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7
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Adapting to Change
“If past history were all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.”
—WARREN BUFFETT
During the first 15 years of his life, John Fox’s father, a lieutenant commander with the Navy Seals, was stationed at Little Creek Base in Norfolk, Virginia. The commander spent six months of each year in Vietnam, and in her husband’s absence, John’s mother was the head of the household. “Mom raised my three younger brothers and me,” tells John. “A graduate of William and Mary with a business degree in the days when women majored in home economics and education, she was one determined woman. Now, my father, a Navy Seal commander with two Silver Stars, was one tough guy. But she was his equal. My mom was as tough as nails. Consequently, my brothers and I grew up in a very disciplined environment.”
With their father being sent back and forth to Vietnam throughout the four boys’ formative years, the Fox family was constantly adapting to change that revolved around orders from the military. “We never knew when my father was leaving, nor did we know how long he’d be gone,” John explains. “And, of course, there was always the worry that he might never come home. Being a Navy SEAL lieutenant commander in Vietnam was a very dangerous job. When my father had to leave, for some reason, the military sent him at 3:00 in the morning. So without any notice, my father would wake us up in the middle of the night and we’d load up all of these bags.
“Our household pet was a Navy SEAL dog. Smokey was trained to sniff out the Vietcong, and stuff like that. One day I went down to the training center and I saw my nice little dog, packed with gear on him. He looked like a killer dog. I’m like, ‘Hey, is that Smokey?’ Being military brats, our lives evolved around my father’s orders, which were always subject to change.
“I remember one particular time when my father came back from Vietnam after a six-month tour, and I was driving with him in the car. We stopped at a traffic light, and I heard my father mumbling to himself, ‘Why am I doing this? I can’t believe this light is making me stop.’
“I was only 11, and at the time I didn’t understand why he acted that way. I’ve since figured it out. He had been over there in the jungle, and every day he was fighting for his life. Additionally, he was making life-and-death decisions for his men. Then, he came back to civilization and he had to do what a traffic light tells him to do. It was bizarre. A day ago, he was in combat deep in the jungle under the most fierce, life-threatening conditions, and 24 hours later, a traffic light is directing him when to stop and go. Talk about having to adapt to change!”
The contrast of fighting in the jungles of Vietnam and driving down Main Street U.S.A. is analogous to coming from another planet. It’s difficult to comprehend how soldiers orientate themselves to civilian life upon their return home. John Fox grew up observing his father make such adjustments for 15 years. In the process, he learned to live with change. In comparison to the kinds of changes that his father had to adapt to, John’s may be less drastic, but have nevertheless been life-disrupting. And because of his early experiences with his father, he nonchalantly accepts change as a normal part of life. His ability to embrace change has served him well throughout his career in football.
FOOTBALL IS A SPORT OF constant change. Every play is different. With 22 players in motion with so many variables, no two plays are identical. A head coach must make adjustments throughout the game based on what the opposing team does, who’s injured, the score of the game, the time remaining in the game, and so on. A well-coached team follows its game plan but is flexible in making changes. For example, after a play is called in the huddle, a quarterback may call an audible at the line of scrimmage, a decision based on how he reads the defense. Moreover, every season, there is a high turnover of players and coaching staff members, a condition that is based on the average professional football player’s career being 3.5 years; so every season brings on a different crop of players. Consider too that player injuries, the free-agent system, and contract disputes also add to the high turnover in the NFL. Thus, there are few certainties; change is constant. No wonder, few teams ever repeat as Super Bowl champions and win back-to-back Vince Lombardi Trophies.
I emphasize that a leader’s ability to adapt to change does not conflict with the importance of sticking to a game plan. A good game plan must be flexible and allow for contingencies, indicating what to do “in the event of . . .” For example, a football team with a strong running attack is behind by 10 points with two minutes on the clock and it has no time-outs. Obviously, it’s prudent to pass the ball and work the clock. Head coaches make adjustments in their game plan during halftime. These adjustments are based on many variables, including what the other team is doing and anticipating what it will do. When asked once about the secret of his ability to anticipate, the great hockey player Wayne Gretzky replied, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
When Mike Sherman speaks about change, he says that football is a microcosm of the business world. “Only it’s accelerated,” he adds, “because one season in the NFL is like 20 years of decision-making for a Fortune 500 executive. Everything is compressed in my line of work. I estimate that the decisions I make in a week’s time number a year’s worth made by my counterpart in corporate America. During an actual game, a head coach is continually making decisions for every play of the game. He’s also held accountable for producing immediate results! And correctly or incorrectly, the fans evaluate him based on the team’s instantaneous performance. This happens during the game and is repeated on Monday mornings, throughout the week, throughout the season and in between seasons. While CEOs are under the gun to produce, they have considerably more lead time than do those of us who coach in the NFL.”
Jon Gruden describes how he views change during the course of a Sunday afternoon game. “Let’s say I call a particular play, and then I spot a roadblock telling me it’s not going to work. The play has to be changed, so the quarterback calls an audible. We practice long hours to prepare ourselves so we can switch gears on a dime. It’s like driving a car. You’re going down the street and you read the road signs. You don’t just get in your new silver Jaguar and push the pedal down and go 75 miles per hour. You come to a stop sign, and you have to come to a complete stop. Then you put your turn signal on and turn right. You’ve got to see the signs. The same applies to football. There are signals going on all the time telling you to make adjustments.”
Every Sunday is a new game. The way John Fox sees it, when you win a game you have to put it to rest. “The same is true when you lose a game,” he explains, “you’ve got to put it to rest. That’s because the next game is coming. It goes back to preparation. Let’s clean up what we did. Was it good? Yes. Can we do better? Yes. Was it as good as it should have been? No. We’ve got to correct this and this. It’s always about change in how we prepare ourselves to win the next game. We have to go into every game believing we’re going to win. I don’t want anyone on this team to have any doubt.”
BEGINNING ON DAY ONE, A new head coach in the NFL is expected to start making changes. Keep in mind that he got the job because his predecessor got the boot. Disgruntled fans want things fixed; they’re the customers, the ones who determine ticket sales. Team owners don’t like drops in ticket sales so they submit to the demands of their customers. Remember, professional football is a business.
While Reid and Fox took over two of the worst teams in recent NFL memory, even playoff teams that don’t win championships have exasperated fans and owners. It’s not always enough to play in a championship game; there are pressures to win it. And if your team wins the Super Bowl, they’re expected to repeat it the following year. Even though only a handful of NFL teams have back-to-back trophies, fans become irritated when their expectations go unanswered. Consequently, the fans demand change, and when your customers demand something new, it’s good business to cater to their demands.
It’s not only demands from customers that initiate change, internal people are also aware that change is necessary. “I was fortunate to have a couple of things going for me,” explains Reid. “First, there were some veteran players who wanted change. They trusted what I was doing. They understood that if they’d keep pursuing my plan and I plugged in some different guys in positions where we were weak, we’d succeed. Second, we had a veteran defense—guys who had been around for a while. It was made clear to them that our offensive unit was very young, but we were making changes that would make it work. They accepted this and, to their credit, they never pointed a finger at the offense for not doing its part to win football games. Although I was criticized by the media and the fans for taking McNabb as our first draft choice, the players were informed that we were building our offense around him, and over time, the offensive unit would put points on the scoreboard.”
As I mentioned, although the fans and media didn’t know it, the Eagle players understood that Doug Peterson had been brought in from Green Bay to serve as quarterback until rookie Donovan McNabb was ready to start. They were there on the practice field and observed Peterson teaching the West Coast offense to McNabb, his understudy, who was being groomed to be the starting quarterback. Hence, the players knew change was imminent. They were seeing it happen behind closed doors. And they believed in the team’s leadership. Andy Reid would transform the Eagles into a strong contender for the championship title.
CHANGE IS SYNONYMOUS WITH RISK-TAKING. Each of the franchise owners took risks when they hired Holmgren, Gruden, Sherman, Reid, and Fox to serve as their head coach. Think about it. It took guts to hire someone to be a head coach of an NFL team who lacked head coaching experience—experience that many people think is a prerequisite for the job. Think about it. You own a very large company. Would you hire an individual with no experience running a large company—or for that matter, a small company? Certainly these franchise owners could have made overtures to a current NFL head coach. Hiring somebody away from another team is as commonplace in professional football as it is in other fields. They could have also sought someone who had been discharged, or for that matter, one of the many available former NFL head coaches anxious to get back into the game. Or they could have hired a big-time college head coach. Just as the NCAA has proved to be a good farm system for NFL players, many head coaches have also come from the college ranks. Understandably, it is always a risk to bring in a new coach to lead a group of people with whom he has no history. But to hire an individual with no head coaching experience whatsoever does indeed push the envelope.
For example, Mike Holmgren was an assistant coach at three different high schools in San Francisco and San Jose from 1972 to 1980 before working as a quarterbacks coach for one year at San Francisco State and four years at BYU. He landed his first NFL job with the ’49ers when head coach Bill Walsh hired him as a quarterbacks coach. “I was essentially a high school coach,” confesses Holmgren. “Bill didn’t have to hire me, and I’ve thanked him so many times for giving me the chance. I suppose he saw something and was willing to take the risk. In this business, you take risks on a day-to-day basis, and especially in Sunday games when you call plays. This job requires you to make a million decisions, and if you’re not willing to let it hang out the window, then you probably shouldn’t do it. In this business you’re not going to be right all the time, and you’re going to get criticized. It gets a little rough sometimes, but that’s part of the deal.”
As I mentioned earlier, Mike and I go back to when he was a high school history teacher and an assistant coach. He enjoyed his work and was very good at it. “I was comfortable,” he says. “I had a little house, was active in my church, my family was growing up, and things were kind of good. Then to leave all that and jump into coaching like I did, well, that was a risk. Today, when I look at my staff, I get to know these men and some of them are risk-takers and some aren’t. I have to know that too. The guys like Jon Gruden, Dick Jauron, Steve Mariucci, Marty Mornhinweg, Andy Reid, Ray Rhodes, and Mike Sherman who worked for me and became head coaches were willing to take risks. That’s an important part of leadership.”
Being an NFL head coach is not for the faint-hearted. Being a risk-taker is part of the job description. “I’ve always believed in ‘no risk, no reward,’ ” says Mike Sherman. “Now risks have to be calculated. For instance, after the 2001 season ended, we had some receivers that I didn’t think were going to be here the following season due to financial situations. As it turned out, all of our starting receivers either left or I didn’t re-sign them. I anticipated a lot of criticism and I sure got it. Everyone was saying, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t go into your season without a bench of veteran receivers.’
“I had to make some quick decisions. For example, to move up to get a guy in the draft, I had to give up a second-round pick. And I looked to see what free agents were available. I couldn’t get my first choice, but could go after who I thought was the most talented free agent, Terry Glenn. I also knew that his off-field behavior made him a big risk. I met his agent at the Combine in Indianapolis, and he convinced me that I should talk to Terry. I drove from Indianapolis to Cincinnati and had a three-hour conversation with Terry. After talking to him, I took the risk and gave him a one-year contract. Although he’s a little injury-prone, he played for us for the entire 2002 season. Glenn ended up catching 49 passes that averaged 13.5 yards and scored five touchdowns. He did a good job for us and there were no off-field problems. Although I was quite satisfied with his performance, I didn’t renew his contract because I had several younger receivers with a lot of potential whom we were developing.
“One of those young players was Don Driver who came with us in ’99 but saw little action until 2001 when he became one of our top pass catchers off the bench. Driver started only twice in ’01, a year when we were loaded with receivers. I moved Driver up in ’02, and as a first-year starter, he was sensational, making 70 receptions with nine touchdowns for 1,064 yards. Only two other Packers receivers ever went over 1,000 yards in their first year as a starter, Billy Howton in 1952 and Sterling Sharpe in 1988. Jumping from the top backup to top receiver earned Driver a Pro Bowl spot and the Packers’ ‘Most Valuable Player’ award in ’02.”
Following the 2002 season, Sherman took still more bold risks when he made several sweeping changes that resulted in replacing his old linebackers with new ones. This too raised a lot of eyebrows. “I cut one linebacker because I felt his production didn’t match his salary and he refused to accept a pay cut. We talked about it, and I was brutally honest with him; only he saw things differently so he left. I also cut a veteran linebacker who led the team with tackles for the last two years. Now even though a player is your leading tackler and proficient at his job, it doesn’t mean he’s the best for the job. And I wanted the best man for the job. In my opinion, having the most tackles is a very discretionary statistic. Because you can lead the team in this department by making tackles 20 yards down the field, or you can do it by making tackles like Ray Lewis does. He makes them in the backfields of your opponent. So there’s a difference there. I took some flak from the media on this decision because all they see is that he led the team in tackles. I try not to let the statistics or public opinion cloud my judgment.”
At the end of the 2003 season, did the decisions made by Sherman prove to be good ones? After all, the Packers went 12-4 during the regular 2002 season and were 10-6 in 2003, winning the Central Division title both years. Personally, when it comes to change, I have always been of the opinion that it’s not important that a decision be right or wrong. What is important is that a decision is made. I don’t believe in second-guessing decision making.
A CURRENT SUPER BOWL WINNER knows that his team must make constant changes to improve because his competition won’t be idly sitting through the long winter waiting until next season without a thought as to what they must do to be a championship team. To follow up with another Lombardi Trophy, there must be enough improvement that his current team wouldn’t be able to compete with next season’s team. That’s why you’ll never hear the coach of the winning Super Bowl team say, “We’re the world’s champions so next year we won’t change a single thing.”
Shortly after Green Bay’s 35-21 Super Bowl win over New England on January 26, 1997, Mike Holmgren called a meeting of his coaches. “We are going to have a meeting next week,” he announced, “and it’s going to be about everything we do. How we practice, how we teach, how we meet, how we travel. Everything is on the table, and something is going to change because I don’t want it to be the same thing next year. I want you all to come in with your suggestions. You have a week to think about what we can do better. Now we just won the Super Bowl. You can’t do it any better. We were the second team ever to lead the League both offensively and defensively. Having said that, it’s all on the table. Everyone’s suggestions are welcome. I want the players to know that this is a new year. We are not just going to roll through it like we did last year.”
Nobody ever accused Mike Holmgren of being complacent. After winning the World Championship, he was a man on the top of his profession, and there he was, acknowledging that he didn’t have all the answers. He was welcoming suggestions. Everything was fair game. Every winning coach knows that nothing stays the same. A team either gets better or gets worse. A championship team is on top this year, but to stay there, it must improve. Failure to improve is going backward.
Every Super Bowl championship head coach knows that there are 31 other NFL teams looking over his shoulder for the magical formula that took his team to the top. Each of those competitors will try to copy it or incorporate it into their style of play. While they’re at it, they may even take it to the next level, adding a few improvements of their own. The competition pays a lot of money to good people to watch a lot of film so they can figure out ways to beat the current champion. And when your team is at the top of the heap, it’s every team’s biggest victory of the season when they beat you.
As Jon Gruden puts it, “There are some unbelievable strategists out there, and if you’re not careful, they will steal your plays and your players. They will kill you. They will dominate you. You’ve got to stay on the cutting edge. You’ve got to work your butt off to get to the top—and work even harder to stay there.”
In the highly competitive arena of NFL football, every team is constantly changing. Teams that you beat last time are capable of beating you the next time. After winning Super Bowl XXXVII, Jon Gruden was well aware of how difficult it is to repeat the success two years in a row. “After you win, you’ve got to have a short-term memory and go back to square one,” he says. “You can’t rest on the good things and you can’t rest on the bad things. I reminded our guys that the last team to repeat Super Bowl rings was the Denver Broncos back in 1997 and ’98. ‘It doesn’t happen very often,’ I emphasized. We have a chance to be great. To be a dynasty. We’re down in the record books and what we’ll have, we will hold onto forever.”
A few months later, when the Buccaneers came back for their first practice following the long winter after Super Bowl XXXVII, Gruden kept repeating to them, “It’s time to turn the page. I want you guys to get off the circuit. Stop making the appearances, stop the partying, having a good time and showing off your ring. It’s been good. We have it. Let’s hold onto it. Remember it. But let’s go get another one. It’s time to defend our title. We want to win every year. If winning once was good, twice is better. We don’t want to be a flash in the pan.”
At the end of the 2003 season, the Buccaneers did not defend their Super Bowl title. In fact, Tampa Bay finished third in the NFC South’s standings with a 7-9 record. The team’s poor showing illustrates how difficult it is for a Super Bowl champion to have a repeat performance. Regardless of Tampa Bay’s poor showing in 2003, telling his organization that it was time to turn the page was an excellent message. Jon Gruden is an exceptional leader, and most NFL people believe that he will be the recipient of another Super Bowl ring or two before his coaching career is over.
CHANGE IS CONSTANT. IT’S BEEN like this since the beginning of time when God created the universe’s stars and planets that are always in a constant state of motion. Every living thing is perpetually changing—including our own physical beings. Take a drop of water from a pond, place it under a microscope and you’ll observe a microcosm of a countess number of infinitesimally small living cells in a state of constant motion. One consistency in this world is change.
For years Dr. Judah Folkman, director of surgical research at Harvard Medical School and a world-renowned cancer researcher posted a sign on the wall of his laboratory that read: “You can teach but you cannot easily unteach.” Dr. Folkman explains that the sign served to remind him and his staff that the medical profession is slow at adapting to change. He points out that for years surgeons always did surgery on patients with stomach ulcers. “Even after tested drugs were on the market that stopped the bleeding,” Folkman explains, “many surgeons continued to remove ulcers by surgery. Similarly, cancer surgeons performed mastectomies and removed a patient’s entire breast, even after lumpectomies that removed only the tumor from the breast proved to be just as effective.”
People in all walks of life resist change. Imagine the chaos that would happen if the government suddenly passed a law stating that the metric system would be mandatory in America! We resist change because we get comfortable with the status quo. But like it or not, change will happen. In fact, the American Heritage Dictionary has the following new listing: “Retronym: a word or phrase created because an existing term that was once used alone needs to be distinguished from a term referring to a new development or variation.” For example, your black-and-white television was, well, your television. But once televised programs were in color, the new sets were color television and the old ones were black-and-white televisions. Before low-cal milk and 2 percent milk, there was no need for the term “whole milk.” And before artificial grass on football fields, the natural stuff was just called grass. Now it’s “natural turf.”
The armed conflict that occurred from 1914 to 1918 was known for decades as “the Great War” and “the War to End All Wars”; once World War II started, it was renamed “World War I.” Likewise, for generations, there were no retronyms for words like “whole-wheat flour,” “regular coffee,” “day baseball,” or “propeller airplane.” A review of a handful of retronyms illustrates how new ways are all around us, rendering the old ways obsolete.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933, the nation faced severe economic crisis. Frightened depositors withdrew funds, causing most of the country’s banks to close. An estimated 15 million Americans were unemployed. To bring about change, FDR announced “the New Deal,” which was opportunistic rather than theoretical in its approach to solving the nation’s problems; hence it lacked a consistent economic (philosophy) agenda. It did however provide hope, and this by itself was a much-needed antidote to move the nation forward. FDR used the idiom in reference to what card players might do when everyone is dealt a bad hand—the players ask for a new deal, the deck is shuffled, and the cards are dealt again. FDR kept trying new things, knowing that he must institute change.
At some time in our lives, all of us have put off making a decision that we knew should have been made. Why? We do it to avoid decision-making that involves taking a risk. We procrastinate out of fear that we may make the wrong decision! It’s safer not to do anything, so we just “sit on it.” Sometimes it’s an emotional thing. Rationally, we know that straddling the fence is erroneous. For example, upon receiving a negative report on a company, an investor may delay selling his holdings and consequently watch the price of the stock take a nosedive, thereby incurring substantial losses. As the expression goes, “He who hesitates is lost.”
During my real estate selling days, I observed people who were unable to make a buying decision and consequently passed on purchasing what was their “dream home.” Although they wanted to change residences, they didn’t want to leave their comfort zone. Then too, there were those who were afraid to buy because a better deal might later be available. Unfortunately, after their dream home was off the market, they regretted their indecisiveness. “My definition of a good deal,” I’d advise them, “is anytime you can get it.”
Then there are those people who stick to the same dreary job for their entire lives because they’re afraid a new job won’t be as good as the one they currently have, and ironically it’s a job they can’t stand! In my own case, in the 1980s when I announced I was going to represent professional athletes, I’d hear, “Stick to your day job, Bob. You can’t be a sports agent. That’s insane.” And inevitably someone would add, “You’re a high school history teacher!”
Later, when I proved them wrong, people credited any success I enjoyed to “sheer luck.” It’s interesting how the people who never take risks are the first to call someone else’s success luck. I believe you make your own so-called luck happen by being well prepared. It’s a funny thing, but when you’re well prepared, you don’t think of it as risk-taking. That’s because you’ve stacked the deck in your favor.
Landing a position of head coach in the NFL requires many job changes during the course of one’s career. In professional football, this is acceptable; it’s the equivalent to how a CEO works his way up the ladder within a corporation, sometimes being transferred a dozen or more times during his career. There was a time when IBM had a reputation for moving its people to so many different locations that insiders said IBM was an acronym for “I’ve Been Moved.” At the same time, recruiters frowned on résumés that indicated a job candidate had a pattern of switching jobs from one employer to another. It was a sign of instability; to some, it even indicated disloyalty. Too many job changes was also a sign of failure that carried a stigma branding a candidate as someone who couldn’t hold a steady job.
In today’s fast-paced world, an executive who has worked for many companies is often viewed as an individual with “a wide range of experience and vast exposure.” Such an individual is also someone who embraces change—a take-charge guy. Conversely, an individual who has worked for the same employer for 30 years might be considered a non-risk-taker, someone who is dated and resists change.
An NFL head coach is constantly studying game films, reviewing his team’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s an ongoing quest for continual improvement. He also reviews game films of the opposition, looking for weaknesses to give his team a competitive advantage. His counterpart in business doesn’t have game films to view, but a CEO does have other ways to evaluate his company and the competition. Internally, a business leader can walk the floor, meeting with employees in the factory and at branch offices. He can ask questions, and let employees feel free to speak out, keeping quiet so he can assess answers and suggestions, always making sure to thank them for their input.
Externally, an astute business leader also does his homework in order to gain ground on the competition. He reads available research information on his competitors and he personally tests their products. How is this done? He shops their stores and he uses their products. For example, Red Poling, a former CEO at Ford Motor Company in the mid-1990s, would personally test-ride Ford automobiles by driving different models to and from work—he did the same with non-Ford cars to familiarize himself with the competition’s products—their strengths and weaknesses.
Successful CEOs read annual reports and other available financial information released by the competition. Sure, it takes some digging to read through cumbersome reports, but they do it. It’s part of their job. Business leaders also attend industry conventions, and here too, they do it in their ongoing pursuit to acquire information about their competition. They want to know why a rival is doing something faster, better, or cheaper. They want to make sure their costs, sales, and profit margins are superior to industry averages. In short, they keep current with what the other guy is doing. This enables them to formulate strategies to implement change to enhance market share. As the cliché goes, “You snooze, you lose.”
The tendency to resist change is certainly more prevalent when one does not have enough facts on hand to make a reasonable decision. Being well informed eases the decision-making process. Strong leaders collect the information they need and move forward. Weak leaders collect too much information, thereby stalling the decision-making process. They suffer “paralysis by analysis,” a disease that can be fatal to weak business leaders.
In football, there is a tendency to look ahead to next week’s “big game” and not get up for this Sunday’s weaker opponent. This is when upsets happen. Successful head coaches don’t underestimate the competition. Neither do successful business leaders. Oftentimes, it’s the competitor that appears to be ready to file for Chapter 11 that businesspeople underestimate. You’ve got to be careful with this guy because he can be dangerous. A desperate competitor might start making changes, thinking there’s nothing to lose. So what does he do? He changes his advertising, lowers his prices, and makes personal calls on customers to give them competitive offers for their business. He also brings in new people with innovative ideas. The lesson here is, don’t count a competitor out because he’s down. Like a losing NFL team that beats a League leader, so can a desperate competitor do the same to you. Always give credit to your competition for being able to think.
A Princeton student once asked his professor Albert Einstein, “Why are you giving us the identical test as last year’s?” The brilliant scientist answered, “Because this year, the answers are different.” Einstein’s lesson to his student is well taken. In our ever-changing business world, what worked last year doesn’t necessarily work this year.
In the world of business, everything is subject to change. In contrast to our life span, the life of a corporation is perpetual, so in theory it continues long after its founder is gone. A corporation’s people change for all the obvious reasons—they retire, they die, they get fired, and they get recruited away by other companies. Real estate changes. Old buildings become obsolete and are replaced by new buildings. As a company expands, additional space is required. National headquarters move to better locations as old neighborhoods deteriorate. Companies also move out of town and out of state. Company names change too. Exxon was formerly known as Standard Oil Company. Avon Products was originally called California Perfume Company. Philip Morris Cos. changed its name to Altria Group Inc. and Andersen Consulting became Accenture Ltd. Even a company’s product line changes. DuPont was the world’s largest manufacturer of gunpowder and America’s largest supplier from the War of 1812 through World War I. American Express’s roots trace back to the Pony Express. The list goes on and on. Great business leaders are constantly reinventing their companies. The company they manage today won’t be able to compete with the company they will manage tomorrow.
They also know that their competition will constantly improve. To catch up with the industry leader, they must make changes that require leapfrog jumps in order to gain a competitive advantage. That’s because the competition is a moving target and doesn’t remain stationary. Nobody ever said it was easy to succeed in our ultra-competitive business world. It takes exceptional leadership skills—men and women who are capable of switching direction on a dime.