Tag Archives: Robert Iger

Are You Leading in the Wrong Zone?

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Are You Leading in the Wrong Zone?

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

I get tired of listening to “experts” explain how leaders need to be bolder. Usually what they are advocating for is more disruptive innovation, less business as usual. But this completely ignores the impact of context and ends up patronizing behavior that may actually be well-grounded. It depends on which zone you are operating out of.

In the Performance Zone, the goal is to deliver on the quarterly plan. It is not the time or place for disruptive innovation. Leadership means getting your team to the finish line despite whatever roadblocks may crop up. Grit and resourcefulness, combined with attention to tactics, is what is wanted here.

In the Productivity Zone, the goal is to be there for the long haul. Again, disruptive innovation is not on the docket. Analysis and optimization are the keys here, and leaders must be willing to step back, take a systems view of things, and invest in efforts that will enable the Performance Zone to perform better in the future.

By contrast, the Incubation Zone is all about disruptive innovation, and most pundits champion a leadership style that is a perfect fit for this zone. So, if you are in this zone, by all means embrace hypothesis testing, agility, fast failure and the like. Just remember that what works here does not work well in any of the other three zones.

Finally, the Transformation Zone is where the pundits ought to be focusing because transformation is a bear, and no one can ever really tame it. Business lore celebrates the amazing disrupters here — Jobs, Musk, Bezos, etc. — as well we should. But in so doing we should not ignore the amazing disruptees, the leaders who redirected their enterprises to bring them kicking and screaming into a new age — Gerstner, Nadella, Iger, and company. For my money, their leadership style is the single most important one for any aspiring CEO to master.

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

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Innovation Quotes of the Day – May 22, 2012

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“Comic books had it wrong. It didn’t take a trauma or cosmic rays or a power ring to make a super hero, just the perfect combination of optimism and naivety.”

– From the Movie “Kickass”

“The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation.”

– Robert Iger

“Successfully building a strong culture of continuous innovation also represents a huge opportunity for an organization to attract the best talent, to lower costs, to continuously add new revenue streams, and to better achieve competitive separation.”

– Braden Kelley

“The nature of an innovation is that it will arise at a fringe where it can afford to become prevalent enough to establish its usefulness without being overwhelmed by the inertia of the orthodox system.”

– Kevin Kelly

“The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication.”

– Michael Faraday

What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

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