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 9, 2011 | Customers, Innovation, Marketing
Every product manager I have ever seen sees his/her pack change, flavor extension, or new size as an innovation, and every marketing manager who lets this mediocre stuff take up valuable time, the only resource that is really irreplaceable, is culpable.
Sometimes, just sometimes, a genuine innovation emerges, and the common feature is that they almost always emerge from a culture that values their own resources, and that of their customers to the exclusion of all the usual puffery. What is left is the genuine hyping of something new, that needs at least some explanation, as it does not fit into any existing, neat categories.
Apple, Ideo, Cisco, Toyota, and a few others do it, others try and copy, change the look, but the value proposition is a copy. There is a new calculus of innovation easy enough to see if you know what to look for, really hard to do.
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 4, 2011 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Strategy
A consumers relationship with a brand is a bit like a friendship, if it is strong, you will be prepared to put up with a bit of nonsense and still be friends, if it is weak, you may not be. If the poor behaviour continues, it will normally be the end of the “brand friendship”, after all, a friendship is supposed to be a two way process.
It’s a simple equation, deliver the benefits of friendship, the “brand promise” to people who care, and you will not depreciate your brand, fail to deliver, and depreciation occurs, and as every marketer knows, building it up is always harder than tearing it down
Accountants understand the notion of friendship in a balance sheet, called “goodwill”, they see it all the time, problem is they do not understand how it gets there.
A quick scan of the commentary yesterday after the Cup day reduction of retail interest rates resulted in all the major banks, except NAB, passing on the whole reduction indicates, a customer PR bellyflop of significant proportions, a whack on the nose to all “brand friends” .
It really does not matter how justified the “banking” of .05% of the decrease by NAB may be, they have just spent millions telling us how they are different from the others, setting themselves up as the bank for service, one you can go to with your financial problems, your banking friend, and it has been an effective message. All gone, “Poof”.
A rational bankers decision based on the margin squeeze created by the rising costs of wholesale money, and the reducing rates in Australia, but taken in an emotional market. Dumb.
Want to see brand depreciation, just look at NAB for a case study.
Oct 31, 2011 | Management, Marketing
The Fair Work Australia decision overnight to order the termination of industrial disputation immediately, rejecting the unions request for a 120 day moratorium on action, is a win for managements right to manage for the long term health of a business at the expense of short term and sectional interests of a group of employees.
The implications go wider than just Qantas, although the catalyst to the decision by FWA was the generation of political pressure brought about by the lockout. If you cannot generate the political pressure, the result would have been different, this is hardly fair to the vast bulk of businesses, and it has reintroduced the spectre of compulsory arbitration by a legislated body of political appointees.
It will be interesting to watch the way this plays out across the political landscape over the next couple of years before the next election. The unions will be outraged, and we will see posturing worthy of an academy nomination, but the threat of an Abbott government coming in with an agenda that includes a further winding back of union power will give them nightmares.
I guess the lesson is that if you have the power, use it, but if you don’t, get ready to duck because the industrial landscape just got ugly, and unpredictable.
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.
