Nov 14, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
The interesting and fun bits of our world are driven by the vision, imagination, and execution capabilities of people. Much of the capital and technical capabilities required to enable these great things to happen are tied up in our corporations, governed by the legislative, and community demands for absolute compliance to an established norm.
Almost by definition, the norm is boring, ordinary, “so yesterday” as my beautiful daughter would say. How is it then that the boards of those same companies, the people with the ultimate responsibility to determine the long term priorities of the business, and allocate the resources to deliver them for stakeholders make the necessary choices. They have to make choices between the creative, the risky, and the new stuff that will cannabilise their existing position, whilst being tied down to processes that demand short term, conservative, risk averse, and ultimately boring behaviours.
The Corporations Act and various accounting standards, domestic and International, require many things of directors, almost all are quantitative, take great time and energy, and deplete resources, when the real value is added by the qualitative.
As a community, we demand probity from directors, and largely we get it, but the few who play fast and loose, who feed self interest at the expense of the interests of those who are footing the bill, ensures that there are rules crafted to catch the 1%, but that hamstring the 99% in the process.
The few truly great leaders around in charge of our large corporations that manage to make those choices are the exception. Jack Welch at GE made six sigma the manufacturing standard of the west by driving GE along a path invisible to most, and his successor, Jeffrey Immelt followed by a pivot of GE into green power, and has created an 18 $billion manufacturing division in just a few years that promises to be hugely profitable whilst delivering enormous value to the planet. There are a few others, the oft cited Apple, FedEx, Disney, add your own, but it is a short list.
Perhaps it is happening again as the suppliers of the milling and moulding equipment used in manufacturing, are about to be made at least partially redundant by a few outliers who are putting manufacturing equipment on desktops.
Just a pity there appears to be so few in Australia.
Nov 12, 2012 | Leadership, Management
Making decisions is like any other process, you gather relevant information, consider options, look for the optimum outcomes, and decide accordingly. Right?
Often wrong.
Decisions are often made based on the HiPPO (Highest Paid Persons Opinion) what was done last time, how it would be viewed by others, what the “rules” say should be done, and a host of other drivers that really add little value to the quality of the decision making.
Decision making is like any process, the better that information, and the more objectively it can be analysed, the better the decision is likely to be. As importantly, the process is optimised by being sufficiently robust such that if the decision were to be made again, with the same information, but a different , but equally capable group of people, the outcome would be the same.
There are a few questions to be asked of any decision making group:
- Where did the data come from?
- What analysis has been done?
- What is the level of confidence in the outcomes?
Pablo Picasso is reported to have said ” computers are useless, they can only give you answers” which goes to the issue at the heart of decision making, the quality of the questions that are asked and the manner in which that are answered.
How disciplined are your decision making processes?
Nov 9, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Marketing
Much effort, particularly by public bodies, is focused on invention, in the mistaken belief that by inventing, patenting, and just being first to do something new, will lead to some great outcome.
Not so.
It is a bit like supply side economics, make the rich richer, and some will trickle down to the less well off, not a great outcome there.
Innovation is driven by different things, a perceived need in the market, an opportunity to improve something, two bits of existing technology combined in a different way, something from one market applied to another unrelated market, and many more. Invention is generally driven by curiosity more than anything else.
Don’t confuse the two, the technologies that have changed the world have largely been commercialised by entrepreneurs, or innovators who saw the opportunities, not by the inventors who conceived the technology.
Invention and innovation are not the same thing.
Nov 8, 2012 | Sales
Few would dispute that Da Vinci was a great artist, he created great art and amazing innovations across several mediums, a creative genius. What is often missed is his technical skill, engineering, anatomy, and at a very basic level, his skill with a hammer, chisel and paintbrush.
Which came first, the art or the science? Probably neither, each nurtured the other. Da Vinci’s determination to reflect the body accurately in his paintings led him to risk his life and liberty by dissecting bodies to get the anatomy exactly right.
How you may ask, does that relate to sales?
The most effective sales people I have seen do two things:
- The build relationships that last
- They close.
One without the other is of little use, the first produces no revenue, the second without the first produces only a one-off transaction, and wastes an opportunity for an ongoing commercial relationship.
This all takes expensive sales time, so increasingly automated marketing tools are being substituted for sales people, adding to the science, but making the art all the more important, as nobody wants to be sold to by a digital robot, so the people need to understand when to intervene, and take control.
Nov 7, 2012 | Branding, Change, Communication, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
“Change behavior, before you try and change attitudes”.
These were the wise words delivered to me by Hugh McKay, 30 years ago, and I have never forgotten them, and am constantly reminded as I see people justify something they have done that is different, unexpected, or inconsistent.
Behavior is easier to change than attitudes, so get to the behavior first, then again, and slowly, attitudes will alter to accommodate the altered behavior.
Therefore if you want to have effective advertising, focus on which behaviors you want to change, and worry about attitude later, but generally, you need not worry, it will take care of itself.
People are the same as they were 50 years ago, 500 years ago, the things they own and want have changed absolutely, but what motivates people has not. Just look at the behavior that Shakespeare wrote about, greed, jealousy, love, ambition and regret, they are still all with us.
The net is just like an electronic yellow pages. When you know you want something, you go to it to find the best buy, what meets your specs, etc, but you do not create demand in the yellow pages, similarly, you do not create demand on the net, the best you can do is generate awareness of your offer.
Make sure that the two fundamental purposes of advertising are not mixed.
The first is to create awareness,
The second is to create demand.
These two things are not the same, and the communication strategy used must be consistent with the potential of the medium and the manner of the message to achieve it.
