Category: Leadership
The challenge with innovation is finding products and services that are easier to use, easier to maintain and more appealing to customers. Where can you draw the creativity and drive to make this happen? Often the best source for innovation is the team within your business. A great leader can turn them into entrepreneurs who are hungrily looking for new opportunities. The key is empowerment. By empowering people you enable them to achieve goals through their own ideas and efforts. The leader sets the destination, but the team chooses the route. What do employees need to be empowered?People need clear objectives so that they know what is expected of them. They need to develop the skills for the task. They need to work in cross-departmental teams so that they can create and implement solutions that will work. They need freedom to succeed. And when you give someone freedom to succeed … Continue reading
Last Thursday, I presented a session on ‘Linking Blogs to Business Strategy’ at Kansas City’s Central Exchange. While discussing editing blog posts, one potential blogger asked about overcoming the problem of perfectionism when writing. I rather flippantly answered psychological help might be in order.While trying to be funny, the answer wasn’t completely facetious. I love when things happen exactly on strategy. Through years of observation, however, I’ve come to realize very few mistakes mean even a ‘figurative’ end to the world. Why drive yourself crazy trying to solve every little issue.This realization began in earnest early in my career, when another person and I were working on a matrix comparing our company to major competitors. It was an arduous project, with many revisions and lots of eyes (including eyes senior to ours) reviewing various drafts. It was eventually published for several thousand sales and management people in the company.Everything was … Continue reading
When I speak to CEO groups, trade associations, and industry conventions, this is one of my favorite questions to ask.Why? Because I love the reaction from the audience. They look at me like I’m nuts!Questioning the sanctity of best practices in a roomful of corporate leaders and managers is like walking into a Boston Red Sox convention wearing a New York Yankees cap. Or walking into a Microsoft Corp. strategic planning session with an iPad in your hand. I might as well criticize mom, apple pie, and puppies.But I dont ask the question merely to provoke a reaction from the audience. I ask it because it may prevent someone from going out of business.In the 1980′s, when Japan was eating our collective lunches in one industry after another, best practices played a critical role in helping American companies develop better quality products. We wouldn’t be where we are today had … Continue reading
This is the sixth of several ‘Innovation Perspectives’ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?’. Here is the next perspective in the series:by Robert F Brands with Jeff ZbarWhen an entrepreneur creates a new product or company, the result usually is borne by spotting an emerging trend, conceptualizing an innovation, or seizing an opportunity unmet or consumer behavior emerging in the marketplace.But what happens once the company opens its doors or the product hits the market? Whose responsibility is it to spot the next trend or opportunity? More important, who should be charged with shepherding the behavior of trend-spotting across the organization?Everybody is responsible for trend spotting. This isn’t some cliquey club; limit your people’s involvement at your own peril. From the Marketing and … Continue reading
This is the fourth of several ‘Innovation Perspectives’ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?’. Here is the next perspective in the series:by Rocco TarasiThere are a lot of easy answers to this question, but the easy ones are not necessarily the correct ones. The first easy answer is “the CEO”, because they are responsible for the strategy and direction of the business, are presumed to know more about their business than anyone, and are responsible for promoting a culture of innovation. But the CEO isn’t on the front lines of most businesses – they aren’t stocking the shelves with Proctor & Gamble goods at the grocery store, or working at the mall kiosk selling Blackberries, or greeting customers at the Citibank checkout window … Continue reading
Most CEOs would say that innovation is critical to their companies’ success. Loads of people would like to exercise their creativity and innovate, but whether at the corporate or at the individual level, something holds everyone back: risk. “What if it all goes wrong?” This can be more or less marked depending on the degree of acceptance of trial-and-error as a learning process, but to some extent it exists in all cultures, countries and companies.What can we do about it? There are process answers around framing the project and keeping it focused, rapid prototyping different versions of the product or piloting in the market. But most importantly there is a mindset answer which is both accept it and don’t accept it.Accept ItForbes provides an interesting list of Apple failures: a few forgotten computers such as the Lisa, the Mac portable, the Taligent, the power mac G4 cube, and a raft … Continue reading
