift a little bit, and we need to keep pace. We don’t want to always play catch-up, but have to figure out how to stay ahead of changes.” Exhibiting strength against the five key principles necessary to successfully shift focus, we’d say they will continue to give Greenwich “the great library it deserves.”

The Greenwich Library reflects a successful shift ahead, but it is relatively recent. Some organizations have been able to shift over and over again as circumstances warrant.