I mentioned in my previous post that I am writing a book on strategy implementation and business architecture. It is based on an approach that we have used successfully with several clients over the years. These clients, in industries as diverse as utilities, telecommunications and automotive, saw themselves confronted with the destructive power of market liberalisation or deregulation. We helped these companies to address these threats by pro-actively aligning their business- and IT-architecture with their new strategic reality through the implementation of modular architectures. So, when in 2003 a colleague mentioned the term 'tsunami' to describe the kind of change these companies faced, we felt we had found our metaphor. From there it was only a small step to the book's working title: Taming the Wave, Dealing with Tsunamis in Business. But everything changed on Sunday, December 26th, 2004...
In the past, the term 'tsunami' has been used in business literature as a metaphor for what is called disruptive change. This suggests that it is only the magnitude and nature of the change that determines whether or not we are dealing with a tsunami. In our book, however, we planned to use a narrower definition of tsunamis, namely:
A tsunami is a (set of) change(s) of a discontinuous nature, that is imposed by external forces and over which (very) limited control can be exerted. Left unaddressed, a tsunami is likely to have devastating impact on both the strategy and architecture (organizational structure, processes and information systems) of a company.
Apart from the regulatory tsunamis we had been dealing with at client companies, we recognized two other types, namely technology and business model tsunamis. But that was before that fatal Boxing day in Asia...
As soon as the scale of destruction and the number of casualties became evident we decided to drop the tsunami metaphor, in deferrence to the 150,000+ victims and their families. Though this was no hard decision at all, it did mean that we had to start looking for a new metaphor to use in our book. This Thursday we will have our first brainstorm in order to find one that is not associated with such massive loss of life.
On a slightly lighter note, I would like to call your attention to something that I found somewhat freaky. Last Thursday, January 6, all media in the Netherlands joined forces and organized a National fundraising campaign for Asia. They were able to raise a total of 112 million euro, which is of course fantastic for a small country like the Netherlands. 'So, what's freaky about that?', you may ask. Well, 112 is the national emergency number in the Netherlands, like 911 in the U.S.. Things like this make me wonder whether there is any truth in numerology ;-)
In the past, the term 'tsunami' has been used in business literature as a metaphor for what is called disruptive change. This suggests that it is only the magnitude and nature of the change that determines whether or not we are dealing with a tsunami. In our book, however, we planned to use a narrower definition of tsunamis, namely:
A tsunami is a (set of) change(s) of a discontinuous nature, that is imposed by external forces and over which (very) limited control can be exerted. Left unaddressed, a tsunami is likely to have devastating impact on both the strategy and architecture (organizational structure, processes and information systems) of a company.
Apart from the regulatory tsunamis we had been dealing with at client companies, we recognized two other types, namely technology and business model tsunamis. But that was before that fatal Boxing day in Asia...
As soon as the scale of destruction and the number of casualties became evident we decided to drop the tsunami metaphor, in deferrence to the 150,000+ victims and their families. Though this was no hard decision at all, it did mean that we had to start looking for a new metaphor to use in our book. This Thursday we will have our first brainstorm in order to find one that is not associated with such massive loss of life.
On a slightly lighter note, I would like to call your attention to something that I found somewhat freaky. Last Thursday, January 6, all media in the Netherlands joined forces and organized a National fundraising campaign for Asia. They were able to raise a total of 112 million euro, which is of course fantastic for a small country like the Netherlands. 'So, what's freaky about that?', you may ask. Well, 112 is the national emergency number in the Netherlands, like 911 in the U.S.. Things like this make me wonder whether there is any truth in numerology ;-)
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