Luck and Agility

Bear with me, here’s a little chronology: • 1953: Rupert Murdoch takes control of the Adelaide, Australia newspaper company News Limited. • 1953-1964: Murdoch expands his holdings by buying a slew of suburban and provincial newspapers throughout Australia, culminating with the launch of The Australian (a USA Today type of national paper) in 1964. • 1968-1969: Buys The Sun and The Daily Telegraph in Great Britian.• 1973, 1976: Buys his first two U.S. papers, the San Antonia Express-News and the New York Post. (He had to sell the Post in 1988 because of cross-media ownership laws, but bought it back in 1993).• 1981: Buys the London Times and The Sunday Times. • 1985: Buys 20th Century Fox with its slew of regional TV stations which he eventually builds into the Fox network.• 1987, 1989: Buys book publishers Harper & Row, then Collins, then merges the two to HarperCollins• 1989: Forms BSkyB satellite TV. • 1993: Buys Star TV in Asia.• 1996: Launches Fox News Channel in the U.S.• 2005: Buys MySpace.• 2007: Buys The Wall St. Journal.This is an abbreviated chronology, believe it or not. And, believe it or not, unlike most serial acquirers, Murdoch has consistently created shareholder value rather than destroyed it. So the burning question is this: How does he do it? Through genius? Through brilliant strategic planning? Through some sort of cosmic intervention? Maybe, but Murdoch himself recently attributed his success to two factors: Luck and agility. There’s something for us to learn here. First of all, the reality is that luck and serendipity do play a tangible role in business success. In my experience, I’ve found that arrogant self-absorbed leaders deny the impact of luck, attributing their success almost entirely to their own brilliance, fabulous leadership and uber-prescience. Leaders who combine confidence with humility admit that the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time always deserves some credit. Jim Collins demonstrated the importance of leadership humility in Good to Great. I agree. You're better off placing your bet with the humble leader than with the blowhard. The agility factor is even more important. In my 20 years of researching this topic, I’ve found that the best organizations are not necessarily the best at planning, but the best at quickly taking advantage of the fleeting opportunities that periodically appear in the horizon of the marketplace. Troubled organizations focus their resources on getting good at analyzing and planning. Successful organizations focus their resources on getting agile and fast. Good strategic planning is important, to be sure. You need to have a clear sense of your direction and priorities. But as the great general von Clausewitz noted: “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” The competitive terrain shifts and convulses regularly. That’s why, consistent with Murdoch’s view, the best companies focus on staying light and nimble. I call it “strategy on the run.” As I wrote in Break From the Pack: “The winners…are companies whose people are always scanning the environment and horizon for opportunities and agilely capitalizing on them, then quickly generating action plans, racing to execute them, and ultimately redefining themselves in line with changing market realities.” I’m certain that thorough due diligence, vetting and oversight preceded every one of Murdoch’s acquisitions, and I’m also certain that they were conducted with a sense of healthy urgency and speed. For the leader, the lesson from Murdoch’s career is not “let’s do a binge of acquisitions”. The lesson is “let’s humbly respect the power of luck, and let’s concentrate on getting agile so that we can take rapid-response advantage of any opportunity—acquisition, market niche, technology, partnership, potential hire, or anything else that can help us create genuine value.”
Posted by Oren Harari at 12:26