Agile Business: Nothing Finishes, Where it Starts

Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously – Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden – (Harvard Business Review)

I have become fond of saying “nothing finishes where it starts.” While that may seems a bit self-evident, think about it; how often have you seen business or leaders set out on a path to developing something and then the unexpected or unanticipated comes along. How often have you seen examples of a “leader” not well equipped to handle or lead change gets rooted to the original idea, either doesn’t or refuses to adapt based on the challenge and dooms a business or idea to failure?

It happens far too often that these leaders fall in love with an idea and can’t take the steps necessary to see it evolve. “Nothing finishes where it starts” change is inevitable and often necessary. Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden have offered a great overview of how leaders can be well prepared to not only navigate changes, but expect it and react in their latest book, Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously.

Gothelf and Seiden illustrate how nimble businesses and leaders are like the Tom Brady of their team; rather than reading and reacting to the defensive scheme they see, they read and react to their customers. But rather than being reactionary, great leaders can anticipate what their customer’s needs might be and how they and their businesses can develop new products and services to meet those needs.

Gothelf and Seiden deliver real world examples of how businesses/leaders have set in place the tools and resources to become more intuitive to customer needs and respond quickly to deliver those new services and products and continually grow the business. Will businesses who set up this kind of model always hit home runs or to stick with the football analogy hit the long bomb? The answer is easy; “nothing finishes where it starts.”