Posts Tagged “competencies”

Finding the Right Team in a Time of Transformation

When tectonic shifts take place in an industry, those companies that are successful in navigating change put the right people in place. The first step is often a new CEO who brings vision and leadership to the organization, but whose success will depend on building a powerful and empowered A Team.

But building the A Team is not usually a straightforward proposition. Managing change is managing complexity:  there is a business that generates revenue and value to current customers, and then there are the new opportunities and new customer demands that must be rapidly met. Building the A Team in a time of transformation is rebuilding the plane while flying it. There are risks that must be recognized and managed well.

There are no simple recipes for building the A Team. Every A Team member must be strategically defined and, thus, must be related to a clearly articulated strategic plan tied to specific business objectives.  In the absence of this, a major risk emerges: opportunistic hiring. Obviously, changes in a business environment create pain and a heightened sense of need. But, without a clear strategic direction, the tendency is to “throw bodies” at the problem. There is a very high cost to this approach: loss of financial resources and loss of agility and momentum, which result in a loss of competitive advantage.

Here I intend to track the requirements and challenges in building A Teams for content and information-centric businesses.  Where technology is strategic, what are the core competencies and what should be outsourced? Where data and analytics are the driving force in both customer engagement and channel management, what do leaders need to know and do to drive profitable growth? Where content is king, who and how do you lead the development of a robust content architecture?  If online is the primary channel for engaging the customer, what makes your product and service discoverable and valuable? And, of course, this is just the beginning.