The Resilient Entrepreneur, Edition #92
Hi there
I hope you had a great week!
Here are the topics in today's edition:
- Martec’s Law: How to Keep Up With Technological Change
- How to Reduce Complexity to Maximize Effects
Please reach out with comments, questions, or suggestions for articles!
Talk soon,
Tom
LEADERSHIP FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
Martec’s Law: How to Keep Up With Technological Change
Digital transformation is a marathon, not a sprint. Martec’s Law explains the reasons for this, and what you can do to stay relevant.
Have you come across Martec’s Law? It describes that technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically.
Look at the image above, and you will see the problem immediately.
What does this mean for an organization? Eventually, you will have to reset your operating model to keep up with technological change. That’s not just the case for companies, but also for public organizations, private individuals, and society.
Are you thinking of AI now? Good. The spread of AI since the release of ChatGPT in 2022 has been so fast, yet not all organizations and people have understood what profound implications AI will have on everything.
Is AI the only example? Behold, no. Let’s look at my favorite topic: Digital transformation. Digital transformation can be quick for individuals, but glacial for public organizations — the adoption of the cloud and the iPad are excellent examples to illustrate this.
What Implications Does Martec’s Law Have?
Irrespective of the type of organization, the gap created by Martec’s Law leads to operational inefficiencies. Organizations fail to integrate new tools effectively, leading to fragmented systems and slow adaptation to new technology.
As the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company bringing digital documentation to the next level, I could cite examples that would fill an entire book. In the context of this article, let’s stay high-level: The stepping stones in digitizing documents are PDFs and folders. Yes, you read right: People still want to stuff PDF files into folders on a SharePoint site, and call this thing digital documentation.
Even if digital documentation is only a small part of an organization, it is very important in certain industries — think of all industries that are regulated, such as aviation, pharma, or public entities. If you are active in one of those industries and still work with PDFs in folders, you will lose your competitive edge sooner or later.
Irony has it that regulated industries lose their competitiveness more slowly than non-regulated industries, just because they are regulated. Maybe that’s true, but maybe it’s also true that regulated industries have tremendous potential to leverage technology to become more efficient — despite being regulated.
What Can You Do?
As always, there is no silver bullet that can miraculously bring together those two curves in the Martec’s diagram.
Start with an open mindset and a culture of learning. Is your team curious? Do they research new technologies only when you tell them to do it, or out of intrinsic motivation? A culture of curiosity is needed to succeed in an ever-changing world. If you hold your team back by rigid workplace rules, don’t be surprised if they don’t go beyond the call of duty. And not going beyond the call of duty is the first step in losing the Martec’s Law battle.
On a management level, you will need to adopt agile methodologies to become more flexible and responsive to change. Agility is a buzzword that is used too often, but its omnipresence is justified in a Martec’s Law world. You can always adapt the agile philosophy to the needs of your specific organization.
And last but not least, on a strategic level, think carefully if you really need to adopt every new technology. You won’t be able to keep up with all the technologies there are, so you learn to say no.
INSPIRATION FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
How to Reduce Complexity to Maximize Effects
Do you want to reduce complexity? Here is a real-life example from an IT systems landscape discussion on why less is more.
Recently, I was accidentally involved in a discussion on the IT systems landscape of a very large organization. People were confusing each other on the systems landscape in the discussion, and I wasn’t sure if the systems landscape actually existed or not.
How come?
All the people involved in the discussion were experts in their domains, and they were all excited and engaged about the topic.
Again, how come? Why did they confuse each other for two hours?
Complexity kills effects.
Let’s drill down a little to understand this phenomenon, which is, by the way, not just an issue in IT.
Terminology Matters
Ask anyone who has worked with me, and they will roll their eyes that I am super strict (or rather stubborn) on terminology.
But terminology matters. If you don’t use a common terminology, the discussion won’t go anywhere.
Let’s return to the example of the IT systems landscape. People were confusing each other on the terms service, system, and system of systems. At the end, somebody said that a service could also be a system, and a system could also be a service.
See the point? To reduce complexity, you have to define the core terms first. And once they’re properly defined, somebody has to enforce that the correct terms are used (that would be me). Otherwise, the discussion will go round in circles, yielding no effect at all.
Less is More, Episode 1
As I was not directly involved in the IT systems landscape discussion, I started drawing up my private IT systems landscape during the debate. For every IT system I use as a private person, I drew a little box. And then I connected the boxes with arrows to see how these systems interface. If I wasn’t sure where the data is stored for a system, I asked ChatGPT and I got an immediate answer.
Within half an hour, two things became apparent:
- The majority of the systems I use privately store their data in the Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services — even iCloud leverages those cloud services.
- I came across a handful of systems that I don’t really use, even though I have a login. I decided to demigrate them to reduce complexity.
Less is more.
Fewer discussions, more doing. Fewer systems, fewer dependencies, more clarity. It’s that simple. But you have to have the courage to start doing rather than just talking about it, and to remove everything non-essential.
If you think this only applies to IT systems landscape discussions, think twice. It’s the same for lengthy and overly complex PowerPoint slide decks and emails. Remove more slides and text than you add, and you will be fine.
Less is More, Episode 2
Straight after the mentioned IT systems landscape discussion, I met an old friend. We worked together at Yonder, the B2B SaaS company I co-founded, and he left some time ago to take up a corporate IT role in a large organization.
Still dismayed from the IT systems landscape discussion, I told him what I had just gone through. Without hesitating, my friend said that if half the people in his organization were removed, everything would still work just as fine as today. Don’t get me wrong, I do not propagate removing people at any cost — your team is your greatest asset.
Nevertheless, what about if we used the same team to generate twice the impact?
About Me
Growing a company in uncertain times is like running a marathon — it demands grit, strategy, and resilience.
As a tech entrepreneur, active reserve officer, and father of three, I share practical insights and write about entrepreneurship, leadership, and crisis management — no AI bullshit, no promos, just my thoughts in plain text.
When I’m not solving problems, I recharge and find inspiration in the breathtaking mountains around Zermatt.
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