Technology Executives CEO Group

Thursday, April 6, 2023

Discussion Topic:

Internal & External Business Sense are Both Important:
Are You Developing Both?

For most of us, both Internal and External business environments are continuing to be volatile and uncertain. The EXTERNAL national and international economies are very unsettled. Examples include: banking & regulatory issues (especially R&D Tax Amortization Regulations), layoffs, hiring and employee turnover problems. And competitors everywhere are developing new workflow technologies being shaped by Chat GPT, especially GPT-4. Plus, low and no-code, OpenAI Codex “Automatic coding.” These rapid INTERNAL transformations, shaped by external competition, generally are very disruptive.

Thus, previously low internal skills and capabilities can, with these new technologies, be quickly transformed from organizational WEAKNESSES into organizational STRENGTHS. Enabling competitive THREATS to be turned into OPPORTUNITIES.

How can we rapidly begin to develop strengths to make sense of this new environment? To understand and agilely respond to emerging new competitive THREATS, and to take advantage of these changes and shape new profit OPPORTUNITIES. One strength we can rapidly develop is personal and organizational Dual Awareness of what’s emerging in terms of the competitive NEW GAME and what’s needed to take best advantage of new low cost and cost-lowering technological approaches.

Adaptive Business Leaders are using these new technologies to redesign their products, services, and internal processes, while tech giants like Google are racing to catch up with the OpenAI-Microsoft partnership. It’s already clear that companies that can’t find ways to integrate ChatGPT and similar AI tools into their business workflows quickly will face creative destruction. Especially from adaptive companies incorporating these new tools into their new business models.

(As we touched on last month…) To make the most of these new opportunities, you’ll need people who are focused on designing and demonstrating new competitive advantages for your business – to TRANSFORM your organization and your management team as a result of LEARNING the New Game, rather than PROTECTING the Old Game, so your company can take advantage of the attendant benefits. This month we’ll further develop these concepts.

If you’ve previously encountered blockages in your organization when it came to adapting new technologies, you’re not alone. It can be very challenging to become adaptive business leaders, with team members focused on the “New Game” versus the “Old Game.” But not if your team members understand it’s just a matter of shifting their thinking from their FAMILIAR ZONE approach to an ADAPTIVE ZONE approach to take advantage of these new technologies for their workflows. The diagram below illustrates how this mind-shift can be best understood and enabled.

In the November 2022 book Deliberate Calm: How to Learn and Lead in a Volatile World (11/22), the authors explore the above concept of “Dual Awareness.” This refers to an ability to be aware of both our internal and external environments and how they interact with each other. By achieving this integrated awareness, we can way more easily enter a state where we can act with intention and perform at our best, regardless of external circumstances. A key to doing this is to detach from the thoughts and feelings of our Protective Mindsets, and simply shift to begin rapidly learning about the new game environment we are now in. This is about observing ourselves having to experience new ways of thinking and noticing our emotions without being swept away by them. By doing so, we gain the ability to choose our responses, rather than automatically reacting out of habit.

This ability is especially critical in times of uncertainty, as company resilience is tested in what many executives consider the most challenging operating environment they’ve ever faced. Moving key people, including yourself, from FAMILIAR ZONEs to ADAPTIVE ZONEs is just one of the key concepts explored in Deliberate Calm.

After our brief presentation (you can delve into more detail in our handout) our member discussion will focus on the following questions:

What was most useful, and least useful, about our presentation?

If, why, and possibly how, might you implement the key aspects of the new Dual Awareness Framework in your organizations?

As always, we’ll look to hear and discuss, “What’s Keeping You Up Nights?” and we’ll also be serving as Strategic Advisory Board Members to our Featured Member: Marshall Toplansky. Marshall is Clinical Assistant Professor of Management Science at Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics. He is also research fellow at two of the University’s research institutes: The Hoag Center for Real Estate and the Center for Demographics and Policy, where he recently completed landmark research into the economic future of Orange County. Marshall is a member the Advisory Board of the Cicero Group, a 250 person data-driven strategy-focused research firm. His goal is to help students and executives learn how to run companies using data and analytics, and to conduct core research on how companies can apply new approaches, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data-driven decision making. Over the past 30+ years, he has focused on helping companies use information to make better, faster decisions.

UPCOMING MEETING DATES

2023: JAN 5    FEB 2    MAR 2    APR 6    MAY 4   JUN 1    JUL 6    AUG 3    SEP 7    OCT 5    NOV 2    DEC 7

This Table meets on the 1st Thursday of each month.
Meetings are held via Zoom with an In-Person session held quarterly.

Past Discussion Topics