7 steps to future-proofing your business

1. Actually, don’t change a thing in your existing business. Cultural transformation endeavours have the power to damage your 1.0 business model, yet fail to deliver the ‘universal soldiers’ you need. The weight of the downsides more than offset the benefits of the upside.
2. Identify a set of hypotheses around new opportunities your organisation could pursue, eg in adjacent markets.
3. Create a data-driven start-up for each of these experiments, each with their own P&L and CEO.
4. Let them harness the infrastructure of your 1.0 business.
5. Let your 1.0 staff migrate to the start-ups, if they show sufficient passion.
6. Manage your ‘experiments portfolio’ as if you were a gardener. Regularly pulling out the dying plants, whilst continuing to add new ones, within the constraints of your resources.
7. Give the ‘healthiest flowers’ the greatest attention.

Over time, your best people will likely migrate to your start-up businesses. All being well, a subset of your new businesses will grow as fast, if not faster, than your 1.0 business is declining.

There is no guarantee this will work. But it sure beats hanging around wondering whether today is the day you are to be disrupted.