2023: The Year of Living Cautiously

It’s going to be a while before we truly make sense of 2023. A pervasive sense of uncertainty seemed to linger in the atmosphere. New projects got put on hold, once-exuberant tech companies laid people off and we’re still suffering the lingering aftereffects of the pandemic in ways large and small. Incredibly, to me, this year marked the 10th anniversary of the publication of my book, The End of Competitive Advantage. In it, I introduced the concept of Transient Advantage, the idea that competitive advantages that were once believed to be long-lasting are becoming shorter and shorter as barriers to entry come down and competition can come from literally anywhere. The book introduced a new playbook for strategy:

• Going from the assumption that stability is the normal thing to the recognition that change is;
• Building the practices of healthy disengagement when a program or project needs to end;
• Putting the best resources against the best opportunities by deftly moving them around the organization;
• Making innovation a proficiency, not a sideshow;
• Promoting different kinds of leaders who are discovery-driven, create psychological safety, and get information directly from the ‘edges’; and somewhat presciently;
• Dealing with a new kind of workforce — one that operates with a ‘tour of duty’ mindset and which doesn’t expect to spend their entire careers with one organization.