Tag Archives: Management

Three Ways Strategic Idleness Accelerates Innovation and Growth

Three Ways Strategic Idleness Accelerates Innovation and Growth

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“What will you do on vacation?” a colleague asked.

“Nothing,” I replied.

The uncomfortable silence that followed spoke volumes. In boardrooms and during quarterly reviews, we celebrate constant motion and back-to-back calendars.  Yet, study after study shows that the most successful leaders embrace a counterintuitive edge: strategic idleness.

While your competitors exhaust themselves in perpetual busyness, research shows that deliberate mental downtime activates the brain networks responsible for strategic foresight, innovative solutions, and clear decision-making.

The Status Trap of Busy-ness

At one company I worked with, there was only one acceptable answer to “How are you doing?”  “Busy.”  The answer wasn’t a way to avoid an awkward hallway conversation. It was social currency. If you’re busy, you’re valuable.  If you’re fine, you’re expendable.

A 2017 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research confirmed what Columbia, Georgetown, and Harvard researchers discovered: being busy is now a status symbol, signaling “competence, ambition, and scarcity in the market.”

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: your packed schedule is undermining the very outcomes you’re accountable for delivering.

Your Brain’s Innovation Engine

Neuroscience has confirmed what innovators have long practiced: Strategic Idleness. While you consciously “do nothing,” your default mode network (DMN) engages, making unexpected connections across stored information and experiences.

Recent research published in the journal Brain demonstrates that the DMN is activated during creative thinking, with a specific pattern of neural activity occurring during the search for novel ideas. This network is essential for both spontaneous thought and divergent thinking, core elements of innovation.

So if you’ve always wondered why you get your best ideas in the shower, it’s because your DMN is powered all the way up.

Three Ways to Power-Up Your Engine

Here are three executive-grade approaches to strategic idleness without more showers or productivity sacrifices:

  1. Pause for 10 Minutes Before Making a Decision
    Before making high-stakes decisions, implement a mandatory 10-minute idleness period. No email, no conversation—just sitting. Research on cognitive recovery suggests that this brief reset activates your DMN, allowing for a more comprehensive consideration of variables and strategic implications.
  2. Take a Walking Meeting with Yourself
    Block 20 minutes in your calendar each week for a solo walking meeting (and then take the walk!). No other attendees, no agenda, just walking. Researchers at Stanford University found that walking increases creative output by an average of 60% compared to sitting. The combination of physical movement and mental space creates ideal conditions for your brain to generate solutions to problems you didn’t know you had.
  3. Schedule 3-5 minutes of Strategic Silence before key discussions
    Research on group dynamics shows that silent reflection before discussion can reduce groupthink and increase the quality of ideas by helping team members process information more deeply. Before you dive into a critical topic at your next leadership meeting, schedule 3-5 minutes of silence. Explain that this silence is for individual reflection and planning for the upcoming discussion, not for checking email or taking bathroom breaks. Acknowledge that it will feel awkward, but that it’s critical for the upcoming discussion and decision.

Remember, You’re Not Doing Nothing If You’re being Strategically Idle

The most valuable asset in your organization isn’t technology, capital, or even the products you sell.  It’s the quality of thinking that goes into critical decisions. Strategic idleness isn’t inaction; it’s the deliberate cultivation of conditions that foster innovation, clear judgment, and strategic foresight.

While your competitors remain trapped in perpetual busyness, by using executive advantage of strategic idleness, your next breakthrough will present itself.

This is an updated version of the June 9, 2019, post, “Do More Nothing.”

Image credit: Unsplash, Laura Weiss

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How Innovation Tools Help You Stay Safe

Risk Management in Uncertain Times

How Innovation Tools Help You Stay Safe

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Risk management is critical in uncertain times. But traditional approaches don’t always help when volatility, ambiguity, and complexity are off the charts.

What many leaders overlook in their rush to safety is that many of the most effective tools for managing risk come from an unexpected place: innovation.

The Counterintuitive Truth About Risk Management

Risk Management’s purpose isn’t to eliminate risks. It’s to proactively identify, plan for, and minimize risk.  Innovation is inherently uncertain, so its tools are purpose-built to proactively identify, plan for, and minimize risk.  They also help you gain clarity and act decisively—even in the most chaotic environments.

Here are just three of the many tools that successful companies use to find clarity in chaos.

Find the Root Cause

When performance dips, most leaders jump to fix symptoms. True risk management means digging deeper. Root cause analysis—particularly the “5 Whys”—helps uncover what’s really going on.

Toyota made this famous. In one case, a machine stopped working. The first “why” pointed to a blown fuse. The fifth “why” revealed a lack of maintenance systems. Solving that root issue prevented future breakdowns.

IBM reportedly used a similar approach to reduce customer churn. Pricing and product quality weren’t the problem—friction during onboarding was. After redesigning that experience, retention rose by 20%.

Focus on What You Can Actually Control

Trying to manage everything is a recipe for burnout. Better risk management starts by separating what you can control, what you can influence, and what you can only monitor. Then, allocate resources accordingly.

After 9/11, most airlines focused on uncontrollable external threats. Southwest Airlines doubled down on what they could control: operational efficiency, customer loyalty, and employee morale. They avoided layoffs and emerged stronger.

Unilever used a similar approach during the global supply chain crisis. Instead of obsessing over global shipping delays, they diversified suppliers and localized sourcing—reducing risk without driving up costs.

Attack Your “Deal Killer” Assumptions

Every plan is based on assumptions. Great risk management means identifying the ones that could sink your strategy—and testing them before you invest too much time or money.

Dropbox did this early on. Instead of building a full product, they made a simple video to test whether people wanted file-syncing software. They validated demand, secured funding, and avoided wasted development.

GE applied this logic in its FastWorks program. One product team tested their idea with a quick prototype. Customer feedback revealed a completely different need—saving the company millions in misdirected R&D.

Risk Management Needs Innovation’s Tools for a VUCA World

The best risk managers don’t just react to uncertainty—they prepare for it. These tools aren’t just for innovation—they’re practical, proven ways to reduce risk, respond faster, and make smarter decisions when the future feels murky.

What tools or strategies have helped you manage risk during uncertain times? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Image credit: Pexels

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When Scaling Innovation Backfires

How One Company Became the Theranos of Marshmallows

When Scaling Innovation Backfires

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Here’s a head-scratcher when it comes to scaling innovation: What happens when your innovative product is a hit with customers, but you still fail spectacularly? Just ask the folks behind Smashmallow, the gourmet marshmallow company that went from sweet success to sticky situation faster than you can say “s’mores.”

The Recipe for Initial Success

Jon Sebastiani sold his premium jerky company Krave to Hershey for $240 million and thought he’d found his next billion-dollar idea in fancy French marshmallows. And initially, it looked like he had. 

Smashmallow’s artisanal, flavor-packed treats weren’t just another fluffy, tasteless sugar puff – they created an entirely new snack category. Customers couldn’t get enough of their handcrafted, churro-dusted, chocolate-chip-studded clouds of happiness. The company hit $5 million in sales in its first year, doubled that the next, and was available in 15,000 stores nationwide in only its third year.

Sounds like a startup fairy tale, right? Right!  If we’re talking about the original Brothers Grimm versions.  Corporate innovators start taking notes.

The Candy-coated Vision

Sebastiani and his investors weren’t content with building a successful premium regional brand. They wanted to become the Kraft of craft marshmallows, scaling from artisanal to industrial without losing what made the product special. It’s a story that plays out in corporations every day: the pressure to turn every successful pilot into a billion-dollar business.

So, they invested.  Big time.

They signed a contract with “an internationally respected builder of candy-making machines” to design and build a $3 million custom-built machine and another with a copacker to build an entirely new facility to accommodate the custom machine.

Bold visions require bold moves, and Sebastiani was a bold guy.

The Scale-up Meltdown

But boldness can’t overcome reality, and the custom machine couldn’t replicate the magic of handmade marshmallows. It couldn’t even make the marshmallows.

Starch dust created explosion hazards. Cinnamon wouldn’t stick. Workers couldn’t breathe through spice clouds. The handmade ethos of imperfect squares gave way to industrialized perfection. Each attempt to solve one problem created three more, like a game of confectionery whack-a-mole.

By 2022, Smashmallow was gone, leaving behind a cautionary tale about the gap between what customers value and what executives and investors want. The irony? They succeeded in their mission to disrupt the market – by 2028, the North American marshmallow market is projected to more than double its 2019 size, largely thanks to the premium category Smashmallow created. They just won’t be around to enjoy it.

A Bittersweet Paradox

For so many corporate innovators, this story hits close to home. How many promising projects died not because customers didn’t love them but because they couldn’t scale to “move the needle” for a multi-billion dollar corporation? A $15 million business might be a champagne-popping moment for an entrepreneur, but it barely registers as a rounding error on a Fortune 500 income statement.

This is the innovation paradox facing corporate innovators: The very pressure to go big or go home often destroys what makes an innovation special in the first place. It’s not enough to create something customers love – you must create something that can scale to satisfy the corporate appetite for growth.

Finding the Sweet Spot

The lesson isn’t that we should abandon ambitious scaling plans. Instead, we must be brutally honest about whether our drive for scale aligns with what makes our innovation valuable to customers. If it doesn’t, we must choose whether to scale back our ambitions (unlikely) or let go of our successful-but-small idea.   

After all, not every marshmallow needs to be a mountain, but every mountain climber (that’s you) needs a mountain.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Five Must Reads for 2025

Five Must Reads for 2025

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

‘Tis the season for “year in review” and “top 10 lists.”  As fun (and sometimes frightening) as it is to look back, it is just as fun (and sometimes frightening) to look ahead.  After all, as innovators, that is what we naturally do.  So, in anticipation of the year ahead, here are 5 Must Reads to make 2025 far more fun than frightening.

(listed in alphabetical order by author’s last name so I can’t be accused of playing favorites)

Pay Up! Unlocking Insider Secrets of Salary Negotiation by Kate Dixon

Pay Up! Unlocking Insider Secrets of Salary Negotiation
  • This book is for everyone, especially… people who want to earn what they deserve
  • This book solves the problem of…the black box that is compensation and the fear of negotiating for what you’re worth
  • This book creates value by… Outlining a step-by-step system to:
    • Understand key terms and concepts and apply them to your situation
    • Research the information you need to confidently and competently negotiate
    • Know what to say and do (and NOT say or do) in the moment
  • Why I love this book: Full disclosure – Kate and I are friends, so I’ve had a front-row seat to her wisdom and humor (how many compensation books invoke Beyonce?) and the jaw-dropping impact she gets for her clients.  I’ve even gifted this book to others because I know it works!

Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work by Whitney Johnson

Disrupt Yourself - Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work
  • This book is for everyone, especially… people who are rethinking their careers and are ready for change
  • This book solves the problem of… knowing how to start redefining your career (and yourself)
  • This book creates value by… Turning Clayton Christensen’s Theory of Disruption into four principles for self-disruption, including:
    • Identifying your disruptive strengths
    • Stepping backward or sideways to grow
    • Patiently waiting for your career (and legacy) to emerge
  • Why I love this book: Two quotes: (1) “Disruption starts as an inside game” and (2) “Constraints can be the perfect remedy if you are having a difficult time.”

Live Big! A Manifesto for a Creative Life by Rochelle Seltzer

Live Big! A Manifesto for a Creative Life
  • This book is for everyone, especially… people who want to experience daily joy and creativity
  • This book solves the problem of…feeling stuck in the day-to-day reality of life, uncertain whit how to begin, and afraid to make big, drastic changes
  • This book creates value by… Offering 20 tips for:
    • Becoming a person who Lives Big, including slowing down, aligning to your purpose, and being patient
    • Acting big, including listening to your intuition, embracing change, and carrying on
    • Savoring the small joys of life, including the gorgeous design of the book
  • Why I love this book: Rochelle’s Discovery Dozen exercise is a game-changer.  I learned this tool when she was my coach, and I have continued to use it for everything from naming my business, to deciding if/when/how to act on an opportunity, and writing articles.

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Steiner

The Coaching Habit - Say Less, Ask More - Change the Way You Lead Forever
  • This book is for everyone, especially... busy managers who want to be better people leaders
  • This book solves the problem of…balancing hands-on management with team empowerment and individual development
  • This book creates value by… Guiding you through seven questions that help you:
    • Work less hard while having more impact
    • Break cycles of team overdependence and workplace overwhelm
    • Turn coaching and feedback from an occasional formal event into a daily habit
  • Why I love this book: A copy of the 7 questions sits just below my monitor, reminding me to be curious, dig deeper, and that every decision is a choice to do one thing and not another.

Readers Choice!

Version 1.0.0
Version 1.0.0

It’s audience participation time!  In the comments below, drop YOUR recommendation for a 2025 Must Read.

Bonus points for telling us:

  • Who it’s for
  • Problem it solves
  • Value it creates
  • Why you love it

Image credit: MileZero, Misterinnovation.com

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The Twelve Killers of Innovation

A Corporate Carol About Why You’re Not Getting Results

The Twelve Killers of Innovation

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Last week, InnoLead published a collection of eleven articles describing the root causes and remedies for killers of innovation in large organizations.  Every single article is worth a read as they’re all written by experts and practitioners whose work I admire.

I was also inspired.

In the spirit of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, I gave into temptation, added my own failure mode, and decided to have a bit of fun.

The Twelve Killers of Innovation

(Inspired by the Twelve Days of Christmas yet relevant year-round)

On the twelfth day of innovating, management gave to me:

Twelve leaders short-term planning

Eleven long projects dragging

Ten cultures resisting

Nine decisions made too quickly

Eight competing visions

Seven goals left unclear

Six startups mistrusted

Five poorly defined risks

Four rigid structures

Three funding black holes

Two teams under-staffed

And a bureaucracy too entrenched to change

Want to write a happier song?

Each of the innovation killers can be fended off with enough planning, collaboration, and commitment.  To learn how, check out the articles:

Twelve leaders short-term planning – 3 Examples of Why Innovation is a Leadership Problem by Robyn Bolton, MileZero

Eleven long projects dragging – Failing Slow by Clay Maxwell, Peer Insight

Ten cultures resisting – How to Innovate When Resistance is Everywhere by Trevor Anulewicz, NTT DATA

Nine decisions made too quickly – Red Light, Green Light by Doug Williams, SmartOrg Inc.

Eight competing visions – The Five Most Common Innovation Failure Modes by Parker Lee, Territory Global

Seven goals left unclear – Mitigating Common Failure Modes by Jim Bodio, BRI Associates

Six startups mistrusted – Developing a New Corporate Innovation Model by Satish Rao, Newlab

Five poorly defined risks – Strategic Innovation is too Scary by Gina O’Connor, Babson College

Four rigid structures – Corporate Innovation is Dead by Ryan Larcom, High Alpha Innovation

Three funding black holes – Failure Modes by Jake Miller, The Engineered Innovation Group

Two teams under-staffed – Why Innovation Teams Fail by Jacob Dutton, Future Foundry

And a bureaucracy too entrenched to change – Building Resilient Teams by Frank Henningsen, HYPE Innovation

How are you going to make sure that you receive gifts and not coal this year for all your innovation work?

Image credit: Pexels

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Ignoring Your Customers is the Key to Happiness

Ignoring Your Customers is the Key to Happiness

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“Now I know why our researchers are so sad.”

Teaching at The Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) offers a unique perspective. By day, I engage with seasoned business professionals. By night, I interact with budding designers and artists, each group bringing vastly different experiences to the table.

Customer-centricity is the hill I will die on…
In my Product Innovation Lab course, students learn the innovation process and work in small teams to apply those lessons to the products they create.

We spend the first quarter of the course to problem-finding. It’s excruciating for everyone. Like their counterparts in business and engineering, they’re bursting with ideas, and they hate being slowed down. Despite data proving that poor product-market fit a leading cause of start-up failure and that 54% of innovations launched by big companies fail to reach $1M in sales (a paltry number given the scale of surveyed companies), they’re convinced their ideas are flawless.

We spend two weeks exploring Jobs to be Done and practicing interviewing techniques. But their first conversations sound more like interrogations than anything we did in class.

They return from their interviews and share what they learned. After each insight, I ask, “Why is that?” or “Why is that important?

Amazingly, they have answers.

While their first conversations were interrogations, once the nervousness fades, they remember their training, engage in conversations, and discover surprising and wonderful answers.

Yet the still prioritize the answers to “What” over answers to “Why?”

…Because it’s the hill that will kill me.
Every year, this cycle repeats. This year, I finally asked why, after weeks of learning that the answers to What questions are almost always wrong and Why questions are the only path to the right answers (and differentiated solutions with a sustainable competitive advantage), why do they still prioritize the What answers?

The answer was a dagger to my heart.

“That’s what the boss wants to know,” a student explained. “Bosses just want to know what we need to build so they can tell engineering what to make. They don’t care why we should make it or whether it’s different. In fact, it’s better if it’s not different.”

I tried to stay professional, but there was definitely a sarcastic tone when I asked how that was working.

“We haven’t launched anything in 18 months because no one likes what we build. We spend months on prototypes, show them to users, and they hate it. Then, when we ask the researchers to do more research because their last insights were wrong, they get all cra….OOOOHHHHHHHH…..”

(insert clouds parting, beams of sunlight shining down, and a choir of angels here)

“That’s why the researchers are so sad all the time! They always try to tell us the “Whys” behind the “Whats” but no one wants to hear it. We just want to know what to build to get to work. But we could create something people love if we understood why today’s things don’t work!”

Honestly, I didn’t know whether to drop the mic in triumph or flip the table in rage.

Ignorance may be bliss but obsolescence is not
It’s easy to ignore customers.

To send them surveys with pre-approved answers choices that can be quickly analyzed and neatly presented to management. To build exactly what customers tell you to build, even though you’re the expert on what’s possible and they only know what’s needed.

It’s easy to point to the surveys and prototypes and claim you are customer-centric. If only the customers would cooperate.

It’s much harder to listen to customers. To ask questions, listen to answers you don’t want to hear, and repeat those answers to more powerful people who want to hear them even less. To have the courage to share rough prototypes and to take the time to be curious when customers call them ugly.

So, if you want to be happy, keep pretending to care about your customers.

Pretty soon, you won’t have any left to bother you.

Image credit: Pexels

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How to Design Offsites That Generate Revenue

How to Design Offsites That Generate Revenue

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Corporate offsites – the phrase conjures images of everything from “mandatory fun” with colleagues to long and exhausting days debating strategy with peers.  Rarely are the images something that entice people to sit up and shout, “YEA!” But what if the reality could be something YEA! worthy?

That’s exactly what the authors of the recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, “Why Offsites Work – and How to Get the Most Out of Them,” describe and offer a guide to accomplish.

Offsites May Be the Answer to the WFH vs. RTO Debate

Offsites aren’t new but they’ve taken on a new role and new significance as companies grapple with how to manage Work from Home (WFH) and Return To Office (RTO) policies. 

As with most things in life, the pendulum swings from one extreme to another until eventually, finally, landing in a stable and neutral midpoint.  When the pandemic hit, we swung from every day in the office to every day at home.  Then society opened back up and corporate landlords came calling for rent, whether or not people were in the offices, so we swung back to Return to Office mandates.

Offsites, the authors suggest, may be the happy medium between the two extremes because offsites:

“give people opportunities for interactions that otherwise might not happen. Offsites create unique opportunities for employees to connect in person, forming new relationships and strengthening existing ones. As a result, offsites help people learn about others’ knowledge and build interpersonal trust, which are both critical ingredients for effective collaboration.”

Offsite Connections Lead to Collaborations that Generate ROI

After analyzing eight years of data from a global firm’s offsites and 350,000 “instances of formal working relationships”  for 750 employees, the authors found that intentionally designed offsites (more on that in a moment) yield surprisingly measurable and lasting results:

  • 24% more incoming requests for collaboration amongst attendees post vs. pre-offsite (silos busted!)
  • 17% of new connections were still active two years after the offsite (lasting change!)
  • $180,000 in net new revenue from collaborations within the first two months post offsite (real results!)

The benefits event extended to non-attendees because they “seemed to get the message that collaboration is important and wanted to demonstrate their commitment to being collaborative team players” and “likely identified new collaborators after the offsite through referrals.”

How to Design Offsites That Get Results

Four key strategies emerged from the authors’ research and work with over 100 other organizations:

  1. Design for the people in the audience, not the people on stage.  Poll attendees to understand their specific needs and goals, then design collaborative activities, not management monologues.
  2. Design for the new hires, not the tenured execs.  Create opportunities for new hires to meet, connect with, and work alongside more experienced colleagues.
  3. Set and communicate clear goals and expectations.  Once the offsite is designed and before it happens, tell people what to expect (the agenda) and why to expect it (your design intentions and goals).  Also, tell them how to make the most of the offsite opportunities by thinking about the skill and network gaps they want to fill.
  4. Track activities to measure ROI.  The connections, collaborations, and commitments that start at the offsite need to continue after it in the form of ongoing communication, greater collaboration, and talent engagement.  Yes, conduct a post-event survey immediately after the event but keep measuring every 2-3 months until the next offsite.  The data will reveal how well you performed against your goals and how to do even better the next time.

Offsites can be a powerful tool to build an organization’s culture and revenue, but only if they are thoughtfully designed to go beyond swanky settings, sermons from the stage, and dust-collecting swag and build the connections and collaborations that only start when people are together, in-person, outside of the office.

Image credit: Unsplash

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An Innovation Leadership Fable

Wisdom from the Waters

An Innovation Leadership Fable

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Once upon a time, in a lush forest, there lived a colony of industrious beavers known far and wide for their magnificent dams, which provided shelter and sustenance for many.

One day, the wise old owl who governed the forest decreed that all dams must be rebuilt to withstand the increasingly fierce storms that plagued their land. She gave the beavers two seasons to complete it, or they would lose half their territory to the otters.

The Grand Design: Blueprints and Blind Spots

The beaver chief, a kind fellow named Oakchew, called the colony together, inviting both the elder beavers, known for their experience and sage advice and the young beavers who would do the actual building.

Months passed as the elders debated how to build the new dams. They argued about mud quantities, branch angles, and even which mix of grass and leaves would provide structural benefit and aesthetic beauty.  The young beavers sat silently, too intimidated by their elders’ status to speak up.

Work Begins: Dams and Discord

As autumn leaves began to fall, Oakchew realized they had yet to start building. Panicked, he ordered work to commence immediately.

The young beavers set to work but found the new method confusing and impractical. As time passed, progress slowed, panic set in, arguments broke out, and the once-harmonious colony fractured.

One group insisted on precisely following the new process even as it became obvious that they would not meet the deadline.  Another reverted to their old ways, believing that a substandard something was better than nothing.  And one small group went rogue, retreating to the smallest stream to figure it out for themselves.

As the deadline grew closer, the beavers worked day and night, but progress was slow and flawed. In desperation, Oakchew called upon the squirrels to help, promising half the colony’s winter food stores.

Just as the first storm clouds gathered, Oakchew surveyed the completed dams. Many were built as instructed, but the rushed work was evident and showed signs of weakness. Most dams were built with the strength and craftsmanship of old but were likely to fail as the storms’ intensity increased. One stood alone and firm, roughly constructed with a mix of old and new methods.

Wisdom from the Waters: Experiments and Openness

Oakchew’s heart sank as he realized the true cost of their efforts. The beavers had met their deadline but at a great cost. Many were exhausted and resentful, some had left the colony altogether, and their once-proud craftsmanship was now shoddy and unreliable.

He called a final meeting to reflect on what had happened.  Before the elders could speak, Oakchew asked the young beavers for their thoughts.  The colony listened in silent awe as the young builders explained the flaws in the “perfect” process. The rogue group explained that they had started building immediately, learning from each failure, and continuously improving their design.

“We wasted so much time trying to plan the perfect dam,” Oakchew admitted to the colony. “If we had started building sooner and learned from our mistakes, we would not have paid such a high cost for success. We would not have suffered and lost so much if we had worked to ensure every beaver was heard, not just invited.”

From that day forward, the beaver colony adopted a new approach of experimentation, prototyping, and creating space for all voices to be heard and valued.  While it took many more seasons of working together to improve their dams, replenish their food stores, and rebuild their common bonds, the colony eventually flourished once more.

The Moral of the Story – (just in case it isn’t obvious)

The path to success is paved not with perfect plans but with the courage to act, the wisdom to learn from failures, and the openness to embrace diverse ideas. True innovation arises when we combine the best of tradition with the boldness of experimentation.

Image credit: Pixabay

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False Choice – Founder versus Manager

False Choice - Founder versus Manager

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combinator, was so inspired by a speech by Airbnb cofounder and CEO that he wrote an essay about well-intentioned advice that, to scale a business, founders must shift modes and become managers.

It went viral. 

In the essay, he argued that:

In effect there are two different ways to run a company: founder mode and manager mode. Till now most people even in Silicon Valley have implicitly assumed that scaling a startup meant switching to manager mode. But we can infer the existence of another mode from the dismay of founders who’ve tried it, and the success of their attempts to escape from it.

With curiosity and an open mind, I read on.

I finished with a deep sigh and an eye roll. 

This is why.

Manager Mode: The realm of liars and professional fakers

On the off chance that you thought Graham’s essay would be a balanced and reflective examination of management styles in different corporate contexts, his description of Manager Mode should relieve you of that thought:

The way managers are taught to run companies seems to be like modular design in the sense that you treat subtrees of the org chart as black boxes. You tell your direct reports what to do, and it’s up to them to figure out how. But you don’t get involved in the details of what they do. That would be micromanaging them, which is bad.

Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it’s described that way, doesn’t it? Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground.

Later, he writes about how founders are gaslit into adopting Manager Mode from every angle, including by “VCs who haven’t been founders themselves don’t know how founders should run companies, and C-level execs, as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world.”

Founder Mode: A meritocracy of lifelong learners

For Graham, Founder Mode boils down to two things:

  1. Sweating the details
  2. Engaging with employees throughout the organization beyond just direct reports.  He cites Steve Jobs’ practice of holding “an annual retreat for what he considered the 100 most important people at Apple, and these were not the 100 people highest on the org chart.”

To his credit, Graham acknowledges that getting involved in the details is micromanaging, “which is bad,” and that delegation is required because “founders can’t keep running a 2000 person company the way they ran it when it had 20.” A week later, he acknowledged that female founders “don’t have permission to run their companies in Founder Mode the same way men can.”

Yet he persists in believing that Founder, not Manager, Mode is critical to success,

“Look at what founders have achieved already, and yet they’ve achieved this against a headwind of bad advice. Imagine what they’ll do once we can tell them how to run their companies like Steve Jobs instead of John Sculley.”

Leader Mode: Manager Mode + Founder Mode

The essay is interesting, but I have real issues with two of his key points:

  • Professional managers are disconnected from the people and businesses they manage, and as a result, their practices and behaviors are inconsistent with startup success.
  • Founders should ignore conventional wisdom and micromanage to their heart’s content.

Most “professional managers” I’ve met are deeply connected to the people they manage, committed to the businesses they operate, and act with integrity and authenticity. They are a far cry from the “professional fakers” and “skillful liars” Graham describes.

Most founders I’ve met should not be allowed near the details once they have a team in place. Their meddling, need for control, and soul-crushing FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) lead to chaos, burnout, and failure.

The truth is, it’s contextual.  The leaders I know switch between Founder and Manager mode based on the context.  They work with the passion of founders, trust with the confidence of managers, and are smart and humble enough to accept feedback when they go too far in one direction or the other.

Being both manager and founder isn’t just the essence of being a leader. It’s the essence of being a successful corporate innovator.  You are a founder,  investing in, advocating for, and sweating the details of ambiguous and risky work.  And you are a manager navigating the economic, operational, and political minefields that govern the core business and fund your paycheck and your team.

Image credit: Pexels

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How Do You Measure Power?

How Do You Measure Power?

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

In a recent blog, I argued that management needs to be accountable not only for delivering current performance but also for investing in power initiatives that will fuel future performance. Compensation systems that focus solely on the former too often result in a hollowing out of the enterprise, as we have seen with any number of iconic companies that have “performed” their way to the sidelines.

But this begs a key question—how do you measure power? Specifically, what kind of metrics could supply a stable foundation for management accountability and executive compensation?

In my book Escape Velocity, when discussing managing for shareholder value, we introduced a framework called the Hierarchy of Powers. The idea is that investors, who are buying a share of your enterprise’s future performance, value your company based on how much power they think it has relative to other investments they could be making. In this context, we claimed there were five classes of power that got evaluated in the following order of priority:

  1. Category Power. Is your core business in a category that is growing, stable, or declining? This, we claimed, is the single biggest predictor of future performance.
  2. Company Power. Within that category, where is your company in the pecking order of companies? If you are number one, that is a huge advantage. If you are number two, it also provides tailwinds. After that, there are no more tailwinds to be had.
  3. Market Power. For companies that focus on one or more vertical markets, is your company the default choice for major prospects and customers in that segment? Wherever this is the case, it gives a material boost to your sales momentum and thus your company’s valuation.
  4. Offer Power. Do you get preference and/or premium pricing due to the differentiation of your offer? Do you win the lion’s share of any competitive bake-offs?
  5. Execution Power. Do you have a history of meeting or beating guidance on a consistent basis?

The model has stood up well over the years, but there is still the question of how to ensure accountability for investing in power when so much of our attention (and compensation) is focused on creating the next quarter’s performance. To that end, my colleague Philip Lay and I have been sorting through objective measures that signal material gains in power, ones that executive teams could readily track, and compensation programs could use to calibrate bonuses.

Here’s what we propose should be the top two metrics for each class of power:

Category Power. The focus here is on portfolio valuation—how many categories does the enterprise participate in, and how is each category faring. Meaningful changes in category power typically come through M&A, often supplementing organic innovation that is looking to scale quickly. Top two metrics for each category assessed:

  1. Category Maturity Life Cycle status. The key stages are secular growth, cyclical growth, stagnant, and declining.
  2. Technology Adoption Life Cycle status. This model focuses specifically on the period of secular growth, breaking it up into the following stages: Early Market, Chasm, Beachhead, Bowling Alley, Tornado, and Main Street. The two big valuation changers are winning a beachhead market segment in the Bowling Alley and participating with meaningful share in the Tornado.

Company Power. In high-growth categories, the focus is on bookings growth and competitive win rates. In mature categories, it is on the stability of the installed base as well as bargaining power both with suppliers and with customers. The top two metrics are:

  1. Market share within each category. By far the most important metric, as market ecosystems organize around and give preference to the category leader.
  2. Balanced mix of power and performance categories. For global enterprises, in particular, portfolio balance creates optionality to deal with both bull and bear markets.

Market Power. In emerging categories, dominating a target market segment, as opposed to merely participating in it, is critical to crossing the chasm and creating a sustainable franchise. In mature categories, target market segment focus is key to creating above-market growth. The top two metrics are:

  1. Segment share. The most important metric because ecosystems that serve market segments organize around a segment leader only when it has dominant segment share.
  2. Growth rates within target market segments. This is particularly important in any economic downturn that impacts different market segments to highly varying extents.

Offer Power. This metric and the next are closely aligned with delivering performance in the current fiscal year. That said, they still signal successful investments in power. The top two power metrics are:

  1. Magic quadrant status. This is the most widely circulated third-party measure of offer power.
  2. Win/loss record in head-to-head competitions. This is the most credible measure of offer power.

Execution Power. This really is the land of performance, but there is still power in reputation. Top two metrics are:

  1. History of “meeting or beating” commits, be they forecast or, release dates. This is what gives confidence to customers and partners to give your team the nod.
  2. Customer success metrics. These include Net Expansion Rate, Net Retention Rate, and Promoter Score, all of which validate that you are keeping your sales promises.

Guidelines for Using the Metrics

Metrics are a device to ensure visibility and accountability, and nowhere is this more important than when dealing with something as abstract as power. The key is to associate the right metrics with the right people, the ones who can have the most impact on the level of power in question. This works out as follows:

  • Top Executives: Category Power, Company Power. The two key levers here are using M&A to strategic advantage and using the annual budgeting process to allocate resources asymmetrically to achieve strategic objectives.
  • Middle Management: Market Power, Offer Power. The two key levers here are using market segmentation to strategic advantage and allocating the resources under your control asymmetrically to achieve dominant shares in target market segments.
  • Front Line: Execution Power. The key lever here is to align and focus the resources under your control or influence them in order to deliver the performance you have committed to.

For purposes of compensation, promotion, and overall alignment, these metrics align well with OKR objectives and can be used wherever OKRs are focused on increasing power. Again, the goal is not to replace performance metrics but rather to complement them.

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

Image Credit: Unsplash

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