News Article - Mario Mora, Managing Partner Equation Partners Chile and Global AltoPartners Board member, recently published an article in Diario Financiero, Chile’s leading financial newspaper, on transformation management. To read the original piece published in Spanish, click here

The English version has been provided on the Equation Partners website

No one doubts that we are living a new and profound industrial revolution, where “hyper connectivity and instantaneity” emerge as icons that characterize this new reality. The implications are great for all corporate world actors, especially for CEOs. This is because, in this new world, it is no longer enough to show incremental improvements to leave the competition behind. Although it sounds theoretical and exhausting, winning today is a function of continuous transformation; the way we do business, relate to customers, manage information, etc.

The technological catalysts of this new industrial revolution are already here, although at different levels of development facing the markets. “Omnipresent digital technology” is an impressive reality; and the cloud, sensors, and cell phones, all converge in what we now call the “Internet of Things”; a new field that will make machines more intelligent and people more capable (cars without drivers; smart houses, factories and cities, and whatever else the imagination may produce).

However, we must make no mistake: transforming a business can be much more complex than having a disruptive business attitude. The “disruptive” are usually entrepreneurs starting something, who play the offensive, and carry a light backpack, where ideas and conviction are the most important burden. On the contrary, pushing a transformation into an established company, with a significant structure of assets and capital requirements, is very different. Here we must balance a strong offensive of the new, with a solid defense of the core business.

In this context, any general manager faced with a transformation process of this nature should keep some considerations in mind. The first; understand that the “core” of the business must be kept healthy at all costs, since it provides the platform and flow necessary to, in parallel, launch “disruptive moves” with high potential value. The second has to do with the acceptance that the days when strategies were defined for long periods of time are over; agility is as important today as the content of a strategy, and these have an increasingly shorter life cycle. The third relates to the decision to run all the extra miles to attract the best talent available. The difference between good and excellent is the order of magnitude. The fourth has to do with defining a meaningful purpose that serves as a permanent north that guides the CEO and the entire organization in transit through this path of change and uncertainty, so typical of transformation.

To contact Mario Mora directly, email him at m.mora@altopartners.com