Do you share the mindset of organizations that know how to survive?

Back in 1994, Gary Hamel in his HBR article, Strategy as a Revolution, stated: “Never has the world been more hospitable to industry revolutionaries and more hostile to industry incumbents.” Almost three decades later, this statement rings true even more. The 33-year average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 in 1964 narrowed to 24 years by 2016 and is forecast to shrink to just 12 years by 2027. It doesn’t take much to think of industry giants that suffered untimely bankruptcies or exist today as a mere shadow of their former selves (Kodak, Blockbuster, PanAm, Borders, Toys “R” Us…).

We studied companies that have enjoyed longevity of more than 50 years to understand what they do differently. Those that experience healthy long lives demonstrate what we call strategic incumbency. This involves two processes:

1. Shifting from passive to active enactment of incumbency
2. Leveraging unfair advantages of incumbency (e.g. scale, trust, long-term orientation)

Focusing on the first process, here is an exercise to test whether your organization has become too passive. Look at each of the following passivity traps and ask if your organization is ensnared in them:

• Complacency: Are you holding on to the world of “knowns” – known customers, competitors, and business models?
• Locked in by sunk costs: Is a myopic focus on securing return on existing assets allowing the company’s “sacred cows” to perpetuate?
• Initiative inertia: Are you guilty of taking a reactive approach to challenges/opportunities and adding on new initiatives, without stopping those that clearly don’t work?
• Short-termism: Is efficiency and cost focus skewing you towards incremental efforts and short-term thinking (in terms of KPIs, incentive systems, promotion criteria, etc.)?
• Control mindset: Are you afraid to share your best ideas with partners for fear of losing control?

If you recognize that your organization is falling into one or more of these traps, you are in danger of becoming a passive incumbent. Passive incumbents tend to be the “guardians of the past”, favoring the status quo and fighting market share battles within traditional industry boundaries. You need to rethink your legacy business models, be willing to step out of your comfort zone, discuss the “undiscussables”, and get ready to experiment to address the changing needs of your customers.

What you need to do first, however, is to change your mindset and attitude to that of an active incumbent. The following table shows how you can start to make the shift:

In the next discussion, we will look at whether your company is suffering from inertia.