Excellence has been a hallmark of my career. I am trained as a process improvement SME, have operations experience, and my doctoral dissertation was on performance excellence at the industry level. But as life and responsibility have expanded, excellence alone is no longer my primary goal. It feels heretical to […]
Tag: Strategy
Organizations love listing strengths: strong people, good culture, great service, solid reputation. Taking a strategic perspective results in a more difficult question: are those actual advantages, or are they the same things that everyone else also has? This is exactly what the VRIO framework, developed by Jay Barney, helps clarify. […]
In business, we understand that making emotional decisions isn’t good sense. That’s why organizations rely on structure. Meeting cadences, agendas, decision frameworks, and defined processes, for example. These mechanisms are not about control, they exist to protect the quality of decisions when pressure is high. Life, however, doesn’t operate the […]
In both business and personal life, three fundamental forces shape our direction: 1. Strategy – The long-term vision and goals we set. Where are we headed? What do we want to achieve? When we fail to think strategically, we become reactive rather than intentional. We drift instead of directing our […]
Businesses, especially large ones, rely heavily on plans, processes and routines. These can quickly become unproductive models of rigid organizational management though, fixated on metrics that are not tightly coupled with innovation. External events often force departure from the routine. When this happens, the processes that are in place can […]
Businesses, especially large ones, rely heavily on plans, processes and routines. These can quickly become unproductive models of rigid organizational management though, fixated on metrics that are not tightly coupled with innovation. Employees must be empowered to learn, adjust, and be willing to take bold action that can lead to change.
Research shows that systems thinking and metacognition (awareness and understanding of one’s own thought process) lie at the root of both IQ enhancing and EQ enhancing skills. Developing both emotional intelligence and IQ skills requires a distinction between cognition (thinking) and metacognition (the ability to reflect on and understand how […]
A strategy is a prediction about the future. It is a hypothesis that can be tested in small pilots and pivoted over time. A good strategy should be formulated as an if-then statement that specifies the internal actions and external conditions that will lead to your expected results. A powerful strategy […]
Almost 20 years ago, a British mathematician and entrepreneur in the field of data science stated that “Data is the new oil.” At the time, it was a very provocative statement. These days, this quote rings true and has largely been validated. Oil contributes to economic results. In raw form, […]
A recent article in Time Magazine suggests that humans now have an attention span that is less than that of a goldfish. Apparently, the easily-distracted goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds, and according to a study by Microsoft, us humans can only pay attention for eight seconds. That […]
Leading tech companies often have employees engage in innovative work as part of their weekly routines. Whether it is part of their job description or a certain number of hours per week that they dedicate to exploratory projects, this time is usually focused on helping to achieve a long term […]
That’s not spelled wrong. While “serial entrepreneurship” refers to someone who starts many new businesses in a short period of time, “cereal entrepreneurship” refers to a certain boot strappyness that was displayed by Airbnb founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia when their company was floundering. After several launches that did […]
Jack Welch stated, “control your own destiny or someone else will.” One of the key elements of survival, and adaptation, is the willingness to self disrupt.
Did you know that what happens inside your company only impacts about 55% of the overall performance of your firm? Approximately 45% of your firm’s performance can be explained by what is happening outside of your company, in your industry or by other things outside of your control. A PESTEL […]
Strategy is the work that you do now to create a positive impact for yourself or for your business in the future. It means that you are setting aside time to think about the vision that you have, align your resources towards those objectives, and execute that work. As executives […]
What is purpose, anyway? A lot of people are searching for it. Human beings are wired to find purpose, and meaning, in our experiences, in our work, and in our lives. When navigating significant levels of disruption, we often work to find meaning in that, too. In short, a purpose […]
According to a recent article by McKinsey, top performing companies have high ambitions about continuing to make investments in technology. This is not surprising. But how companies plan to leverage technology to differentiate their companies is what is noteworthy. There are several reasons why top performers usually keep an eye […]