Monthly Archives: August 2015

Living Life by Text Message

Living Life by Text MessageI did my MBA at London Business School in the United Kingdom and one of the benefits of studying at a top school and being an alumni is seeing all the really cool things that the entrepreneurial alumni coming behind you are doing or that alumni in the venture capital industry might be involved with.

One of the startup ventures a fellow London Business School alumni is involved with is called ServiceWire, a company focused on the on-demand services industry. ServiceWire bills itself as the help desk for your home service needs, and unlike Amazon’s new offering Amazon Home Services which requires you to go to the Amazon web site and make a bunch of clicks, ServiceWire lets you send a text message with your request and get a response from your Personal ServiceGuru with an upfront price estimate from handpicked professionals with satisfaction guaranteed. It’s a very interesting model. Much more mobile friendly than Amazon’s offering.

Too often people get caught in the mindset of a web site or a mobile app being the only way to deliver a quality service to customers, or as being the best way to solve a customers problem.

For example, yesterday I went to the YMCA and entered the building behind another patron but I was able to enter the facility probably a minute or more before him because he was trying to find the app on his phone and load it and use it, while they scanned the plastic card I keep in my wallet in two seconds and I was on my way. Technology doesn’t always make things more efficient or effective, and it’s easy to over-engineer a solution.

This is why I like ServiceWire’s approach to helping solve life’s little problems. At this point it is a UK company only and is taking new members by email invitation only (request an invitation on their web site). If it is successful I imagine someone else will copy their approach in the United States and elsewhere.

Will the ServiceWire approach succeed at the expense of Amazon Home Services’ approach?

The ServiceWire approach should also prompt the following questions:

What solution might you be over-engineering?

What other mechanisms could you use that you are ignoring now?

Keep innovating!


Accelerate your change and transformation success

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Voting Open for Thinkers50 Top Management Thinkers for 2015

Thinkers50 - Nominations and Votes NeededThank you everyone for your nominations for the Innovation category of the Thinkers50 Distinguished 2015 Distinguished Achievement Awards. The short lists for the eight categories will be announced in early September.

September 1st is the last day to cast your votes for the Thinkers50 Top Management Thinkers for 2015.

Click here to vote for me for the Thinkers50 Top Management Thinkers for 2015 by filling in the following:

Your Name
Your Email
Person who gets your vote: Braden Kelley
That person’s title: Founder
That person’s organization: Innovation Change Leadership
That person’s email address: thinkers50@bradenkelley.com

Click here to vote for me for the Thinkers50 Top Management Thinkers for 2015

Thank you in advance!

I am deeply grateful for your continuing support.

Sincerely,

Braden

Image source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/436145545136453823/


Accelerate your change and transformation success

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Is Innovation a Priority for CEOs?

Is Innovation a Priority for CEOs?

We’d all like to be the best at everything and to make everything a priority, but that’s just not the real world.

So what did CEOs say was their priority when they were surveyed by KPMG for their Global CEO Outlook 2015.

Here are nine of the key findings from the report:

  1. 62% of CEOs are optimistic on the economy
  2. 54% are optimistic on company performance
  3. 74% believe the competitive environment is getting tougher
  4. 52% believe aggressive growth strategies prevail
  5. 30% feel they are not risking enough for growth
  6. 86% are concerned about the loyalty of their customers
  7. 42% are pursuing a mix of both organic and inorganic growth
  8. 47% of CEOs are pursuing significant geographic expansion
  9. 73% feel regulatory environment having a big impact on their business

It is also interesting that American CEOs are more pessimistic about growth prospects than their international brethren:

KPMG CEOs Confidence

Especially given that survey respondents see the greatest potential for growth in the United States:

KPMG Growth Potential

And while American, German, and Japanese CEOs definitely live in the most mature markets, part of their growth pessimism may come from more completely grasping the impact of the top four concerns of CEOs voiced in the survey:

KPMG Top 4 Concerns

“Maintaining status quo, while incredibly comfortable, is the most risky thing you can do in today’s world.” – Mark A. Goodburn, Global Head of Advisory, KPMG

Most interesting for me is the chart at the very top that shows fostering innovation as a lower priority than developing new growth strategies. Obviously innovation is just one component of any holistic growth strategy, but shouldn’t fostering innovation be a little more important if CEOs hope to create sustainable growth?

But it shouldn’t be surprising that this option scored the lowest, because my experience has been that leaders want innovation but they often aren’t willing to invest the dollars required when the rubber hits the road, and even more troublesome is that many leaders don’t understand how to foster innovation. Most CEOs see innovation as a project and not as an organizational capability they need to develop in order to help fend off disruption. Anyways, here are the top three barriers to innovation CEOs identified in the survey:

  1. Rapidly changing customer dynamics
  2. Unsure of which technologies will deliver the greatest return
  3. Budget constraints

Maybe there is no money for innovation and companies are so worried about disruption is because the survey tagged the CFO as the executive gaining the most clout in the C-suite and the CIO came in last. Just a thought.

So what’s holding you back from making sustained innovation a priority?


Accelerate your change and transformation success

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Get More Done

Get More Done

What Matters Most Management (WMMM) is the Key to Success

Most times you’ll see this posed as a question “What matters most?” as people grapple with finding the meaning of life. That is not the case here…

Instead I would like to share with you my simple management philosophy that will help you be more successful in today’s sometimes overwhelming, chaotic world of too many competing demands on your time.

I will help you succeed on a whim! (well, okay a WMMM)

Your success in this case comes from following the whim (or WMMM) of What Matters Most Management. It can be tailored for use in managing your time, a project, etc. For simplicity we’ll look at time management today by popular request (people ask me all the time how I manage to get so much done).

It involves quite simply making a quick inventory of all of the things that you could focus on today, or that you’re being asked to focus on, and identifying three key things:

1. How big of an impact will completing this task have (Hi/Med/Lo)

2. How big of an effort will it take to complete this task (Hi/Med/Lo)

3. When will my energy be the best for completing this task (Morning/Afternoon/Evening)

This daily inventory of tasks can be done in your head, or on paper, depending on how detail oriented you are. After you have your mental or written list, then plan your day, prioritizing of course any tasks with a low effort/high impact combination (often very rare).

You will also want to prioritize any tasks that involve getting others to do work. Getting others started on their work sooner rather than later, will lead to those tasks getting done faster because they are not sitting in your inbox.

Consider also whether it makes sense to start a task you can’t finish today or not. Sometimes there is no advantage to starting something today instead of tomorrow if you’ll end up finishing it tomorrow either way. Other times there will be tasks you need to finish tomorrow that you’ll have to start today to make it work. Going through this exercise is how you’ll identify What Matters Most (WMM).

I find this method to suit an organic person like me much more than a rigid system like Franklin Covey, plus systems like that don’t take into account when the ideal time might be to do a certain type of work based on the composition of your day and personal energy patterns. Save up somewhat mindless, administrative type work for when you’re brain is tired and do your more creative, intense work when your mind is fresh.

It’s also amazing how frequently the Pareto Principle proves out (where the items that deliver 80% of the value only require 20% of your effort, and vice versa). Focus on that 20% that will drive the 80% of your potential positive perception in the minds of others and in tangible impact in your life.

The WMMM approach works the same on projects, and can be super powerful when a family, project team, etc. all follow a similar philosophy.

The WMMM approach can also be used by product managers and entrepreneurs to create more successful products and services!

Go ahead! Try it! I think you’ll find that you’ll get more done, and sometimes more importantly, people will notice.

Image credit: earningmoneytoday.com

This article originally appeared on Linkedin


Accelerate your change and transformation success

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.