Oct 15, 2009 | Innovation, Leadership, Management
It is not the words of a company vision that count, as much as the conversation that goes on around the water cooler about the purpose of an organisation. The notion of including all personnel in a conversation about business purpose is very effective.
Sam Palmisano, current CEO of IBM conducted a “Values Jam” on the IBM intranet over 3 days a few months after his appointment. This generated 40,000 “conversations” about purpose across the business, with Sam acting as both participant and final arbiter.
The outcome is a set of words that has stood IBM in great stead over the last 6 years, and all employees know, they have the opportunity to contribute.
Subsequently, the “jam” concept has been used by IBM to inform a range of other issues from their internal innovation “jam” in 2006 which resulted in 10 new businesses with $100 million in seed funding, to the 2008 “habitat jam” held on behalf of the UN.
These activities only work because they unleash the power of a common purpose in their participants, have you considered how to unleash the power of your networks?
Oct 11, 2009 | Innovation, Management, Marketing, Small business
It is easy to see opportunities outside the “home base” often easier than seeing them close to home. However, success comes with exploiting potential in existing markets before you “export” resources to chasing new ones. Chase market penetration, cost reduction, value and innovation in your home and adjacent markets before you bet the farm on a new one.
These closer to home opportunities are rarely as sexy as building a business in a new area, but often they come with less risk, and investment, and usually a greater payoff.
Innovation is front and centre in this process of leveraging the existing base, but it is the grunt work of implementation, continuous innovation in small ways, and focus that will win.
My definition of marketing, not found in any textbook I have read is:
“Marketing is the identification, development, protection and leveraging of competitive advantage”
I have found if you apply this definition to all the activities of an enterprise, looking at each for its contribution to at least one of these parameters, your marketing focus will be crystal clear, and the process of sorting out strategy, and the supporting allocation of resources will be considerably eased.
Sep 24, 2009 | Innovation, Management, Marketing
Seth Godin is once again ahead of the wave with the launch of Brands In Public.
The logic is simple, today, you cannot control the conversations that occur about your brand or business, they happen across the myriad of access points to the web, so the next best thing is to assemble the conversations at a common point, and give yourself the opportunity to participate.
Brands in public gathers the conversations, and offers a point of intersection between these conversations and the brand owner. At least, you then have a place at the table to counter the nonsense, put forward the facts, and perhaps add a bit of steerage to the process.
Wonderful idea, so obvious with hindsight, executed with simplicity.
Sep 22, 2009 | Change, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
There is a growing trend driven by the difficult times for management to set very big goals (Big Hairy Audacious Goals… BHAG),and hope to create the focus necessary to achieve the BHAG outcome.
Often however, the opposite appears to occur, as those in the organization charged with the execution of the plans simply do not believe the objectives are achievable.
Sometimes this is just that the objective is divorced from the reality of the competitive environment, sometimes it is simply a failure of leadership, but most often, it is just that the goals emerge from wishful thinking that puts off difficult decisions for a bit longer.
JFK said in 1961 “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to earth. ” This is probably the most famous BHAG of all. It is a statement in a single sentence that contains the three elements of a successful BHAG. It creates the vision of where we want to go, the measures of success are clearly articulated, and everyone recognised the resources necessary to achieve the task would be made available, because the President had committed himself to the goal.
No room for wishful thinking or bland leadership in that statement, and it was achieved. Would it have been achieved, had any of the three conditions been missed? Probably not, because it would have just been the wishful musings of the President.
Sep 16, 2009 | Change, Innovation
Aggressive defense of the status quo by powerful firms, or a consortia of firms in some sort of industry lobby body often indicates a fat profit plum ripe for the plucking, or a closed shop that protects inefficiency. Perhaps they are the same thing.
Look at the defense of the record industry against the digital music revolution, the aggressive defense of the pharmacy drug (legal) distribution monopoly, the newspaper distribution monopoly (would you buy a newsagency now with the e-distribution of news taking over?) and the artificially high entry barriers imposed on new entrants to many professional bodies and you will see potential profit in the breaking down of the status quo, which protects someones easy life.
Usually, everyone apart from the defenders benefit when these strong guardians of yesterday are wiped away, as they usually are, with a greater level of pain than would be incurred if there was a sensible and creative discussion about alternative models.
In the end, all the lobbying does is create added waste and pain, and the chance to protect the profits of incumbency by innovation, and evolving the business model to better serve customers is lost in the determination to protect the status quo.
Sep 13, 2009 | Change, Innovation, Leadership
Transaction costs occur when you do something, opportunity costs, even harder to measure, occur when you do nothing.
Transaction costs are well hidden inside the activities that take place in your business, and short of introducing activity costing, are usually hard to determine with certainty. However, what is certain in every business I have ever seen is that they can be reduced, usually significantly.
It takes common sense, determination, leadership, and a willingness to break open the status quo to reduce transaction costs, none of which are easy, which is why it can be such a powerful competitive tool, your competitors will find it just as hard, and will often shy away.
Opportunity costs are even harder to measure, and usually it is only with hindsight that any measurement is possible, but then almost nobody wants to point out what could have happened if you had done something differently, and that is exactly why it is such a powerful concept to consider.
Ask yourself: “If we…………., what might happen?” as a part of your planning processes.
