Apr 17, 2014 | Change, Collaboration, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
The most successful people I have seen over 40 years of business share one crucial characteristic.
Curiosity.
The successful are insatiably curious, it spans all aspects of their lives, not just the parts that are spent working at what pays the mortgage, but across all aspects of their private and social lives as well as their commercial ones.
Curiosity also in independent of the size of the enterprise, and often happens in clusters, as one curious person infect those around them. The Medici effect.
Supporting the curiosity are a number of specific behaviours I have observed, that to a greater of lesser extend are exhibited by all, they are in effect the enabling behaviours of their curiosity.
- They are always asking questions, some whilst knowing that the receiver has no idea of the answer, or even if one exists.
- They seek alternative views everywhere, encouraging others to play devils advocate
- They network relentlessly, seeking a diversity of views, not just on their areas of specific interest, but across the span of human activity
- They read widely, then test what they have read against their own experience
- They are curious about advances and ideas outside their area of immediate focus
- They observe, play “fly on the wall” looking for “jobs to be done” by all the products being used in the environment they are observing.
- They experiment relentlessly, often in very small ways, and explicitly set out to understand what worked, what did not, and why.
- They record everything, by making notes, using a Dictaphone, and more recently using the plethora of mobile devices to great benefit.
Perhaps you can add some more, but at least ask yourself how many of these you display, and are they displayed by those around you.
Apr 11, 2014 | Change, Collaboration, Innovation, Small business
courtesy respectserendipity.com
At first sight, “Organised” and “Serendipity” are at opposite ends of the scale, almost mutually exclusive.
Serendipity occurs by chance, when the stars align, the unexpected happens and not by any organised process, or so we are led to believe. Organisation by contrast removes by its nature the chance occurrences, random relationships, and inconsistency that make serendipity possible.
As collaboration increases and we recognise and seek to harness the intellectual capital of individuals by what is often called loose/tight management, the opportunity for serendipity increases, simply because the processes that run our lives are looser, more inclusive rather than exclusive. The use of technology to facilitate collaboration and recording process has increased the opportunity for those serendipitous moments and insights that just used to occur at the water cooler, and in the lunch room.
It follow then that setting out to organise in such a way that the chances of serendipity are enhanced is both logical and indeed, is a competitive necessity. It is after all where the insights that lead to innovation and its rewards are born.
Are you organised for it?
Mar 24, 2014 | Change, Leadership, Personal Rant, Strategy
Until I was about 10 years old, I lived in a little cottage at North Avalon, and used to walk to primary school through the sandhills, along the beach, then to school, and back. It sometimes took longer than it should have, as there was simply so much to see and do.
Those with children who have been to a farm nursery will understand the joy, the wonder of it to those kids, yet, this is not a normal part of our landscape, as it was just a very few years ago. This connection to the world around us has been replaced by apartment blocks, video games, and concern about the safety, both physical and emotional, of our kids.
Somewhere along the line we have lost something, real engagement with the natural world has been lost, replaced by coverage by David Attenborough.
Imagine the urban landscape that included again, those opportunities for the production of a bit of food for the family, and neighbours, how much reconnection might occur?.
Man is a social animal, and at some level we all understand that the most powerful motivator is recognition, not money, so social collaboration when enabled and recognised can change the world.
Look at what had happened with the town of Todmorden in Yorkshire, England, the productive gardens in our own backyard, have the potential to again be social glue, a force for the benefit of us all.
Problem is, the short term, financially driven mind set that dictates the usage if land around out cities, as well as in them mitigates against this opportunity to once again create the enablers of the production of social glue, and our children and grandchildren will be the worse for it.
Mar 11, 2014 | Change, Governance, Innovation, Personal Rant
Comment on possible changes to the cross media ownership laws is emerging, again. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull reopened the conversation in an interview with Sky, reflecting that the media landscape had changed dramatically, so it makes sense to change the rules that govern the ownership that were set up before the changes occurred. It seems pretty sensible to me.
However, here is the paradox.
The traditional media is commercially stuffed, as the advertising has been drained away by the “new media” of the internet, but never have they been so powerful. Just look at the role the Murdoch press, and the so called “news” programs on commercial TV at prime time in the evening, played in the recent federal election.
“New media” outlets are popping up all over the place, previously unpublishable individuals (like yours truly) can have their say, amongst comment and analysis by serious groups like the Guardian , and new collaborations like that represented by the Conversation . However, the agenda is still being shaped by the newspapers and evening TV “news” programs.
Occupying a core place in the system is the ABC, seemingly reviled by both political persuasions when in Government, so they must be doing something right. However, the future of the ABC is consistently under question, and the economic argument is a solid one. The demographics of the ABC are heavily skewed towards the top half of the population, 70% of the population never engage with the ABC over the course of a year, and yet we all pay equally, effectively a regressive tax. As the argument goes, those who want the ABC can generally afford to pay for it, or have their viewing/listening interrupted by ads which pay for it, and those who do not ever listen/view it should not be expected to pay.
The media landscape has changed beyond recognition in the last decade, and the rules that govern that landscape should evolve as well to better ensure a competitively and commercially healthy system, as we are all best served by diversity, competition and innovation. Just what that evolved regulatory framework means is under debate, and some pretty smart people are putting their views, amongst them Marc Andreesen, an investor who gets it right more often than he gets it wrong, with this terrific post on the future of news.
Any change will impact all of us. How we obtain information, analysis, and opinion, wrapped up as “news” in my humble view, is crucial to the way we interact with the world, and we should all be engaged in the debate about the changes.
Feb 25, 2014 | Branding, Change, Collaboration, Demand chains, Marketing, retail
A pilot program I have been recently involved with, setting out to assist the evolution of a” Sydney Harvest” brand of local produce has not delivered the results hoped for.
After years of agitation by produce growers in the Sydney basin, beset as they are by aggressive competition from the chain stores, lack of scale and high operating costs as a result of being in semi urban areas, governed by urban concerns, the pilot was created. It was a collaboration between a small number of Sydney basin growers, and specialist retailers aimed at delivering the freshest and best possible produce to those discerning and demanding customers who choose to shop at the specialist produce outlets.
The value proposition was simple : “You know it is fresh, because it come from down the road, you know the retailer, and here is the grower, guaranteeing product provenance and farming practice sustainability”.
In considering the reporting of the exercise, part of the shortcoming of the pilot was that there was little commitment beyond the verbal from the participants, even though the verbal commitment was strong. This is very common in the early stages of collaborative exercises, everyone says “yes” and waits for others to do the lifting. The emergence or otherwise of a “champion” someone who takes on the challenges at a visceral level, can be the main bellwether of success.
Watching a presentation by Seth Godin last night, he articulated just the situation we had.
There was no “connection” between the participants beyond the superficial, the human connection was not there.
Godin calls Connection “The asset of the future” and in a connected world, it would be hard to argue against this proposition. He further identified 4 pre-conditions of connection occurring.
- Co-Ordination. There was co-ordination in this pilot, but it was managed from the outside, by me, there was little skin in the co-ordination part of the game by participants.
- Trust. Trust evolves over time as a result of behaviour, it is never given, it has to be earned. In this case, we underestimated hugely the role to be played by trust, and the preconditions necessary for its evolution.
- Permission. Seth is talking about permission being given by the subject of a marketing effort, so this pilot is a different set of circumstances, nevertheless, whilst” permission” was given in the sense that all signed up to the pilot knowing exactly what was going to happen, and the role they were expected to play, when it went away, nobody missed it. The “permission” whilst given was nothing more than a superficial “OK”
- Exchange of ideas. In this case, whilst there was superficial buy in, the subsequent behaviour did not include interaction amongst the participants. They were too busy and pre-occupied with the normal business to put the time aside to exchange ideas, and get to know on a human level the other participants ,exchange ideas and experiences, and learn from each other.
This stuff is really, really, hard, and the only way we learn is by jumping in and having a go.
Feb 12, 2014 | Change, Management, Operations
Courtesy Cartoonstock
As a little kid, the milkman used to deliver from a horse drawn cart. Even then, in the mid fifties it was outmoded, almost rustic, but endlessly engaging for a 5 year old boy.
Much later, I was the marketing director of a NSW dairy co-operative as it wrestled with the inevitability of deregulation. I was continually reminded by those with vested interests that there should be no change, that the regulation was a good thing, that home delivery of milk was what had made us great, even though customers had voted with their feet. It sometimes sounded like that old milkman of my childhood explaining why he still had a horse when everyone else had trucks.
Yesterday listening to the various political blame allocations for the closure of Toyota, on the heels of the announcements by Ford and Holden, it was groundhog day, again.
Facts, and a dispassionate view of the whole picture played no part. Just like the farmer Directors of that dairy company, everyone else was wrong, they alone had the insights necessary to keep the boat from sinking, disaster from arriving, and the black forces from Hades consuming us.
Toyota has joined Ford and Holden in folding their tents, along with much of the Australian food processing industry.
Lets have a look at some of the underlying factors obscured by the smoke and mirrors of self interest:
- If we are so committed to an Australian car making industry, why do only 20% of us drive one made here? Some more heresy: A significant proportion of those 20% are company supplied cars, where the driver has no choice, and if they did, would that 20% be 10%? Death of an industry!! Who cares, obviously not enough of us. It is just like the food processing industry, which I would argue is just a touch more important, killed off by lack of scale, high $A, global supply chains, the move to low cost manufacturing locations, a history of self important and short sighted management, and political and bureaucratic hubris.
- 35,000 jobs will disappear!! Woe is me, the sky is falling! That number, not to make light of the distress of those who find themselves unemployed, and perhaps unemployable, is less than 0 .3% of employment. Anyway, why is 35,000 the number? Toyota has 600 people in their Sydney offices, none of them are going.
- 25 years ago manufacturing was 14% of jobs, now it is 8%, it was 12% of GDP, and now is 6.5%. The vast majority of people displaced by these changes have found new jobs in industries that barely existed 25 years ago, why not again? Anyway, 350,000 people change jobs every month, every month! Another 35,000 over 4 years is a drop in the bucket, again not to be unfeeling towards those who struggle.
- It could be a financial bonanza for the government. Instead of supporting a corpse, pumping in life support dollars, they can be just counting the revenues from tarriffs as imports increase 20%, they might even remove the “luxury” tax designed to “save” the local industry, now there is no local industry left to save. However, I doubt it, as the “luxury” tax raises$ 1.8 billion. When the previous government proposed changes to the regime to capture tax lost to corporate salary packaging of cars, the current government, then opposition, in a dose of real hypocrisy opposed it, but I sense a change of mind now.
It would be much better if the energy spent looking backwards and allocating blame was spent looking forwards, and building for the future.
