The WARTIME CEO

LEADERS MUST ADOPT A ‘WARTIME’ MENTALITY IF THEY WANT TO SURVIVE THE NEXT 24 MONTHS, SAYS CONSUMER STRATEGY EXPERT LYNDALL SPOONER.

The events of 2020 have thrown up disruption the like of which many people have never experienced before, and the biggest question for business leaders is, how do we get through this? Lyndall Spooner, Founder and Director of consultancy Fifth Dimension, counters with her own question: “Are you ready to go to war?”

“Business leaders have to adopt a wartime mindset, forcing CEOs to be insanely protective and obsessive over their business’s success,” she says. “Those who don’t, won’t reach desired targets and simply won’t survive.”

According to Lyndall – whose firm has been included in the ‘GreenBook Research Industry Trends’ Top 25 Strategic Consultancies as one of the world’s most innovative companies – Australia’s long-term economic growth has left many businesses strategically weak.

“Australia has experienced an incredible run of uninterrupted economic growth for nearly 30 years. As a result, many businesses are unprepared to compete for a more discerning consumer in a declining economy,” she tells The CEO Magazine.

“Since March, consumers have undergone swift and lasting change, and so must businesses in order to remain relevant and competitive. How businesses respond will be highly dependent on the quality of their consumer intelligence. The reality is that many companies are making decisions based on poor data.

Lyndall goes on to state that simple consumer metrics that worked prior to the pandemic, when the economy was growing, will not work moving forward. The benefit of a growth economy is that it can hide and forgive poor management and useless consumer metrics.