Message from the Dean
January in Mobile. Winter in south Alabama is different than most of the U.S. Here winter is a tug-of-war between the loved and worshipped purveyors of cool mornings/ warm afternoons and the demons of the north (also known as the dreaded Polar Vortex.) For the most part, the demons have finished a distant second this year but tonight we expect our second winter night below freezing. The number of students that somehow don’t get the message about the cold and continue to dress in shorts always surprises me. I like to believe that our generation was smarter than that but, in reality, we were most likely the ones freezing when the weather changed.
Then again, the failure to anticipate change is not unique to college students. Leading companies like Blockbuster, Blackberry, Kodak, and Radio Shack also failed to anticipate and react to change. Even the American institution Sears looks to go the way of the dinosaur soon.
The disruptive technologies that brought us Netflix, iPhones & Android smart phones, Tesla, and Keurig are not going away. If anything, technology advances are accelerating (take a few minutes to read about CRISPR, IoT, AI, and 3D printing). These and other newly discovered or soon to be technologies will change our lives in ways that cannot be imagined.
So how to be ready? Three words of wisdom from the Internet—these have to be true since they are online, right? The first is the hardest to make happen—forget forever the words “we’ve never done it that way before”. Those six words will doom any enterprise to failure. A second is also not easy—tear down the silos. The employees of successful businesses work across disciplines and share common goals. After eliminating “we’ve never done it that way before” work on “it’s not my problem”. All problems and issues belong to all employees. The third sounds more simple—know your customer(s). It’s really a little more challenging; before a firm can know its customers the firm must first identify who they are. Many firms have multiple independent customers. Once identified, the process can start to determine customer needs and desired outcomes. Achieving all or even one of these is a great start to surviving the changes that await.
Best wishes in the coming year as you await the changes that are to come.