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Lafayette, LA—“All strategies ultimately fail.”

These aren’t the words of an eternal pessimist. Instead, they're a reminder that no matter how successful a company is, it can fail if it gets complacent and doesn’t keep up with changing times. Jay Jackson, past CEO of Stuller, discussed change management with attendees at its recent Bridge Conference, where The Centurion Newsletter was a guest.

“If you keep doing the same thing over and over, no matter how successful you are, the world will change around you,” said Jackson. To wit, he held up the example of the U.S. railroad industry, whose executives vowed to “defend it to the death” as air travel became more popular following World War II.

Death is exactly what happened. Instead of looking for ways to improve the rail travel experience, the industry instead undertook a fear and smear campaign to scare the public away from airplanes. But it didn’t work: the allure of getting to their destination in a few hours instead of a few days outweighed the potential fear of a plane crash in the public consciousness.

“If the rail executives had thought of themselves as being in the transportation business, rather than the railroad business, they would have ended up owning the airlines,” said Jackson. As owners of the airlines, they would have been the ones to provide faster, better value to their customers and keep the profit.

Another example Jackson cited was Eastman Kodak, which ironically invented the technology that would later cause its near destruction. In the 1980s, Kodak was one of the top five most valuable companies in the world. Kodak itself actually created the first digital camera in 1976—but it didn’t pursue the category for fear of cannibalizing its own film sales. Instead, competitors raced into the digital space, all but killing film photography anyway--and with it, Kodak’s market share. By 2000, the company was on the verge of collapse and today is a shadow of its former self. 

Digital photography is an excellent example of the evolution of change, emphasized Jackson. As cell phone cameras become near ubiquitous, sales of digital cameras dropped and even they become more of a specialty item for serious photographers.

The inherent value of jewelry is an advantage for the industry, says Jackson. “All the gold and platinum ever mined still exists. That’s the core basis of the product: it’s rare and it lasts.” But even there, the industry today is divided largely into two categories: one of perceived value but relatively low quality, and one of high quality luxury.

In today’s market, whether it’s a diamond ring or a computer, if it’s not meaningfully unique, and with a correspondingly outstanding purchase experience, it had better be cheap, said Jackson.

What is the key to success? “You have to have an innate dissatisfaction with the status quo,” he concluded.

Top image: Whistletix.com