The word “real time” brings a connotation of instantly, NOW. The web is a “real time” environment.
Anything published 60 seconds ago is old. Any new conversation
quickly become old. Real time is at the click of a mouse and it does
not wait for anyone nor does it wait for your business models to catch
up.
The problem with business is most leaders are stuck in past “mindsets and models“. Mindsets and models are changing moment by moment and the changes are fueled by the conversations, NOW.
How Do You Plan for “Real Time Business”?
Tim Leberecht writes: It
used to be that there’s nothing more boring that yesterday’s newspaper.
Now there’s nothing more boring than today’s. When you relaunch your
business model, product, brand identity, web site – it’s already too
late. Real-time beats planning to the punch.
Real-time businesses therefore must get rid of long-term
strategy plans, product road maps, goals and objectives, and all the
other superfluous documents that distract organizations from focusing
on their true mission – the here and now.
Real-time business is inherently social – there is no real-time
without social. The more businesses open up their organizations and
invite external voices into their inner sanctum, the more real-time
they will become. Getting social will help companies gather customer
intelligence in real-time and use it to move faster. In the future,
real-time businesses may deliver before their customers even articulate
their needs. And they will provide immediate value without immediate
return, in other words they will over-deliver – free for now but with a
material or immaterial return later.
“The process is the product,” as Trendwatching writes in its
latest report, in which it also claims that the real-time the web is
breeding a new quest for longevity or “Foreverism”: “the new popularity
of technology that allows consumers to find, follow, interact and
collaborate forever with anyone & anything.” It’s not as
paradoxical as it may sound. Living real-time means living in the
ongoing – forever. If everything happens in real-time, nothing is ever
final and always in permanent beta.
Conversely, if everything lasts forever on the Google web (your
emails, networks, conversations) and your digital presence is only as
good as your latest search results and Twitter updates, you better
utter some digital impressions NOW.
How Fast Can You Get To Now?
My brother used to always tell me “The past is over and you have to learn to live in the now. Just remember the now you were just in is now over!“
The irony of doing business NOW is NOW is for a
moment. The rate of change is relative to the rate of interest. The
rate of interest changes with the conversations. Now do you understand why Twitter, at 140 characters, creates rapid changes in conversational interest? That is why it’s called conversational currency, the rate of interest is in a constant state of “change” NOW.
How do you plan for NOW? It’s to late! Get it?
What say you?