Back in 1960, when I bought a small envelope company with dreams of becoming a gazillionaire, I could not imagine a world where people just turned on a machine, clicked through some instructions and paid the electric bill.
I didn't think that I could have a contract signed and returned to me in a few minutes instead of dropping a paper document in the mail and waiting a few days. I was operating in a time when catalog orders went into an envelope back to the retailer to be processed.
In other words, I didn't anticipate the changes ahead — and neither did my competitors. Had I read a book like Daniel Burrus' "The Anticipatory Organization," I might have considered investing in developing computer technology.
But over the years, I wised up and learned to follow trends, even predict a few. I was perhaps a little late to the party with some of that wisdom, but it made a big difference when I could start to see what was coming my way.
"Organizations of all types and sizes have traditionally relied on their ability to react as quickly as possible to shifting challenges, the demands of the marketplace and other types of disruptions," Burrus says. "That's often referred to as agility."
But in today's increasingly disrupted and disruptive world, agility alone no longer cuts it, he asserts.
So, he asks, "Would you rather have merely reacted as quickly as possible as change took place, or anticipated it and crafted well-thought-out plans to take advantage of its game-changing opportunities?"
Burrus cites plenty of very recognizable examples to back up his ideas. For instance, he tells about the introduction of the iPhone. Reporters asked the CEO of BlackBerry, which then dominated the cellphone market, if he was concerned about a threat to his business. His response might amuse us today. He didn't think anyone would want to watch a video on a phone, and couldn't imagine the appeal of watching on such a small screen. As of November 2018, the last time Apple released sales figures, more than 2.2 billion iPhones had been sold worldwide.