Category: Strategy
Most people know that 3M’s Arthur Fry was not trying to invent the thing he invented in 1974–the Post-it Note–he was daydreaming in church. As neuroscientists now know, and was conclusively shown in 2009, it’s when our minds wander that our brains do their best work–it’s when we’re not trying to think creatively that we’re often most creative. Continue reading
The old way of winning the talent wars was to search for and hire the very best talent and keep them inside your own four walls by offering them competitive compensation, benefits, and perks. Your hope was that your talent is better than your competitors’ talent. But over the last couple of decades, companies have increasingly found that employees who pursue what they do with passion will outperform an employee with a gun to their head every time. Circuit City learned very publicly that people are not commodities and went out of business from treating them as if they were. Continue reading
For the foreseeable future, there will be more work than time. Yet year-on-year we’re asked to get more done and year-on-year we pull it off. Most are already at our maximum hour threshold, so more hours is not the answer. The answer is productivity. Continue reading
It seems that there is a trend towards getting rid of the innovation ‘stage gate’ process. Why? Continue reading
I was speaking with a client recently who reminded me of the metrics her CEO had set out for innovative new ideas. While I think it is important to have clear goals and quantifiable metrics for innovations, I was a bit apprehensive about these measurements. Take a look at them and see if you can guess which one gives me the most concern: Continue reading
Back in the 1880’s, Frederick Winslow Taylor was able to make dramatic gains in efficiency by timing workers performing rote tasks. His efforts spawned the idea and practice of scientific management. Alas, these days routine jobs, even white collar ones such as bookkeeping, legal research and basic medical diagnoses are increasingly being automated by computer. Others fall prey to globalization and are outsourced. Continue reading
