Monday, May 21, 2018

Step Four: Discussing the Strategic Implications, Part 3

Four weeks ago, in Step Four: Discussing the Strategic Implications, Part 2, I continued a description of a Scenario Planning exercise my Board chair and I decided to conduct at our most recently completed Board meeting. I ended the previous post with a comment that we needed to resolve some unexpected problems with the structure of the exercise as we prepared to complete it at our upcoming meeting in June 2018.

One problem was the number of indicators we had created to describe our four scenarios, and the methodology that we would use to assess them and determine which of the scenarios, if any, were coming true for our industry. As my Board chair and I have worked to prepare the agenda for our upcoming meeting we've made a couple of decisions that, even if they don't solve that problem, will at least kick it further down the road.

Our first decision was to prioritize the indicators. This seemed like an obvious choice once we dug into the content of the indicators and examined them from the perspective that we would be using them to help us determine which future scenario was coming true. The way they are written, it seems clear that some will have more predictive power today and others won't achieve predictive power until much later.

Here's an example, using the indicators we have developed to predict a future in which our industry benefits from our technology integrating successfully with Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. These are the indicators, in the order they were originally created:

1. IoT Products: The growth of fluid power products with IoT connectivity has kept up with or outpaced that of competing technologies.
2. New Applications: As a result of its integration with IoT technologies, fluid power has entered new applications and markets.
3. OEM Demand: OEMs have driven increased demand for fluid power products with embedded IoT technologies.
4. Workforce: Fluid power companies have increased their investment in the IoT skill sets of their workforce.
5. IoT R&D: Fluid power companies have increased their R&D budgets related to IoT technologies.
6. Standards: There are international standards that support the use of IoT technologies in fluid power products.
7. IoT Platforms: Major fluid power players have developed full IoT platforms and are offering subscription sales to those platforms.
8. NFPA Membership: IoT technology providers are engaged as members of NFPA.
9. IoT Retrofit Kits: IoT retrofit kits are available and in use by the fluid power industry.
10. Non-IoT Equipment: As a result of its integration with IoT technologies, non-IoT enabled equipment that is reliant on fluid power has been retired.

Reading carefully through that list seems to make it clear that indicators like #3, #4 and #5 have to come true before any of the other ones will. If OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers, i.e., customers, from the point of view of our members) aren't increasing their demand for fluid power products with embedded IoT technologies, then why would fluid power companies increase either their workforce investments or R&D budgets in favor of those developments? And if fluid power companies don't make those investments, how could indicators like #1 or #7 come true? They're going to launch IoT-enabled products and platforms without investing in the necessary research or workforce talent?

Using logical inferences like this, we were able to sort our original list of IoT indicators into the following three broad categories:

EARLY
3. OEM Demand: OEMs have driven increased demand for fluid power products with embedded IoT technologies.
5. IoT R&D: Fluid power companies have increased their R&D budgets related to IoT technologies.
4. Workforce: Fluid power companies have increased their investment in the IoT skill sets of their workforce.

MIDDLE
8. NFPA Membership: IoT technology providers are engaged as members of NFPA.
6. Standards: There are international standards that support the use of IoT technologies in fluid power products.
9. IoT Retrofit Kits: IoT retrofit kits are available and in use by the fluid power industry.

LATE
7. IoT Platforms: Major fluid power players have developed full IoT platforms and are offering subscription sales to those platforms.
1. IoT Products: The growth of fluid power products with IoT connectivity has kept up with or outpaced that of competing technologies.
2. New Applications: As a result of its integration with IoT technologies, fluid power has entered new applications and markets.
10. Non-IoT Equipment: As a result of its integration with IoT technologies, non-IoT enabled equipment that is reliant on fluid power has been retired.

Remember that the context of this exercise has us looking five years into the future. As such, we should be able to say that indicators labelled above as “EARLY” will have more predictive power in the early stages of the next five years, those labelled “MIDDLE” will have more predictive power in the middle stages, and those labelled “LATE” will have more predictive power in the late stages.

And this should give us better guidance for what signs to look for in the marketplace to help us understand which possible scenario is coming true. Rather than looking at all ten of these issues, today, the most important thing to determine is if our EARLY indicators are true.

That's one decision we made to help us focus our discussion at our upcoming Board meeting. I'll reveal and describe the second in a future post.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/541346817687906626/


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