Nov 15, 2011 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
Most acknowledge that the future will be different from the past, so why is it that we seem determined to manage our way to the future by repeating the recipes of success from the past.
Future success relies on doing things differently, and this is uncomfortable, unpredictable, and unnerving, so avoided by most.
Kodak missed the development of the digital camera, despite inventing it, Nokia missed the development of the “smartphone” while a runaway market leader, all the large PC companies missed the development of the direct sales model until Dell had tied it up, Detroit missed the consumers cry for smaller, fuel efficient cars that were reliable until bankruptcy loomed, and Apple continues to clean up by reinventing categories, and everyone else just follows them into the mobile consumer markets that they pioneer.
It is the equivalent of driving along a bush track by looking through the rear vision mirror, eventually you will crash. Only by looking ahead, and navigating a path less well marked can you take a leadership position, and that requires some “Unlearning”.
Nov 14, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Small business
The conduct of meetings, whether they be the AGM of a major company, or the committee of the local raffle group should run by the same basic set of rules, worked out over a long period to ensure that a meeting comes to a conclusion at the end of a comprehensive “due process”.
Whilst the AGM of a public company should be far more formal than the local tennis group, nevertheless, some rules should never be broken, significantly the one that states: “No-one can speak twice on a topic until all who wish to speak on the topic have done so”.
This simple rule ensures that the local opinionated motor-mouth who seems to pop up on most small committees is controlled.
It is up to the chairman to keep the discipline, but many a local meeting I have attended has failed because the basics of conducting a meeting are not enforced.
Nov 7, 2011 | Collaboration, Communication, Leadership
The core skill of a successful innovator is their ability to recover from disappointment and failure, to learn from it, and go again, to embrace and recover fom error, not avoid it. As Steve Jobs Pixar’s founder said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who can” in the now more famous 1997 Apple advertisement “think different”
In this presentation by Randy Nelson, Dean of the Pixar University, the in-house learning facility of that innovation machine, Pixar, the things Pixar looks for in a potential employee are outlined. My summary and thoughts are below, but it is well worth the time watching Randy.
- Resilience and adaptability are the key components of the ability to recover, and change direction in the face of negative results and failure.
- Look for people who have mastery of something to demonstrate the innate drive to be the best. A resume is usually just a wish, a promise, so probe for mastery of something, anything as an indicator that they have what it takes to be the best.
- Find people who are interested, more than they are interesting. Interested is an indicator of curiosity, a core competence in success.
- Collaboration is more than co-operation on steroids. A production line can be co-operative, the actions at one stage impact on the actions at a subsequent one, so you need co-operation for it to work well but it is a sequential thing, whereas collaboration is all about amplification, the sum is greater than the individual parts. Individuals bring ranges of separate experience, knowledge, depth of understanding, depth of knowledge, breadth of knowledge that allows them to communicate on multiple levels, then collaboration can happen.
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 28, 2011 | Communication, Leadership
The old axiom that there are two certainties in life, death and taxes, has been expanded by a third certainty: change.
Should this third certainty have an impact on the nature of leadership in the future?
My view, Absolutely!.
In uncertain environments, a core skill has to be the management of ambiguity, and so it is reasonable to expect leaders of the future to be good at receiving, processing and articulating inconclusive, ambiguous, and often contradictory information, in a way that offers a sense of certainty and security to those being led.
