The customer is always right … and at the centre

“What’s left will be businesses that have reinvented themselves to operate in the digital space with customers interests and needs at the very heart of their operations,” Mr Walduck said.

“They will have prioritised agility over efficiency and entrenched their workforce’s creative capability, empowering their people to collaborate, create and act fast on new ideas.

Since 2012, Mr Walduck has led the digitisation of Australia Post towards customer-centric, seamless physical and digital experiences.
He said that how well a business empowers its workers to create and act on new ideas is already fast becoming one of the future determinants of business success.

“The days of intense creative collaboration, to an idea for a new product or service, to getting it out there and on the market …on the website within 24 hours, are just around the corner,” he said.

“None of the old paradigms are relevant any more. The increased rate of uncertainty means it’s much harder to make predictions – revenue, costing, staff and resources, and even business planning.

“Companies will always have long-term aspirations, but with three-month business plans because that’s about as long as we can expect the detail to be valid: change is that fast.

“How we work will be just as important as what we work on. And agility is already more important than overused concepts like ‘innovation’.”