If you want your company to stay relevant in the future, ask yourself this simple question:

“What if our company were founded today?”

With this question you can open up all the relevant topics you need to go through when forming a vision of your company. A vision that will ensure that your company will stay relevant in the future.

Why is this question so powerful?

When you think of your answer to this question, you will need to consider at least the following:

• Reviewing current market: how will the emerging companies, start-ups and competition try to transform the business you are in?
• Utilising new technologies: how would you work in the current and future connected digital world and new platforms?
• Finding new business models: would you use the same business model if you would start now?
• Eliminating legacy: what if there were no burden from the past prohibiting you not to change?
• Utilising your assets: think of your assets that you wouldn’t have. This helps you to identify your strengths that you need to nurture to maintain your advantage compared to entrants in the market.
• And last but not least: in which business you actually are in? What are the underlying constants that you want to keep, and which ones you want to change?

Why do you need a vision?

The decisions that people in the company do today are all at the end based on a vision of where you want to be in a few years. In case you haven’t stated the vision explicitly, each decision maker — practically everyone — base their decision on their own interpretation of the current state and the direction where the company is heading. Typically, these decisions are more likely to maintain the status quo rather than aim to transform the company.

Defining a clear vision and expressing it in a compelling way to everyone in the company is a pre-requisite for any significant change in the business.

Transform or die

Lately, the emergence of digital technologies, internet, and the associated new business models have been the primary cause for the market disruptions that has swept so many companies down under.

Many incumbent companies struggle with the renewal. They have been in their business for so long that they have difficulties in breaking out from the old patterns. The literature and business folklore is full of stories of companies who couldn’t transform when the world was changing around them: Kodak, Blockbuster, Polaroid, Toys’R’Us, Nokia’s mobile phones, etc.

These well-known companies and brands are just the tip of the iceberg. There are uncountable number of small and mid-size companies that we have never heard of that perished. They couldn’t respond to the changes and the new entrants to the market. They lacked the capability to transform themselves, but primarily of all, they lacked the vision of how they should transform.

If they would have asked themselves this question — and acted upon it — they might have been able to change before they became irrelevant.

Example: a traditional TV network

Let us next take an example how this question can be used. Think of an established television network company that runs several TV channels that have a distinctive brand to attract viewers from different segments of their target audience.

The TV network has also a relatively new presence in the internet: informational web sites for each of the TV channels, and a catch-up service for viewing programs and clips after they have been shown on the live TV channels.

Television networks bear a long legacy since mid 1900s. Their business is based on broadcasting programs over the TV networks (aerial or cable) to attract viewers, who will then be presented with advertisements. The business is mostly funded by the advertisers who want to reach customers in the segments that the different TV channels attract.

Now the question is: what would a TV network be like if it were founded today?

This question will raise at least the following observations:

• TV programs will be sent over internet, providing purely on-demand viewing
• TV can contain consumer created content
• Viewing can take place anywhere, at any time
• The competition is no more other TV channels, but will include on-line services like Netflix and YouTube.
• Current linear TV channels don’t have the same purpose any more.
• People don’t use remote controls. Channel brands based on remote control button numbers don’t have any meaning (BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4).
• On-line TV network has only one major brand that will contain all of the content, possibly evolved from the current on-line catch-up service.
• The current audiences and brand recognition are strong assets that can’t be put at risk.
• The essence of a TV network is still to provide attractive video content to segment target audiences, financed by the advertisers but also possibly via premium subscriptions.

In this example, our “what if” -question actually causes the media company to re-think their strategy. Their brand hierarchy will need to be turned upside down. They must review their business model to include subscription services. They need to start the work to transform the existing TV channels and the catch-up service to this new world. This transformation needs to be done carefully, in order to not to alienate the current audiences in short term, but steadily to avoid the emerging the new media companies that have no historical baggage to render them obsolete.