It’s not often I go to the gym at 6.30 in a morning, I usually prefer midday to give me a break during work.
But today I was up early, the sun was shining and I felt great. So a workout and a swim before work seemed a good idea.

I now regret not having been at this time before. The amount you learn about what’s happening in business is really interesting.
Makes the BBC’s Today programme look positively short of news.

For instance today’s headlines from the gym are:

“Kevin’s just not pulling his weight…”
and as he’s responsible for increasing sales and as they are targeted on a team result it’s not pleasing the rest of his team. The boss won’t find out till it’s too late to meet target because if he’s so stupid that he can’t see it himself then it’s his look-out.

“The new sales push will knock the competition for six”
A company has come up with a new product and pricing structure to steal some of the competition’s major clients in September. By the time the competition has leant what’s happening it’ll be too late for them to do much.

Preparing for the future
Having listened to all this news I wondered if the boss did know about Kevin, or was he relying on monthly statistics. If he’s relying on the sales stats he will have little chance of reversing the situation before targets become impossible to be met.

More imporantly, does the competition not know that they are about to have their sales attacked? If the new product line and pricing structure is as effective and destructive as anticipated then there will be a panic and a rush to “Fix the problem” in September. In my experience this will always be a costly and time consuming exercise.

The gym’s news confirms that It’s always worth having an early warning system to identify what the future might bring and obviously the Gym at 6.30 is a place I will be going to more often.

As for my early warning system…I think the picture below shows my future

Recently a load of people have been talking to me about restructuring their teams for the future.
I’ve noticed that to do this they collect vast amounts of data in an effort to predict the future trends, business conditions, customer needs and so on.

The problem with the future
The problem is that the future is unpredictable. and the only people to generate a “five year plan was thr old Soviet Union…and look where they are today!

Take technology for instance…by the time it’s clear what will be affected in the future it’s too late! It move so fast that catching up is difficult far less being able to stay ahead. THerefore traditional planning where the object is to predict the future, develop detailed plans and restructure teams to take account of those predictions no longer make sense.

It must be assumed that the future can’t be predicted…but it can be prepared for. The answer is to shift how business prepares for the future.The task for business is to structure the organisation to be immediately flexible. That’s not new idea…but it’s rarely implemented successfully.

I’m excited about the future
Over the past months I’ve talked to so many business leaders about this topic. I’m excited that the result will be that I’m organising a series of events for selected business leaders to talk to them on how they can plan for the future they don’t yet know about.

I had a long breakfast with a friend and Company Director this morning. Over the bacon and eggs we talked about some senior and unexpected departures from one of his competitors. He was identifying the opportunities these senior departures presented for his own company.

In short he categorised these as:

• Available talent might be available and useful to his own comany (possibly on a consultancy basis)
• The competitor’s clients might speculate that they might need to shop around for alternative suppliers (Just in case!)
• Loss in staff morale and as a result loss of productivity
• Gap in leadership until new leader can be appointed and begin to succeed
• Possible further departures which could increase problems
• Cost to competitor of rehiring and lead-in time for newe job holder

Too often, when senior management departs staff look to the future wondering if the business is doomed. (Even if the leader had been unpopular) and wonder if they should consider finding another job before it’s too late. My friend and I speculated that the benefits for my friend’s company could last between six and nine months and be worth many clients and an increase in sales income.

Bernard Matthews as an example
One only has to look at Bernard Matthews, the turkey company, to see how the loss of top people can benefit competitors. Last week the Chairman, Davis McCall, stepped down. Then the Chief Executive, Noel Bartram left and follows Rob Mears the Managing Director’s ealier departure.
The company employs 2200 people with a further 1000 staff in Germany and Hungary. In recent years Trading conditions have been poor for the company with bird flu and increase in costs. In addition staff morale has been hit and sales have slumped. Profits on a turnover of £341m amounted to just £2m.
With the departure of senior people it could be expected that morale and productivity will further be affected unless the latest appointment of David Joll (former CE) can secure a rumoured investment of between £20 and £30million. In which case he could end up as a hero.

A Strategy
My friend and I worked on plans until lunchtime on ways to manage possible, though unlikely, senior departures in his own company.

Stephen Harvard Davis

Yesterday I had an interesting meeting with my good friend Warren Cass, the founder of Business Scene, discussing what type of speakers audiences were wanting to hear at networking events and business conferences.

My contribution, as a business speaker, was that I’ve noticed that audiences have changed what they are wanting to hear from the stage. I’ve detected that audiences are no longer willing to listen to the motivational speaker
encouraging the audience to “Do it like I did” or the “How to
improve…” talk or even worse the “I’ve written a book you’ll love to
buy” talk. Instead they are wanting information that’ll help them, and their business teams, survive and even prosper in the future and through these difficult times.

The future of speaker’s keynotes
I predict that the during 2012 people will be wanting to hear speakers offer an opinion on what the future holds, practical tips on how to survive the economic downturn and how teams can be made more efficient and profitable. That’s not to say that people want to be bored to death or filled with statistics, they won’t put up with that either! The talks will have to be entertaining, energetic and full of information. An interesting time for the future of the conference speaker and for those booking them for their audiences.

The popularity of my short interview clips on how to answer difficult interview questions has surprised and delighted me. Here’s another question mentioned to me by my network.

“What future trends do you see for our industry?”

Interview question TRENDS

You might also be interested in a 40 page report on “Finding a job using social media” that is available HERE