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Leaders Who Do Not Act: Heroes or Villains?

May 14, 2012 in Business Genome, Business Strategy with 0 Comments

How to figure the true cost of not taking action

Should people who do not act be rewarded or criticized? What is the true cost of not acting? Are you Snidely Whiplash or The Avengers?

Last week, Juan Enriquez presented a compelling talk on the cost of not acting. He told the story of John Nestor, former employee with the FDA, who had an “unassailable record (according to some people’s standards) for preventing potential harm” because he in fact never approved a single drug. Quoting Sam Kazman, who reported on John Nestor’s record at the time of Nestor’s death, some viewed Nestor as a hero–for protecting the public from the potential harm of approving a drug that could turn out to be harmful. On the other hand, Kazman wondered if Nestor’s conservatism taken to the extreme could be viewed as villainous—for preventing entire populations with particular diseases from benefitting from potential cures that could have come from a drug that worked.

Applying this same logic to the world of commerce, the question arises, “Are people who do NOT act more admirable than those who act?” Are turtles that retreat from risk and adventure more admirable than giraffes that Continue Reading…

The Giddyup and the Whoa of Innovation

May 7, 2012 in Business Genome, Competitive Advantage with 2 Comments

Who will be the X-Y-Z guys for your company’s next innovation?

It’s dangerous out there in the world of business. It used to be dangerous because business was run by the leaders who favored incremental growth over innovation. Risk-averse leaders were the ideal during times when corporate growth was simply a matter of executing well and acting responsibly.

But for many companies in today’s fast-paced market, where incremental growth won’t make the grade anymore, innovation is now in vogue. The positive side of innovation is that it can lead to a way out of stagnation—companies can uncover new opportunities for products and services that hit the mark with customers and keep brands at the top of the market. The problem is that to get innovation to stick, companies need two different types of people—the visionaries and the executors—and it’s critical to put everyone to work on the part of the process where it makes the most sense.

House painters who start the job aren’t the same personality type as the ones who can paint the baseboards.

My dad had a theory about house painters. He said that the same guy who was great at painting the walls might not be so hot at finishing the baseboards. He called the first guy the “A-W” guy and the other guy the “X-Y-Z” guy. It turns out to be the same with innovation. The people who generate all of the Continue Reading…

Optimism for Business at the Speed of a “Flip”

April 30, 2012 in Business Genome, Competitive Advantage with 0 Comments

Get your business ready to accelerate your learning curves.

Business can learn how to innovate from TED-Ed, a new platform designed for sharing lessons and customizing learning.

The world of business is overdue for an optimism revolution. We all need strategic alternatives that free us from the doom and gloom of economic and competitive pressures. We would like to transition our companies—large and small—into an era of abundance.

If you’ve read Peter Diamandis’ book, Abundance, you may agree that the secret to business prosperity is innovation—figuring new ways to face the new world of competition. But, the question is this—How can we all get smarter, faster?

Brace yourself—the answer is a bit twisted. Suspend your disbelief and consider these ideas:

–In some cases, we can achieve competitive advantage by sharing information more aggressively – giving and receiving.

–In other cases, we can join forces with others—either through informal collaboration or joint venture–and piece together opportunities that leapfrog us forward. For example, we can add ecommerce to our brick and mortar retail brands (like Allstate and Esurance) or add new brick and mortar configurations to our existing brands (like State Farm’s Next Door).

But, whatever our strategy for growth, we know that we have to open ourselves up to new ideas. We need to jump outside of our silos, immerse ourselves in unfamiliar territory, understand new ways of seeing Continue Reading…

The 3 Leadership Traits that Matter Most

April 23, 2012 in Business Genome, Business Strategy with 0 Comments

Leadership at the Speed of Change

Stop measuring what doesn’t matter. Rip up your leadership scorecards. Forget hierarchy. Get ready to whip yourself into shape in an entirely new way. Stop being the kind of leader you were trained to be. Right now.

Today’s new business realities call for a radical shift in our approach to leadership. The dynamics of competition have changed from taking aim at a competitive “enemy” in our current line of sight to a competitive dynamic that resembles a game of Whack-A-Mole, where we can’t predict who will emerge from left field to win the hearts of our customers. Sometimes as quickly as overnight.

Today’s rapid pace of change + shift in customer preferences = new leadership priorities. Welcome to Leadership At The Speed of Change.

So, rip up your current report cards and replace them with 3 leadership traits that are perfectly tuned to the biggest challenges: 1. Staying ahead of innovations from unseen competitors, 2. Keeping in touch with evolving customer priorities, and 3. Building a culture that engages everyone in keeping our companies up to speed.

Every day, we’re Continue Reading…

Are Customers Ready for a 4th Place?

April 16, 2012 in Business Genome, Small Business Growth with 2 Comments

Craving a new (live) place to hang with birds of our same feather.

What’s missing from our lives now is live contact, with a whole new purpose and a whole new style. What do you see as new, emerging places where our customers want to gather?

I’ve noticed a new phenomenon lately. We seem to be looking for a new type of place where birds of our feather will stick together, intermingle, and just hang out. Beyond a bar. Beyond a shopping mall. Beyond a coffee shop.

Whether we’re introverts, extraverts, extreme social animals or simply laid back cave dwellers, there comes a time when we crave the company of others. In person. We want a place where we can escape from work, find camaraderie, and experience the thrill of live chat that really is live. We want to exchange our work rhythm, task orientation, Pinterest-like click-and-share mojo, for

We’re ready to move beyond the “third place” that Cheers and Starbucks made famous years ago. We are looking for a 4th place.

in-the-flesh conversation. Feel the connection we felt in the college dorm, but with an updated atmosphere. We crave something beyond what we get from our families, churches, pick up Continue Reading…

Business Clutch Plays

April 9, 2012 in Business Genome, Business Strategy with 0 Comments

How to avoid choking under pressure

It was bound to happen. A glitch that would turn a public presentation into a pressure cooker. I was about to give a very important live presentation, televised for rebroadcast. Despite numerous rehearsals and tests of the technology, there was always a chance that things could go south.

And, they did.

What does it take to rise to the occasion and perform gracefully under fire?

At the critical moment we’d rehearsed many times–when the tech guy hit the cue for the teleprompter to bring up my presentation–there were…crickets. None of the words appeared on the screen and I was left naked–without cues, without words. And I had a split-second choice to make. Would I rise to the pressure of the moment and carry on with confidence or would I choke?

I’ve watched lots of clutch moments over the years–people who were under the gun to make board presentations, handle safety emergencies, or confront political controversies. What I’ve observed is that leaders with great game seem to have common traits, some borrowed from the lessons of sports psychology, with an added dose of something I’ll call “Faulty Scoreboard Avoidance”. Here’s what business leaders can learn Continue Reading…

Tapping the Power of Combination

April 2, 2012 in Business Genome, Business Strategy, Innovation with 2 Comments

Cross-practices are the secret to kicking business up a notch

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was the wheel. Centuries later, came the suitcase. The suitcase and the wheel existed in close proximity for years, until one day, someone stopped thinking about suitcases + porters = convenience and started thinking suitcase + wheel = convenience. And that aha moment came: the wheeled suitcase.

It’s the same in every aspect of our business. We’re in close proximity to so many powerful ideas, but our mindsets prevent us from tapping into the power of combination. Too often we stare at the suitcase and the porter, day after day, thinking, “I wonder if we could get the porter to run faster toward the trains?”

We’ve all sat through sessions designed to explore new ways to increase sales, build customer loyalty or even come up with the next iPhone equivalent for our own businesses. Conventional wisdom tells us to put up a picture of our current “suitcase” on the wall and compare it to other “suitcases” and incrementally build a better suitcase.

Simply making a different-shaped suitcase would not have created a better experience for the traveler. But, adding wheels, well, that’s another story.

We call that approach Continue Reading…

How To See The Future, Today

March 26, 2012 in Business Genome, Competitive Advantage with 0 Comments

Cross-industry CoLabs eat SWOT analysis for lunch

A rabbi, a priest and a cop walk into a bar…well, that’s not exactly how it begins—more like 3 business leadership teams walk into a conference room: one that heads up a mid-sized aluminum company, another that runs a niche software company, and a third that’s responsible for growing a very unique carpet manufacturing operation. They have never worked together before, but they share a common interest—they’ve gone through the traditional SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, they’ve put their best minds on their strategic competitive analysis, they’ve integrated forecast models into their planning. And, still, they wonder, “Is there more we could do to get ahead of tomorrow’s opportunities?”

Granted, it’s an unconventional approach to gather together leaders from completely different industries. But, in the past 3-5 years, the business environment has drastically changed, creating chaos in all of our predictive models. Who was to know that iPhones would yield more pictures than Kodak cameras? Who would have predicted that startups in online insurance would grab significant market share from the traditional companies, or that Starbucks would sell beer? More than ever before, we live in a cross-industry world, and more than ever, we need new tools to plot our next opportunities and stay ahead of our customers’ desires. We can no longer afford the luxury of Continue Reading…

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