When trying to transform a company, you are bound to encounter difficult people who lambaste innovative ideas from a position of fear because they don’t understand how to operate in the new world. Majority of the business unit leaders and IT professionals resist change because they’ve been managing in the same way for decades.
They don’t know what becoming agile means. They don’t understand the importance of failure or iteration. You can’t make a plan that goes five years out and expect that to be the reality five years from now. That’s why some highly respected, established institutions have seen their stock prices nose dive in recent years.
To their credit, many in financial services understand this problem even if they fail to absorb its lessons. Instead, they pass the buck and try to climb the corporate ladder while their business teeters closer toward obsolescence.
That’s why business leaders come in with a bright, optimistic five-year plan that follows a hockey-stick line chart, in which profit and productivity increases sharply following a few years of dormancy or temporary loss. Without a hockey-stick design you won’t get the funding, so they angle for promotions or new jobs before reaching the anticipated uptick – which doesn’t arrive more often than not.