Category Archives: Leadership

Be Human – People Will Notice

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Be Human - People Will Notice

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Speak up. Your ideas can’t see daylight unless others know about them.

Be wrong. When you’re wrong, you sharpen the rightness.

Be right. When you’re right in the face of wrongness, everyone wins, except for you.

Stand tall. Stand behind your decisions, but you can’t be responsible for their outcome.

Be truthful, but not hurtful.

Be overwhelmed. This is difficult.

Give it away. When things go well, delegate credit to the up-and-coming. They’ll remember.

Support others. When someone’s in the bucket, pull them out. They’ll remember.

Pay it forward. A kind soul gave it to you, and it’s time to give it to someone else. They’ll remember.

Say “thank you.” And mean it.

Be quiet. When things are on the right track, there’s no need to derail.

Take the heat. When there’s a mistake, own it so the young don’t have to. They’ll remember.

Make room for others. Nothing blocks their growth like your career aspirations.

Say nothing negative, unless you can’t. And if you must, say it in private.

Praise publicly, loudly, and often.

Set up others for success. And when accused of doing so, plead ignorance.

Share your frustrations, but sparingly. Done skillfully, it’s a compliment.

Be human. People will notice.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Breaking Rules to Delight Customers

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Breaking Rules to Delight Customers

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

There is a massive benefit to empowering employees to “break the rules” for their customers. And what I mean by “breaking the rules” is to consider what you can do for a customer outside of the norm that doesn’t cost the company money, isn’t illegal or immoral, and won’t hurt “business as usual.” In reality, employees aren’t breaking any rules. They are finding ways to take care of the customer while not breaking the “rules” mentioned above.

One of the concepts I cover in my customer service keynote speech is the idea of the “line in the sand.” Many companies train their employees in what they can’t do for customers. They have “rules” that have little or no flexibility. While it’s essential for employees to be trained on what they shouldn’t do, it may be more important to train them on what they can do. By that, I mean how far employees are allowed to go before they have to say, “No.”

I call this The Line in the Sand concept. It is important to draw that line, which is the boundary that employees aren’t allowed to cross, but at the same time, teach them what they can do to get right up to the line.

For example, I have a client in the luxury automobile market. This client has a team that travels to auto dealerships to help dealers with demanding customers they can’t seem to please. Members of this team believe in the power of saying “Yes” instead of “No.” They have the authority to refund the entire price of the car, even if it’s 10 years old. That’s their line in the sand – their last resort. They can get right up to it but can’t go past it. And by the way, they have never made it to that last resort. They have always found other ways to make discontented customers happy without getting to that line.

The key is training, but it isn’t just imparted in one session to tell employees what to do – or not do. It’s about continuously sharing stories of what other employees are doing to meet customers’ needs and demands, all without crossing the line in the sand. When an employee does something right, congratulate them and share the example with others. And if they do something wrong, or in other words, if they cross the line, turn it into a learning opportunity that is also shared with others. Routinely sharing examples helps employees recognize their opportunities to delight their customers.

Some examples of “breaking the rules” might be honoring a warranty that expired a month ago – or stretching a 14-day return policy to the 15th or 16th day. Some retail organizations, like Nordstrom, have an easy, no-questions-asked return policy. Even though the employees at Nordstrom aren’t breaking the rules, the customer feels as if they are going above and beyond. That’s all this really is. Making customers feel like you are on their side, willing to be flexible and giving them reasons to say, “I’ll be back!”

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Fear is a Leading Indicator of Personal Growth

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Fear is a Leading Indicator of Personal Growth

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When was the last time you did something that scared you? And a more important follow-on question: How did you push through your fear and turn it into action?

Fear is real. Our bodies make it, but it’s real. And the feelings we create around fear are real, and so are the inhibitions we wrap around those feelings. But because we have the authority to make the fear, create the feelings, and wrap the inhibitions, we also have the authority to unmake, un-create, and unwrap.

Fear can feel strong. Whether it’s tightness in the gut, coldness in the chest, or lushness in the face, the physical manifestations in the body are recognizable and powerful. The sensations around fear are strong enough to stop us in our tracks. And in the wild of a bygone time, that was fear’s job – to stop us from making a mistake that would kill us. And though we no longer venture into the wild, fear responds to family dynamics, social situations, interactions at work, as if we still live in the wild.

To dampen the impact of our bodies’ fear response, the first step is to learn to recognize the physical sensations of fear for what they are – sensations we make when new situations arise. To do that, feel the sensations, acknowledge your body made them, and look for the novelty, or divergence from our expectations, that the sensations stand for. In that way, you can move from paralysis to analysis. You can move from fear as a blocker to fear as a leading indicator of personal growth.

Fear is powerful, and it knows how to create bodily sensations that scare us. But, that’s the chink in the armor that fear doesn’t want us to know. Fear is afraid to be called by name, so it generates these scary sensations so it can go on controlling our lives as it sees fit. So, next time you feel the sensations of fear in your body, welcome fear warmly and call it by name. Say something like, “Hello Fear. Thank you for visiting with me. I’d like to get to know you better. Can you stay for a coffee?”

You might find that Fear will engage in a discussion with you and apologize for causing you trouble. Fear may confess that it doesn’t like how it treats you and acknowledge that it doesn’t know how to change its ways. Or, it may become afraid and squirt more fear sensations into your body. If that happens, tell Fear that you understand it’s just doing what it evolved to do, and repeat your offer to sit with it and learn more about its ways.

The objective of calling Fear by name is to give you a process to feel and validate the sensations and then calm yourself by looking deeply at the novelty of the situation. By looking squarely into Fear’s eyes, it will slowly evaporate to reveal the nugget of novelty it was cloaking. And with the novelty in your sights, you can look deeply at this new situation (or context or interpersonal dynamic) and understand it for what it is. Without Fear’s distracting sensations, you will be pleasantly surprised with your ability to see the situation for what it is and take skillful action.

So, when Fear comes, feel the sensations. Don’t push them away. Instead, call Fear by name. Invite Fear to tell its story, and get to know it. You may find that accepting Fear for what it is can help you grow your relationship with Fear into a partnership where you help each other grow.

Image credit: Pixabay

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A Tipping Point for Organizational Culture

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A Tipping Point for Organizational Culture

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

Like millions of others globally, I watched with fascination, the sensational and striking spectacle of the ceremony, significant symbolism, spectacular artifacts, and rituals at the recent King of England’s majestic coronation. At the same time, I allowed my mind to wander and wondered how this visually stunning and unrivaled British ceremony would impact the nations and realms’ culture and leadership, today and in the future, wondering if, indeed, it is at a cultural tipping point.

Where it is believed, by some, that the coronation made “two statements of great importance for today’s world about the place of religion in public life and the importance and meaning of the nation”. Acknowledging that such a monumental and marvelous event is indicative of a cultural tipping point, not only for the people it embraces but also for organizations, nations, and realms as a whole, to search for what is meaningful and valued by its people.

Making the connection

My mind wandered and made some obvious connections between the core and common elements that embody both organizational, and national cultural realms – the values, beliefs, assumptions, and mindsets that drive key behaviors and deliver the common implicit messages. As well as the disciplined systems and processes that deliver the results, the rituals that are enacted, and finally, the artifacts whose symbols represent what the culture values.

Maintaining relevance and engagement 

Like the monarchy, what do organizations need to do to maintain relevance and engagement to thrive in unstable and uncertain times, especially when their existence and legacies are being questioned and evaluated by the people they serve?

At a pivotal time when new sets of global, societal, and organizational demands are being made, largely as a result of the fourth industrial revolution, encompassing the convergence of exponential technologies impacting all of us globally.

At the same time, we are all still affected by the consequences of the global pandemic-induced lockdowns, impacting every fabric of our social and civic structures in our world today.

A case study for leveraging cultural tipping points differently 

The coronation of King Charles III provides us with a great case study of an outstanding and remarkable display of English cultural attributes.

This enables us to ask some serious questions about how national and organizational cultures and leadership in times of exponential change, like today, might thrive with uncertainty and co-create solutions to some of the most complex global challenges, by leveraging the range of cultural tipping points differently.

A range of organizational cultural tipping points

We are in effect, experiencing globally a range of cultural tipping points:

  1. At the macro level, according to a recent article here in Australia, where King Charles still resides as our head of state, the local SMH states that this realm is in a state of flux:

“The King is head of state in 15 countries. More than half of the so-called “realm states” are in the Caribbean and most of them are bailing out. Barbados two years ago, Jamaica probably next year. Belize, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are planning their exit as well”.

  1. At the micro level, according to Mc Kinsey & Co, in a recent article “New Leadership for a new era of thriving organizations” stated that organizations and leadership are also in a state of flux:

“Organizations such as Allianz, Haier, Microsoft, and Nucor are transforming their industries with a new organizational approach that seeks to be open, fluid, and adaptable; unleashes the collective energy, passion, and capabilities of its people; reimagines strategy; and focuses on delivering greater value to all stakeholders”.

“Their cultures support a more open, collaborative, and emergent way of working. And the shift to this new kind of model changes the way businesspeople must lead”.

Going back to culture and leadership fundamentals

Because culture and leadership are, according to Edgar H. Schein “two sides of the same coin and cannot understand one without the other” we have to be in charge and focused to intentionally, constructively, and creatively manage their interdependence.

He also states that culture matters because it is a “powerful, tacit, and often unconscious set of forces that determine both our individual and collective behaviors, ways of perceiving, thought patterns, and values”.

If we do not intentionally and strategically take charge, focus, and leverage these forces, we will simply always be at the effect of them, as they take us down the path of least resistance, remain implicit, and will not deliver the results we want and need in a disruptive world.

Going back to culture and leadership fundamentals

Because culture and leadership are, according to Edgar H. Schein “two sides of the same coin and cannot understand one without the other” we have to be in charge and focused to intentionally, constructively, and creatively manage their interdependence.

He also states that culture matters because it is a “powerful, tacit, and often unconscious set of forces that determine both our individual and collective behaviors, ways of perceiving, thought patterns, and values”.

If we do not intentionally and strategically take charge, focus, and leverage these forces, we will simply always be at the effect of them, as they take us down the path of least resistance, remain implicit, and will not deliver the results we want and need in a disruptive world.

Sharing the key messages

My mind then wandered and considered what might be the key messages being communicated by this incredible series of marvelous events, and wondered how relevant and engaging they might be to people today:

  • A coronation signals the conferment of God’s grace upon a ruler,
  • A coronation appoints the king as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England,
  • A coronation is a joyous and celebratory event.

Back to the SMH “The people got what they wanted. The cheers in the Mall, the boulevard built for the adoration of royalty, were real, even if the masses were down on those for the Queen’s Jubilee.”

Impacting the future

It remains to be seen if this powerful, majestic, memorable, and significant once-in-a-lifetime ceremonial event will ultimately help unify or divide the English realm. Which it seems, is facing its own range of unique challenges and a controversial cultural tipping point, ultimately and seriously impacting its future viability.

Back to the SMH “But Charles’s big show might be his last great day. The last dance of a wheeling, brilliant circus that has entertained and beguiled but which soon enough, in its distant realms, will stutter and shrink and reel no more.”

Why does this matter?

This matters today because we are individually, and collectively at a range of social, civic, and organizational cultural tipping points.

Where our organization and leaders are also dancing many of our “last dances”, and “stutter and shrink and reel nor more” because, according to some, we are not strategically focussed on leveraging the culture and leadership basics:

  • Implicitly clarifying values that focus on delivering value that improves the quality of people’s lives that they appreciate and cherish and explicitly making them an active part of corporate life.
  • Ensuring that leaders role model and enact behaviors that demonstrate the values in action, where people are accountable and rewarded by rigorous systems and supportive disciplined, and agile processes.
  • Co-creating powerful sets of rituals, symbols, and artifacts, aligned to the values, that deliver the “new architectures” to create permission, safety, and trust that drive collaboration, experimentation, innovation, inclusion, and sustainability.
  • Communicating engaging and inclusive messages that resonate creativity, respect, and appreciation for people, profit, and the planet.

Shifting the organizational cultural tipping points

It’s time to transform leadership to transform organizations, in ways that are self-aware and inspiring, meaningful and purposeful, equitable and sustainable, with increasing speed, resilience, and efficiency to guide organizational cultures and leadership that:

  • Helps people navigate and balance in-person and remote work, be mentally healthy and well, and make the way for both applied AI and human skills development.
  • Develops new rules for attracting and retaining people, close the capability chasm and walk the talent tightropes to better equip, empower and harness people’s harness collective intelligence to make both the organization and the world better places.
  • Creates, invents, and innovates new ways of thinking, and acting that ultimately shift the range of cultural tipping points to meet new sets of global, societal, and organizational demands and challenges emerging in the 21st century, and lets go of what is no longer relevant to better serve humanity as a whole.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, is a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, which can be customised as a bespoke corporate learning program.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique innovation context. Find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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3 Innovation Types Not What You Think They Are

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But They Do Determine Your Success

3 Innovation Types Not What You Think They Are

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

The Official Story

When discussing innovation, you must be specific so people know what you expect. This is why so many thought leaders, consultants, and practitioners preach the importance of defining different types of innovation.

  • Clayton Christensen encourages focusing on WHY innovation is happening – improve performance, improve efficiency, or create markets – in his 2014 HBR article.
  • The classic Core/Adjacent/Transformational model focuses on WHAT is changing – target customer, offering, financial model, and resources and processes.
  • McKinsey’s 3 Horizons focus on WHEN the results are achieved – this year, 2-3 years, 3-6 years.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the options and worry about which approach is “best.”  But, like all frameworks, they’re all a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and the best one is the one that will be used and get results in your organization.

The REAL story

Everything in the official story is true, but not the whole truth.

“Innovation” is not peanut butter. 

You can’t smear it all over everything and expect deliciousness.

When doing innovation, you must remember your customer – the executives who make decisions, allocate resources, and can accelerate or decimate your efforts.

More importantly, you need to remember their Jobs to be Done (JTBD) – keep my job, feel safe and respected, and be perceived as competent/a rising star – because these jobs define the innovations that will get to market.

Three (3) REAL types of innovation

SAFE – The delightful solution to decision-makers’ JTBD

Most closely aligned with Core innovation, improving performance or efficiency, and Horizon 1 because the focus is on improving what exists in a way that will generate revenue this year or next. Decision-makers feel confident because they’ve “been there and done that” (heck, doing “that” is probably what got them promoted in the first place). In fact, they’re more likely to get in trouble for NOT investing in these types of innovations than they are for investing in them.

STRETCH – The Good Enough solution

Most like Adjacent innovation because they allow decision-makers to keep one foot in the known while “stretching” their other foot into a new (to them) area. This type of innovation makes decision-makers nervous because they don’t have all the answers, but they feel like they at least know what questions to ask. Progress will require more data, and decisions will take longer than most intrapreneurs want. But eventually, enough time and resources (and ego/reputation) will be invested that, unless the team recommends killing it, the project will launch.

SPLATTER – The Terrible solution

No matter what you call them – transformational, radical, breakthrough, disruptive, or moonshots – these innovations make everyone’s eyes light up before reality kicks in and crushes our dreams. These innovations “define the next chapter of our business” and “disrupt ourselves before we’re disrupted.”  These innovations also require decision-makers to let go of everything they know and wander entirely into the unknown. To invest resources in the hope of seeing the return (and reward) come back to their successor (or successor’s successor). To defend their decisions, their team, and themselves when things don’t go exactly as planned.

How to find the REAL type that will get real results.

  1. “You said you want X. Would you describe that for me?” (you may need to give examples). When I worked at Clayton Christensen’s firm, executives would always call and ask for our help to create a disruptive innovation. When I would explain what they were actually asking for (something with “good enough” performance and a low selling price that appeals to non-consumers), they would back away from the table, wave their hands, and say, “Oh, not that. We don’t want that.”
  2. “How much are you willing to risk?”  If they’re willing to go to their boss to ask for resources, they’re willing to Stretch. If they’re willing to get fired, they’re willing to Splatter. If everything needs to stay within their signing authority, it’s all about staying Safe.
  3. “What would you need to see to risk more?”  As an innovator, you’ll always want more freedom to push boundaries and feel confident that you can convince others to see things your way. But before you pitch Stretch to a boss that wants Safe, or Splatter to a boss barely willing to Stretch, learn what they need to change their minds. Maybe it will be worth your effort, maybe it won’t. Better to know sooner rather than later.

Image credits: Pixabay

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How Networks Power Transformation

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How Networks Power Transformation

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In February 2004, Viacom announced that it would spin off Blockbuster Video into its own independent company, which gave its CEO, John Antioco, the opportunity to begin addressing the disruptive threat emanating from Netflix head on. He developed a viable strategy, executed it well, but in the end his efforts were for naught.

Around the same time General Stanley McChrystal was tapped to take command of Special Forces in Iraq. Much like Antioco and Blockbuster, he faced a disruptive threat in the form of Al Qaeda that, using unconventional tactics, threatened to thwart his efforts. Unlike Antioco, however, McChrystal succeeded brilliantly.

We tend to think about transformation in terms of strategy and tactics, but if that was all there was to it, Blockbuster would still be thriving today. As I explain in Cascades, the difference between Antioco and McChrystal wasn’t that one had a good plan and the other didn’t, but that McChrystal saw that he had to rewire the networks in his organization.

Why Blockbuster Really Failed

Today, Blockbuster is a cautionary tale, but for all the wrong reasons. When the spinoff was announced, Antioco moved quickly to build an online rental business and remove the late fees that so many found annoying. Later, in 2006, he created the Total Access program that allowed customers rent DVDs online and return them in stores.

The convenience of the Total Access program was something that Netflix couldn’t match and almost immediately Blockbuster began to surpass Netflix in adding new subscribers. Yet within a few months, a compensation dispute arose between Antioco and the corporate raider Carl Icahn, who had gotten control of the company. Antioco left, the new CEO reversed the strategy and Blockbuster declared bankruptcy in 2010.

The tensions had actually been building for some time. Antioco’s shift to the online business made franchisees, many of whom had their life’s savings tied up in Blockbuster stores, uneasy. The changes were also costly, which depressed earnings and made investors and analysts skeptical. The stock price cratered.

It was the low stock price that led Icahn to buy up stock in Blockbuster, a proxy fight that allowed him to take control of the company’s board, the compensation dispute, Antioco’s departure and the reversal of the strategy. What really killed Blockbuster wasn’t external competition, but internal opposition.

Addressing The Internal Struggle

While Antioco framed the challenge Blockbuster faced largely in terms of strategy and tactics, McChrystal saw his task as an internal struggle. His forces were among the best in the world and were winning every battle. Yet somehow, they were losing the war and losing it badly.

As McChrystal would later write, “the world had outpaced us. In the time it took us to move a plan from creation to approval, the battlefield for which the plan had been devised would have changed. By the time it had been implemented, the plan—however ingenious in its initial design—was often irrelevant.”

So instead of trying to come up with better plans, McChrystal sought to change how his organization functioned. The problem, as he saw it, was one of interoperability. His forces needed not only to work with each other, but also partner agencies and other stakeholders, in order to succeed.

“I needed to shift my focus from moving pieces on the board to shaping the ecosystem,” McChrystal would remember. The moves paid off. The tide of the war soon shifted and the forces under his command would achieve their major objectives.

Rewiring Networks

The main difference between Antioco and McChrystal had less to do with their actions than it did with their mindsets. Where Antioco saw his task in terms of planning and execution, McChrystal saw his in terms of connection. “We began to make progress when we started looking at these relationships as just that: relationships— parts of a network, not cogs in a machine or outputs and inputs,” he would later write.

Antioco would take a very different approach. He set up the Blockbuster Online team in a warehouse down the street its Dallas headquarters. That allowed him to pursue the online strategy with little disruption to operations in the core business, but it also allowed suspicion and fear to fester and grow.

McChrystal, on the other hand, moved to forge links anywhere he could. He started embedding intelligence analysts into commando teams and vice versa. Liaison officer positions, traditionally given to marginal performers or those nearing retirement, were now earmarked for the very best operators.

Moves like these slowed down the individual teams — commandos in business suits placed at embassies don’t kill many terrorists — but that wasn’t the point, building networks of trust and interoperability was. Over the next few years, the effectiveness of his organization improved markedly and overall operating efficiency improved by a factor of seventeen.

Rethinking Leadership For A Networked Age

To a large degree, the most important difference between Antioco and McChrystal was how they saw their role as leaders. Antioco was truly a brilliant strategist and had built an enormously successful career devising effective plans and driving efficient execution. He had encountered opposition before, but had always been able to prevail by showing results.

McChrystal came to see things differently. “I began to reconsider the nature of my role as a leader,” he would later write. “The wait for my approval was not resulting in any better decisions, and our priority should be reaching the best possible decision that could be made in a time frame that allowed it to be relevant.

In other words, where Antioco saw a vertical hierarchy for carrying out tasks efficiently, McChrystal saw a horizontal network of connections which needed to be cultivated. Where Antioco built a strong senior management team to drive his strategy, McChrystal forged shared values throughout his organization so that units could act independently.

The truth is that we need to reimagine leadership for a networked age to focus less on driving strategy and tactics and more on widening and deepening connections in networks. Or, as McChrystal put it, “The role of the senior leader was no longer that of a controlling puppet master, but that of an empathetic crafter of culture.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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Sprint Toward the Innovation Action

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Sprint Toward the Innovation Action

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Companies have control over one thing: how to allocate their resources. Companies allocate resources by deciding which projects to start, accelerate, and stop; whom to allocate to the projects; how to go about the projects; and whom to hire, invest in, and fire. That’s it.

Taking a broad view of project selection to include starting, accelerating, and stopping projects, as a leader, what is your role in project selection, or, at a grander scale, initiative selection? When was the last time you initiated a disruptive yet heretical new project from scratch? When was the last time you advocated for incremental funding to accelerate a floundering yet revolutionary project? When was the last time you stopped a tired project that should have been put to rest last year? And because the projects are the only thing that generates revenue for your company, how do you feel about all that?

Without your active advocacy and direct involvement, it’s likely the disruptive project won’t see the light of day. Without you to listen to the complaints of heresy and actively disregard them, the organization will block the much-needed disruption. Without your brazen zeal, it’s likely the insufficiently-funded project won’t revolutionize anything. Without you to put your reputation on the line and decree that it’s time for a revolution, the organization will starve the project and the revolution will wither. Without your critical eye and thought-provoking questions, it’s likely the tired project will limp along for another year and suck up the much-needed resources to fund the disruptions, revolutions, and heresy.

Now, I ask you again. How do you feel about your (in)active (un)involvement with starting projects that should be started, accelerating projects that should be accelerated, and stopping projects that should be stopped?

And with regard to project staffing, when was the last time you stepped in and replaced a project manager who was over their head? Or, when was the last time you set up a recurring meeting with a project manager whose project was in trouble? Or, more significantly, when was the last time you cleared your schedule and ran toward the smoke of an important project on fire? Without your involvement, the over-their-head project manager will drown. Without your investment in a weekly meeting, the troubled project will spiral into the ground. Without your active involvement in the smoldering project, it will flame out.

As a leader, do you have your fingers on the pulse of the most important projects? Do you have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to know which projects need help? And do you have the chops to step in and do what must be done? And how do you feel about all that?

As a leader, do you know enough about the work to provide guidance on a major course change? Do you know enough to advise the project team on a novel approach? Do you have the gumption to push back on the project team when they don’t want to listen to you? As a leader, how do you feel about that?

As a leader, you probably have direct involvement in important hiring and firing decisions. And that’s good. But, as a leader, how much of your time do you spend developing young talent? How many hours per week do you talk to them about the details of their projects and deliverables? How many hours per week do you devote to refactoring troubled projects with the young project managers? And how do you feel about that?

If you want to grow revenue, shape the projects so they generate more revenue. If you want to grow new businesses, advocate for projects that create new businesses. If you need a revolution, start revolutionary projects and protect them. And if you want to accelerate the flywheel, help your best project managers elevate their game.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Moneyball and the Beginning, Middle, and End of Innovation

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Moneyball and the Beginning, Middle, and End of Innovation

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Recently, pitchers and catchers reported to MLB Spring Training facilities in Florida and Arizona.  For baseball fans, this is the first sign of Spring, an occasion that heralds months of warmth and sunshine, ballparks filled (hopefully) with cheering fans, dinners of beers and brats, and the undying belief that this year will be the year.

Of course, there was still a lot of dark, dreary cold between then and Opening Day.  Perfect weather for watching baseball movies – Bull Durham, Major League, The Natural, Field of Dreams, and, of course, Moneyball.

Moneyball is based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis and chronicles the 2002 Oakland Athletics season.  The ’02 Oakland A’s, led by General Manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), forever changed baseball by adopting an approach that valued rigorous statistical analysis over the collective wisdom of baseball insiders (coaches, scouts, front office personnel) when building a team.  This approach, termed “Moneyball,” enabled the A’s to reach the postseason with a team that cost only $44M in salary, compared to the NY Yankees that spent $125M to achieve the same outcome.

While the whole movie (and book) is a testament to the courage and perseverance required to challenge and change the status quo, time and again I come back to three lines that perfectly sum up the journey of every successful intrapreneur I’ve ever met.

The Beginning

“I know you’ve taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall…he always gets bloody…always always gets bloody.  This is threatening not just a way of doing business… but in their minds, it’s threatening the game. Really what it’s threatening is their livelihood, their jobs. It’s threatening the way they do things… and every time that happens, whether it’s the government, a way of doing business, whatever, the people who are holding the reins – they have their hands on the switch – they go batshit crazy.”

John Henry, Owner of the Boston Red Sox

Context

The 2002 season is over, and the A’s were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.  John Henry, an owner of the Boston Red Sox, has invited Bill Beane to Boston to offer him the Red Sox GM job.

Lesson

This is what you sign up for when you decide to be an Intrapreneur.  The more you challenge the status quo, the more you question how business is done, the more you ask Why and demand an answer, the closer you get to “tak(ing) it in the teeth.”

This is why courage, perseverance, and an unshakeable belief that things can and should be better are absolutely essential for intrapreneurs.  Your job is to run at the wall over and over until you get through it.

People will follow.  The Red Sox did.  They won the World Series in 2004, breaking an 84-year-old curse.

The Middle

“It’s a process, it’s a process, it’s a process”

Bill Beane

Context

Billy has to convince the ballplayers to forget all the habits that made them great and embrace the philosophy of Moneyball.  To stop stealing bases, turning double plays on bunts, and swinging for the fences and to start taking walks, throwing to first for the easy out, and prioritize getting on base over hitting a home run.

The players are confused and frustrated.  Suddenly, everything that they once did right is wrong and what was not valued is deeply prized.

Lesson

Innovation is something new that creates value.  Something new doesn’t just require change, it requires people to stop doing things that work and start doing things that seem strange or even wrong.

Change doesn’t happen overnight.  It’s not a switch to be flipped.  It’s a process to be learned.  It takes time, practice, reminders, and patience.

The End

“When you get an answer you’re looking for, hang up.”

Billy Beane

Context

In this scene, Billy has offered one of his players to multiple teams, searching for the best deal.  When the phone rings with a deal he likes, he and the other General Manager (GM) agree to it, Billy hangs up.  Even though the other GM was in the middle of a sentence.  When Peter Brand, the Assistant GM played by Jonah Hill, points out that Billy had just hung up on the other GM, Billy responds with this nugget of wisdom.

Lesson

It’s advice intrapreneurs should take very much to heart.  I often see Innovation teams walk into management presentations with long presentations, full of data and projections, anxious to share their progress, and hoping for continued funding and support.  When the meeting starts, a senior exec will say something like, “We’re excited by the progress we’re hearing about and what it will take to continue.”

That’s the cue to “hang up.”

Instead of starting the presentation from the beginning, start with “what it will take to continue.”  You got the answer you’re looking for – they’re excited about the progress you’ve made – don’t spend time giving them the info they already have or, worse, could raise questions and dim their enthusiasm.  Hang up on the conversation you want to have and have the conversation they want to have.

In closing

Moneyball was an innovation that fundamentally changed one of the most tradition-bound businesses in sports.  To be successful, it required someone willing to take it in the teeth, to coach people through a process, and to hang up when they got the answer they wanted.  It wasn’t easy but real change rarely is.

The same is true in corporations.  They need their own Bill Beanes.

Are you willing to step up to the plate?

Image credits: Pixabay

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A Shortcut to Making Strategic Trade-Offs

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A Shortcut to Making Strategic Trade-Offs

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

I read with interest the following article posted on hbr.org. It highlights the challenge facing every Executive Leadership Team in securing alignment around what they should prioritize, short versus long-term gains, high versus low-risk initiatives, and disruptive versus sustaining innovation. The article notes that conflicts requiring sacrifices are common across industries, and that to handle them better, CEOs should introduce a “calculus of sacrifice” to ensure greater alignment in decision-making:

“By making the degree of sacrifice explicit among such conflicting objectives and quantifying it, CEOs can reframe decision-making and give executives the tools to make decisions aligned with their vision. Instead of advocacy-based deliberations, in which proponents of different courses of action make affirmative cases, discussion focuses on sacrifice: How much of one thing are we willing to give up in order to get more of something else?”

I take this to be a very reasonable point of departure, but from here the article goes on to propose a lengthy set of dialogs between the CEO and every member of the ELT digging into their personal approach to these issues and working toward a collaborative consensus about the best course of action. I don’t think this is either realistic or efficient. Instead, let me advocate for a zone-based approach.

As readers of this blog will be aware, the zone management model identifies four “zones of interest” within any enterprise, each with its own mission, metrics, and governance model, as follows:

  1. Performance Zone: Focus on executing this year’s annual plan with particular emphasis on meeting or beating the financial guidance given to investors.
  2. Productivity Zone: Focus on supporting the Performance Zone by attending to all the processes required to operate the enterprise efficiently, effectively, and in compliance with regulations.
  3. Incubation Zone: Focus on disruptive innovations that could have substantial impact on the enterprise’s future success, and develop real options for incorporating them into a future portfolio.
  4. Transformation Zone: Focus on taking a single disruptive innovation to scale, thereby changing the overall valuation of the enterprise’s portfolio.

Each of these four zones entails a different “calculus of sacrifice,” one that is built into the mission and metrics of that zone. Rather than ask the Executive Leadership Team to chart a path forward by keeping all four in mind, a simpler way forward is to use the annual budgeting process to allocate a percentage of the total available resources of the enterprise to each one of the four zones. The question is not, in other words, what should we do with this specific situation, but rather, how much of our operating budget do we want to spend in each of the four areas? It is still a tough question to answer, but it is bounded, and you can reach closure on it at any given point in time simply by having the CEO say, this is what it is going to be.

Once the allocations are settled, then decision-making can go much faster, because each member of the ELT is making calls in one, and only one, zone, using the calculus of that zone and ignoring those of the other three. In other words, stop trying to make your colleagues more or less innovative or risk-averse, and instead, let them play to their strengths in whatever zone represents their best fit.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Geoffrey Moore

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‘Innovation’ is Killing Innovation. How Do We Save It?

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'Innovation' is Killing Innovation. How Do We Save It?

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

How do people react when you say “innovation?”

  1. Lean forward, eyes glittering, eager to hear more
  2. Stare blankly and nod slowly
  3. Roll their eyes and sigh
  4. Wave their hands dismissively and tell you to focus on other, more urgent priorities.

If you answered C, you’re in good company.

Innovation is a buzzword. Quick searches of Amazon and Google Scholar result in 100,000+ books and 200,000+ articles on the topic, while a scan of the SEC’s database yields 8,000 K-1 filings with the word “innovation” in 2020 alone.

“Innovation” is meaningless, like all buzzwords. There’s a reason that practitioners and consultants insist on establishing a common definition before starting innovation work. I’ve been in meetings with ten people, asked each person to define “innovation,” and heard 12 different answers.

But all this pales in comparison to the emotional response it elicits. Some people get incredibly excited, bouncing out of their seats, ready to bring their latest idea to life (whether it should be brought to life is a different story.). Some nod solemnly as if confronted by a necessary evil, accepting a fate beyond their control. Most roll their eyes because they’ve been through this before and, like all management “flavors of the month,” this too shall pass.

“Innovation” is killing Innovation

The emotions and opinions we tie to “innovation” overwhelm the dictionary definition, making it difficult to believe that the process and, more importantly, the result will be different this time.

We need a different word.

One that has the same meaning and none of the baggage.

This may feel impossible, but if “literally” can mean “figuratively” (do NOT get me started on this 2013 decision) and the Oxford English Dictionary can add 700 new words in 2022, surely we can figure this out.

10 alternatives to ‘Innovation’

The following options are sourced primarily from conversations with other experts and practitioners.

  1. Invention
  2. Ideation
  3. Incubation
  4. Improvement
  5. Creation
  6. Design
  7. Growth
  8. Transformation
  9. Business R&D*

Yes, #10 is intentionally missing because…

What do you think?

Finding a new word (or maybe changing how “innovation” is perceived, understood, and pursued) is a group effort. One person alone can’t do it, and a few people on a call complaining about the state of things certainly won’t (we’ve tried).

What do you think?

Do we need a different word for “innovation,” or should we keep it and deal with the baggage?

If we need a different word, what could it be? What do YOU use?

If we keep it, how do you combat the misunderstanding, eye rolls, and emotional baggage?

Let us know in the comments.

* This option came directly from a conversation with a client last week, and I kinda love it. 

We discussed the challenge of getting engineers to stay in a discovery mindset rather than jumping immediately to solutions. Even though they work in R&D (the function), he observed that 99.9% of their work (and, honestly, their careers) is spent on the D in R&D (development).

That’s when it clicked.

Research begins with investigation and inquiry to understand a broad problem and then uses the resulting insights to solve a specific problem. It is a learning process, just like the early stages of Innovation. And, just like in the early days of Innovation, you can’t predict the result or routinize the work.

Development focuses on bringing the “new or modified product or process to production,” Just like the later phases of Innovation when prototyping and experimentation are required, and risk is driven out of the proposition.

Traditional R&D focuses on technical and scientific exploration and solutioning,

Innovation focuses on market, consumer/customer, and business model exploration and solutioning.

It is R&D for the business. 

Business R&D.

Image credits: Pixabay

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