I had breakfast yesterday with a longtime colleague who was in town visiting with clients. After 20+ years in senior executive roles with global 500 companies, she decamped to a mid-sized firm that was trying to get to the next level.  Like many industries, this company has been reeling from disruption caused by the rise of digital technologies, and investors were expecting bold ideas.  With a board meeting just around the corner, the CEO challenged my colleague to work with the leadership team figuring out how to position the business to become more like a technology-led company?  Looking for guidance on how to proceed, my colleague asked, how do we do this?   As we spoke further, several issues emerged:

• The company’s vision lacks a bold purpose
• Clarity what it takes to look, feel, and act like a technology company is limited
• An understanding of how its markets and customers are changing is not fully formed
• Open collaboration and communication are the exception rather than the rule

Without a clear template for the future state, addressing these issues would be a challenge.  How could the organization make bets on its people, operations, and partners without first formulating its purpose and deciding what businesses it should enter? Like many companies, this organization seemed to attempting to optimize for the current rather than future business.  Its strategic planning process further reinforced this thinking.

As we parted ways, I left my colleague with the following food for thought:  set aside conventional wisdom about strategy formulation and take a hard look, instead, at who your future customers will be in the future and what they want.  Customer-centric thinking will clarify the types of businesses the organization may wish to pursue.  Apply this customer understanding to how the business could create and realize value from a new mix of offerings.