If you're not the lead dog, your view never changes
Why your Business must Accelerate … and do it NOW … or be eaten.
ABSTRACT: There are four phases in the evolution of every business – Startup, Normalization, Stable Operations, and Acceleration.
As a leader or owner, you’ve likely mastered the first three and have evolved your business to a state of operational stability. At this stage you are rightfully beginning to feel proud of your accomplishments – a well-managed operation with a steady and predictable revenue stream; not just feeding your own family but also supporting a number of employees who now depend on your continued success. Pause, exhale, and take it all in. Congratulations! You’ve mastered the art of the business.
But you’ve also reached a fork in the road. You may not see it yet, but the road you will now embark on will determine whether your success was a fleeting one followed by a catastrophic failure, or if you have the fortitude to sustain and accelerate your business.
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Bridging the Innovation Alignment Gap
Creating innovation alignment between a Company and its Service Provider
ABSTRACT: In the years of building and managing an innovation practice, the one thing that I’ve concluded is that innovation means different things to different companies. And while most companies insist that their vendors and service providers be innovative, seldom does this provide a clear direction as to what they expect and how the service providers can deliver on these expectations. Hence, alignment in expectations is frequently not achieved.
One way that provides a good analysis-based approach to improved innovation alignment between a company and its service provider is to clarify, and ultimately understand the company’s innovation frame of reference. By categorizing a company in terms of its innovation posture, the service provider can begin to identify appropriate alignment vectors and develop strategies which optimally sync up with their client’s innovation mindset. In the end, this creates a much improved understanding of the company’s expectations and a smoother path to working together to meet and exceed them.
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Megabytes vs Megahertz
Understanding depth and agility and knowing how to apply it.
ABSTRACT: When you boil things down to the elemental values, businesses succeed or fail based on two things. First – is the value of the products or services they offer. The second is the quality and effectiveness of the people in the company who bring those products to market, deliver the services, and support the customers who buy them. It’s really that simple – Products and People. Get those two things right and you quickly rise to the top of the food chain and dominate your market.
Product is by far the easier of the two for companies to master. People … well, that’s a whole other matter. There is one reality which many companies completely miss, which relates to the title of this article, and which can serve as a proven and tested leadership paradigm. Let me lay out the case through a simple example.
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