Go to Where the Puck Is Going

“Go to where the puck is going, not where it’s been!”

I first heard this Wayne Gretzky inspired quote from a mentor during China’s heady growth years (2006-2016). I was explaining how market disruptions required reworking our priorities. The feedback was spot on — I was thinking incrementally when I should have been thinking leapfrog. This changed my operating lens and helped shape an amazing decade of growth for my business.

When GDP growth is driven by consumer aspirations, digital & infrastructure leaps, and regulatory unlocks, it rapidly reshapes demand, lowers barriers to entry, and unleashes business model innovation — new competitors, channels, demand centers, and disruptive models emerge.

Cut to India 2025 — a similar transformational vortex is taking shape. Are your 2026 plans incremental to 2025 or based on future-back scenario planning for 2030 and beyond? 2024-25 based plans are planning to ‘where the puck has been.’

Most managers under-call disruption ahead, bogged down by ‘the familiar’ — pride in “this is how we do things,” blind spots from “we tried that before, it won’t work,” and “if it isn’t broken why fix it?” When the macro context is disrupting, business as usual won’t cut it.

A checklist for your business

• How “plugged-in” is your business to 2030 context — macro, consumer needs, channels, competition, geo-clusters? Have you done disruptive 2030 scenario planning?
• Is your 2026 plan growth over 2025 or part of a roadmap to 2030? Beware the ‘hockey-stick’ where all the action is in outer years!
• Does your plan have definitive bets on ‘driving the core’ and ‘adding more’ through product and business model innovation?
• Is there zero-based disruptive shift in resource deployment — trade, channel, marketing, R&D, digital/tech, headcount, supply chain?
• Are you addressing talent & capability gaps from a 2030 ‘future back’ perspective?

Look back at 2021-2025. Did we chase disruption or stay ahead of it? Jan 2030 is as close to today as Jan 2021.

As the Fleetwood Mac song goes: “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow… it will soon be here… a little bit before… yesterday’s gone!”