"If we want everything to stay as it is, everything will have to change".
In the 1993 cult movie of the same name, Groundhog Day is celebrated on every February 2nd as a day of prognostication, when the good folk of Punxutawney observe the reaction of a groundhog emerging from winter hibernation to predict whether winter will continue for many more weeks or indeed if an early spring is here. Whilst Wall Street and the markets yearn for any kind of proven prognostication, this is not the theme that has made the movie famous. The term Groundhog Day is more ubiquitously associated with business inertia rather than as a portentous day.
In the movie, the principal character played by Bill Murray gets caught in a time trap where he wakes up every subsequent morning to Groundhog Day, back again at the start of Groundhog Day, reliving the same experiences but with the benefit of being able to foresee the future and the option to change his own actions. He resists change initially and with the benefit of foresight he tries to capitalise for selfish short term gain but this strategy is flawed and only accentuates his selfishness. He is not freed from this continuous time loop until he transforms from being a selfish command control person to a better person. What is interesting and absolutely typical of human behaviour is how many iterations of behavioural change he has to go through, even with the benefit of foresight, before he finally crosses the Rubicon and is effectively transformed.
The term Groundhog Day has become commonplace in the vernacular, synonymous with the humdrum of daily life where every day seems to be the same as the last. In the world of business it is describes a more familiar behaviour. It captures the phenomenon of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different outcomes.
Many companies and divisions thereof suffer collective blindness. They become entrenched in their silos, protecting their fiefdoms with their feet firmly implanted in treacle. Businesses that get stuck in this Punxutawney behaviour are doomed. In order to get with the programme, they need to embrace qualitative change as the new paradigm and adopt a mindset of adaptability and agility responding intuitively and almost involuntarily to their customer needs and the ever changing market environment.
An old quote from the 1958 Italian novel “The Leopard” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lamedusa captures this brilliantly "If we want everything to stay as it is, everything will have to change". This is no easy task, as no one wants a change that will impact them negatively; and there is no change that will allow things to stay the same that does not impact all severely.
In blackswan we have assembled a database of 3.5million innovation breakthrough datapoints which have enabled us to build unique predictive methodologies, a science of serendipity so to speak. Our prognosticative systems streamline the transformational journey and associated risks and pain, to deliver effective Transformation for our clients.
As Groundhog Day approaches, spare a thought for the two local drunks who were totally contented and happy until Bill Murray, despairing of his own new found plight, completely shattered their self esteem and affirmed their delusionary existence, as he stared into his bourbon, when he said to them
“You have no idea how suicidal it is being stuck in the same place every day, doing the same old thing, where nothing you say matters”
On Groundhog Day, instead of agonising over a prolonged winter, do something better, something new or something different and actuate rather than prognosticate an early spring.
