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The Pace of Change is Now a Top Emerging Risk

Addison Group

With the rapidly changing business landscape, companies are growing concerned over their abilities to keep up, due in part to their own weak digitalization strategies.  In a Q2 survey taken of 133 senior executives across different industries, we can see that the pace of change is a top emerging risk. 

Accelerating privacy regulation was the previous quarter’s top emerging risk and has now become an established risk after ranking in the 4 previous reports, as well.

Two operational risks are closely linked with the concerns around the pace of change:

  1. Weak digitalization. Executives communicated their concerns regarding poor digital budgets and a high failure rate for digitalization projects as well as the ability to scale projects and potential project delays.
  2. Digitalization misconceptions. Two out of 3 digital transformation projects fail to achieve their objectives. Increasing the focus on digital projects can help to reveal the companies weaknesses, and by learning with an incremental approach, the organization can learn at scale, with limited risk.

These two risks may be driving the concern about the pace of change and other related threats from business model disruption. 

Organizations are worried about the pace of change and the state of being exposed to disruption. Another driving concern around the pace of change is the fear of being disrupted by more agile competitors and having a lack of clear paths to follow to encourage growth. 

Leaders should insert themselves as early as they can into the strategic planning process and collaboratively work together with their finance teams to encourage a change in steps and other positive risk-taking.

Risks can materialize through:

  • An increase in the numbers of new innovative competitors 
  • A failure of the brand proposition not meeting the client’s needs or demands
  • Executives not responding to the macro trends
  • The needs of consumers constantly changing

Overview

Make sure you are in control of your company’s pace of change rather than letting it control you. By automating processes and hiring the right employees, your company can fuel it’s own growth at a manageable speed for everyone.

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