Strategy and Change

8A Call to Action

Yet if we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run—and often in the short one—the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

—Arthur C. Clark

WE THINK DISRUPTIVE change is here to stay. There's room to debate if the period from the mid-2010s to the mid-2020s is fundamentally more volatile than those before, but we know that technological change will move quickly, and its impact will be far-reaching. Ideally, we'll continue to turn change into opportunity and mitigate the adverse consequences that inevitably come with it. Organizations will evolve, harnessing technology to work in new ways. Increasingly, we may find that decisions are made for us, handled by intelligent agents drawing on vast troves of data and applying unseen rules (and biases). In a constantly changing and increasingly complex world, mistakes will be made faster and with greater consequences. Regardless of how these changes unfold, we'll need leaders who can act on opportunities, break down barriers, and work across silos.

In fact, silos might be the most likely source of ongoing risk and resistance to the opportunities of digital disruption. Every disruptive change is inherently a challenge to the status quo. As practitioners, we've spent a great deal of time working with executive teams to perfect the write-up of a new strategic initiative. We've spent more time working through the inevitable resistance and confusion that ...