Nov 28, 2011 | Change, Collaboration, Communication, Marketing, Social Media
The internet is choked with lists, 10 ways to do this, 5 best ways to handle that, bloggers put them in because a list is a proven driver of blog traffic. People seem to want the core of an idea to be trimmed down to a set of bullet points, perhaps it is just more digestible that way.
I have certainly done it a bit, with 12 facebook tips for SME’s, How to make twitter useful, 6 rules for strategic alignment, and many others, some my lists, others a link to the lists of others, each for one reason or another seemed to be useful and worth sharing. In the case of the lists I created, mostly they emerged from work I was doing for a client at the time, and the process of assembling a list assisted me to order my thoughts, and so hopefully, helped a few others in a similar way.
Today, the “Uber-list” from Forbes magazine, which has a whole feature on the worlds most innovative companies, the worlds 2000 leading companies, the most powerful people, the richest, and so on.
It makes for interesting reading, almost wherever you make your dollar, there is some reference to the industry, who is who in the zoo, and what they did right.
Thanks Forbes, something for everyone.
Nov 20, 2011 | Change, Leadership, Management, Strategy
The chaos in the European monetary system, and the appearance of a lack of the required backbone to address the issues has parallels in every commercial change situation I have ever seen, irrespective of the size of the oranisation:
- It takes a while to stuff up a sound system with hubris an self-interest, the decline is slow, but with hindsight, absolutely clear.
- The leadership that got into the mess is unable to clean up its own poop, and needs changing.
- Necessary changes cannot be made until it seems there is no option, and the stakeholders recognise that the status quo is simply unsustainable.
- In change, some get hurt more than others, but most suffer from some austerity. If the stakeholders clearly understand that there is simply no option, and they trust the emerging leadership to take tough, but in the long term decisions that benefit all, they will suffer the short term pain to set things right.
In Europe we are half way through this process. Most Europeans would recognise the status quo is unsustainable, and that change must happen. The leadership is changing, Italy and Greece have changed, and Spain has an election coming up at which the incumbent government will probably be decimated, Ireland made the changes a year ago, and appears to be recovering, and Portugal is just tagging along, so far so good in driving change. Next step is to ensure the measures are appropriately tough, and that they “stick” despite the opposition that will emerge from organised vested interests.
It seems to me that the whole process is being facilitated by the Germans. They do not want the EU to implode as it would see their new Deutschmark soar, removing their current competitive advantage, so they are paying the price of short term financial market instability to force the changes elsewhere in Europe, to give impetus to the general understanding that aggressive change is the only way forward.
If Europe was a company, this is exactly what we would see if a number of key subsidiaries got into trouble.
Billy Bloggs & Co, my small client undergoing some painful restructuring is showing us what will happen in Europe.
Nov 3, 2011 | Change, Leadership, Strategy
It seems that the carrot and stick approach will work less in the future than it has in the past. Science is demonstrating that for tasks that require even a modest amount of cogitative skill, paying more for the task actually reduces performance. Again, the higher the rewards, the less the performance, and our world is rapidly becoming a place where routine and repetitive tasks are being eliminated.
So much for the notion of huge executive pay as an incentive. When you look around, it is pretty obvious. Linux, Wikipedia, Apache, the list goes on, major businesses emerging from an economically impossible business model, getting smart people to work for nothing, then giving away the results!
That should make an economists head hurt.
Humans work for a meal and a place to stay, be warm, and have some basic comforts, but once these basics are taken care of, they work for the satisfaction, the recognition, to achieve something meaningful, and to enjoy doing it. The trick therefore is to have a purpose in your business, one that engages and motivates, and allow your employees to exercise their innate creativity and insight to achieve the purpose.
Daniel Pink presents these ideas in an animated presentation that is as entertaining as it is informative.
Nov 1, 2011 | Change, Leadership, Management, Strategy
Gary Hamel is one of the leading management thinkers around. Every time he speaks, he is worth listening to, and whilst you may not always agree, there is always depth to his views.
In this post he proposes that management as we know it will be destroyed by three forces of the 21st century . To quote, “Over the coming decades, these forces will mostly destroy management as we know it”
The forces he refers to are the rapid changes in the competitive environment that just keep accelerating, the development of web based collaboration tools, and the impact of the generation just growing up to whom the net is just there, a thing that is not even considered, to repeat his metaphor, it is as transparent as water is to a fish.
As one who talks about this stuff continually, I wish I could articulate is as simply, and clearly as he does.
Oct 26, 2011 | Change, Social Media
A while ago, when Google+ was first launched, I questioned its value, and by extension, future. The reason for my skepticism, was that an initial look at Google+ led me to the conclusion that the inherent switching costs involved in moving the focus of on-line social activity from facebook to Google would be too high for a sufficient number of users for Google+ to build the scale necessary for social media success.
It now seems that something from the old economy is working in Google’s favour, and my assessment will probably be proved to be wrong.
Momentum and initiative.
We all understand the value of momentum and initiative, in business, sport, and our private lives. Those who have it, all other things being equal, win, simple as that. It seemed to me at the time that facebook had all the cards, but Google seems to have grabbed the initiative, and built momentum, if the “tech-chatter” of which there is plenty, some of it from very well connected people, accurately reflects the extremely rapidly evolving social media ecosystems.
Oct 25, 2011 | Change, Leadership
Is there a paradox here, or are collaboration and autonomy complementary?
On one hand we are seeking to encourage collaboration to engage everyone and maximise chances of optimum thinking to occur, whilst usually discounting the potential for “groupthink”. On the other hand we see the value of the autonomy of the individual as a means to provide the intrinsic motivation for them to do their best, to stretch themselves.
It seems to me after 30 years of being engaged, and observing this paradox at first hand that there are a couple of perspectives:
# If you can navigate the short term tensions and difficulties to build successful collaboration, it becomes a long term strength, and despite the ever present short term tensions, if they are managed as debates, no matter how heated, that are based on facts rather than emotion, you can achieve both collaboration and personal autonomy.
# People in an industry develop a way of conceptualising the industry and their place in it, both as an individual and as a collaborative group. The key to growth is being able to redefine the prevailing view, and successfully chase success in the evolving industry.
In the week after Steve Jobs’ death, with all the eulogies being written, the central core of his success was just such an ability to redefine an industry and successfully lead the changes. On the other hand, the once great Kodak invented digital photography, and did not see the value given their view of the photographic industry, Nokia the runaway mobile phone leader 10 years ago is now struggling for relevance, and it took a radical forced restructure of the “big Three” in Detroit before they recognised that their view of the auto industry was not consistent with the desires of their customers.
Kodak, Nokia, and the Detroit three all lacked a leader capable of redefining the industry view held by their businesses, and paid the price for that failure.
