Business is a Game of Transformation

The following is an excerpt from the book I'm working on, which comes out in 2027.

Let’s examine something together.

What does it mean to be in business, really? You might say it’s about profits, competition, or creating value. But those are outcomes. I’m curious about what’s underneath. The essence. What it means to be in business.

10,000 years ago, the woolly mammoth was well suited to its environment. Its thick, matted fur was the perfect insulator against the frigid environment of the last Ice Age. When the Earth warmed, that asset turned into a handicap. The climate changed faster than the woolly mammoth could adapt. Now the woolly mammoth is extinct.

In the 1900s, coyotes came under a similar kind of pressure. Seen as a threat to their livestock, farmers did everything they could to kill them off. Poison, trapping, hunting. They succeeded, at first. But coyotes came up with their own response. They found a way to start reproducing faster than the farmers could kill them off. Now coyotes are thriving.

Both faced a change in their environment that forced them to transform.

One succeeded. The other did not.

Is business any different?

We can all think of companies that were successful for a while. Then, one day, something changed. Competition crept in. Customers became interested in something else. A new technology shook things up. It tried to transform itself, but it was too little, too late. The blue-chip became a has-been.

Another kind of outcome might come to mind.

There’s the company that didn’t just survive a challenging season; it came out ahead. The shift in tides wasn’t a threat to be mitigated, but a window of opportunity to re-imagine what was possible. To re-think what it could become. It acted while it still had room to maneuver. Now its best days lie ahead.

New ventures are no different.

A startup is not successful the day it is formed. It must transform itself from a puddle of people, money, and ideas into something concrete. Something that can survive (and win) in the environment where it chooses to play. Until that transformation happens, the startup’s very survival is at stake.

There’s a second kind of transformation we should talk about, though.

Business is never a game you play alone.

Your success depends on what happens within the minds of your customers, prospects, partners, and investors. What the market knows and believes about you. When your business transforms itself from one thing to another, or when it first comes to life, the market doesn’t know. It may not understand. It may not even care. You must transform what the market thinks.

The essence of business is transformation.

When we win at transformation, we can win at business.