You don’t want to be that person. The person whose words come back to haunt them when seasons change. We all know them. The ones who say there’s nothing new coming down the pike to upend culture, society, an art form, an industry or a sector.
Some people seem to get a kick out of saying things like that. It makes them feel wise and all knowing when they say with supreme confidence that there’s nothing that can change the current dynamic as we know it.
Time and again such views have been shown up by events. Insert the famous yet anecdotal quote from the U.S Commissioner of patents in 1889 who said confidently ‘Everything that can be invented has been invented’. Usually never said with malice but the sheer confidence of a horse with its blinkers tightly worn.
I recall when I got my break into the advertising industry and one of those industry defining events came around — a pitch for the MTN account — literally the largest marketing budget was at stake. The brief we received for the pitch and our read of the telecoms industry suggested that the industry was locked into a pattern where the market leader was dominant and would always be dominant.
Within a year, that dominance was seemingly solidified after an outsider from the FMCG world (Bola Akingbade) came in as CMO at MTN and established his view point on consumer segmentation on the industry. There was hardly space for any strong contender as the MTN business seemed to have figured out its positioning and churn problems. Or so it seemed.
Within a year, a new player entered the industry and threw a spanner in the works.
New jobs, new products, new services, new supporting companies, new advertising and most importantly new customers all came out of seemingly no where because a new player got into the market and started moving fast and breaking things.
The most reliable thing to plan for is the certainty of change.
In more recent times, just when the Nigerian banking industry looked like it was settling into a predictable pecking order of players, seemingly out of no where came the FINTECH companies. Insurgent and hungry, with lower operating costs and multi-million dollar valuations and the raises to go with it.
Once again new jobs, new products, new services, new supporting companies, new advertising and most importantly new customers all came out of seemingly no where because many new financial players got into the market.
Don’t be in the company of those predicting that everything is all set and locked in. You literally close your eyes to all the indicators all around you.
This article is about the certainty of change. It is constant and relentless. It upends incumbents and makes sure society as we know it never stagnates. The best place to be is to stand just behind change, watching for it and following closely behind it.
What changes are bubbling now no one else can see ? You can be surrounded by the next great thing and unaware of it because you also don’t do enough of your own thinking. It is important to keep your mind and ears open to perceive slow budding interest shifts, alignments (new hires in strategic roles and companies) and possible new uses of things and resources. People group those things under the header ‘trends’ but I want you to be clear eyed so don’t do that. Look at your world, office, industry and resources through those three lenses.
Trust me you will begin to see what’s coming down the pike ahead of your peers.
That’s where fortune waits.
Take position.
