Monthly Archives: December 2010
As many of you may know, my second book was called Goal-Free Living. Although it was originally going to be a book on how to be more creative, it morphed into a manifesto for a counter-cultural way of living. In fact, the “goal-free” philosophy will be featured in a major newspaper early next year. Stay tuned for that. Someone once asked me why people crave goals. It is a hard question to answer. But an interesting point of view was sent to me by Antony Woods from Australia, and I wanted to share it with you… He quotes a renowned 20th Century Burmese Meditation Master: “The fourth protection for your psychological benefit is to reflect on the phenomenon of ever-approaching death. Buddhist teachings stress that life is uncertain, but death is certain; life is precarious but death is sure. Life has death as its goal. There is birth, disease, suffering, … Continue reading
Here is the fourth of four posts for the American Express OPEN Forum: Much is written about the importance of diversity in teams and also about the competitive advantage that high-performance teams can build for an organization. There is a lot to read about boosting creativity and forcefully injecting different perspectives into the ideation process. People are encouraged to use tools like the six thinking hats or methodologies like SCAMPER to help their teams come up with more innovative ideas. But, we don’t talk enough about the roles that are necessary for innovation success. People are not interchangeable commodities and they don’t possess the same characteristics and aptitudes. Because it is simpler for us to pretend that people are interchangeable, we often do so, but deep down we know that people have different passions, skills and abilities. Yet we delude ourselves into thinking that every employee in our organization: CLICK … Continue reading
There’s a huge gap between CEOs saying they want their companies to innovate and actually acting in a way consistent with what they say. This lack of congruence drives internal change agents crazy, catatonic, or out the door. At the very least, it makes them cranky and unwilling to go the extra yard required to turn their inspired ideas into reality. And so, as a public service to all of you out there whose CEOs are not walking the talk, here’s my TOP TEN reasons why not. Choose one, align with some fellow change agents, and kick start the process of actually doing something about it. Innovation sparks dissonance and discomfort. Innovation is all about increasing variability. Most CEOs want to decrease variability and increase predictability. Results only show up long-term — not next quarter. CEOs conserve resources. Innovation requires more resources. Innovation flies in the face of analysis. Imbalance … Continue reading
Summary: Many large, and leading, companies have not created much shareholder value the last decade A surprising number of very large companies have gone bankrupt (GM) or failed (Circuit City) Wal-Mart is a company that has generated no shareholder value The Wal-Mart disease is focusing on executing the business’s long-standing success formula better, faster and cheaper — even though it’s not creating any value Size alone does not create value, you have to increase the rate of return Companies that have increased value, like Apple, have moved beyond execution to creating new success formulas Have you noticed how many of America’s leading companies have done nothing for shareholders lately? Or for that matter, a lot longer than just lately. Of course General Motors wiped out its shareholders. As did Chrysler and Circuit City. The DJIA and S&P both struggle to return to levels of the past decade, as many of … Continue reading
You can increase your success in business if you can become an ideas carrier, someone who identifies, collects and communicates fresh ideas for other people’s business challenges. If you work in an office you can do this for your colleagues, your boss or the people who report to you. If you are a consultant or sales person you can do this for your customers. If you are a buyer you can do it for your suppliers. In every case you can build your relationship by helping the other person solve their problems. Let’s say you are a salesman. Think of your most important customers. What are their most pressing business challenges? What are the top priorities and the worries that keep them awake at night? Forget for the moment about trying to sell them your products, focus instead on their problems and issues. Now as you go about the rest … Continue reading
One of my favorite Peter Drucker passages about innovation goes something like this: “To render a business entrepreneurial, management must take the lead in making obsolete its own products and services rather than waiting for a competitor to do so. The business must be managed so as to perceive in the new an opportunity rather than a threat. It must be managed to work today on the products, services processes, and technologies that will make a difference tomorrow.” What Drucker is alluding to here is not so much the ‘systematic abandonment’ of existing businesses that are becoming obsolete, but rather, to focus on the proper allocation of resources– both personnel and financial–to create businesses for tomorrow in order to continue growth. Being able to properly allocate (and reallocate) your most valuable talent to the products and services that will drive growth for tomorrow is one the biggest challenges today for … Continue reading
