At the Business Transformation Panel: Simon Gillespie, General Manager Corporate Clients, Spark Digital; Brian Ryan, Group General Manager Development, Vector; Michael Boersen, CEO, Yellow; and Strahan Wallis, Managing Director, Porter Novelli (moderator)
The overused phrase ‘fail fast’ is in need of a revamp.
“Fail fast is negative, it is far more encouraging to ‘iterate fast’,” says Brian Ryan, group general manager development, Vector.
Ryan spoke at the ‘Business Transformation Panel’ organised by the Trans-Tasman Business Circle.
Ryan and the other panellists,Simon Gillespie, general manager corporate clients, Spark Digital and Michael Boersen, CEO of Yellow, talked about the steps they have taken in a fast changing business environment.
It is about speed
Brian Ryan, Vector
Ryan says big data plays an important role in helping the company transform itself.
Michael Boersen of Yellow says the company had considered itself the “Google of the print world”, printing the business directories that became the references across New Zealand.
But as people moved to the digital world, he says, we had to be more innovative or “do something different”.
“If you want to reiterate, you can do a lot of that within the business,” he says. “If you want to do something fundamentally different, you need a new fresh approach to what you are doing.”
It is a disruptive world we live in. Therefore, we need to have the ability to change on a regular basis.
Michael Boersen, Yellow
Boersen says while some of the larger organisations with bigger asset bases have to do some longer-term planning, the challenge for a company like Yellow is different.
“You get a smaller player come in and their plans are what [they would] do in the next three months.
“The world changes very quickly, it is a disruptive world we live in. Therefore, we need to have the ability to change on a regular basis, so we know where we are going to be in 18 months to two years.”
“You [must] have the ability to iterate as you go, change direction.”
Yellow started looking at what it could fundamentally do differently using its own strengths.
"We spent a lot of time discussing what are our strengths, what is happening in the world. We need to refine our digital directory properties."
"We have a strong brand and a connection to small businesses,” he states. “We went from advertising focused to consumer focused.
“Consumers demand a lot of the activity. If you do not take that into consideration, you will not survive.
“We are not short of ideas [on] what we are going to do going forward. We do that in the new world, in the innovatiion hub.”
He says Yellow took a team of “creative people” and gave them the license to go and do something different.
“It releases the team from all constraints of the business, it allows you to think outside the square for the type of people you want.
“While there are rules around them, you would give them the license to go and operate because they need to create something different versus keeping the business going."
“It was essential for us to have people who were innovative and willing to take risks and look at the future.”
He says a project based on the work of this team will be launched next month.
The next challenge is finding how to bring the legacy businesses, which do have a strengths, into the 'new world focus', he states.
