Innovation + design

The Center for Creative Leadership recently released the findings of
their study of senior executives' opinions of the future trends they face. It is no
surprise that the increasing complexity of their challenges was
forefront on the executives' minds. As authors Corey Criswell and André
Martin noted in the introduction to the report, "Senior executives face
increasingly complex challenges that involve organizational changes,
market dynamics and talent shortages. One popular response to increasing
complexity is to lean on innovation. Our respondents believe that aiming
for innovation through overt processes (systems and structures) and
talent development is paramount to creating a culture that is agile
enough to address complex challenges."

I certainly hear the cry for innovation often in my client work. Simple
logic would argue that creation of an innovative culture cannot occur
without first innovating current business practices. All too often the
stories I hear of innovation revolve around the lone wolf who somehow
beat the existing system. Innovation will not be widespread until the
systems, practices, policies, and procedures are changed so that
innovation becomes the path of least resistance. It may even be
counterproductive to preach innovation and fire up the troops if they
run smack into barriers that discourage it. Cynicism often occurs,
followed by disengagement of talent when they wonder why they should
bother.

In our model for analyzing and creating solutions we recognize this
architecture as being a key component of successful change. If
innovation is the goal, perhaps the focus shouldn't be restricted to
encouraging the players. Instead we should look seriously at the playing
field. Some examples I am seeing include rigid organization structures,
project teams being populated by those who are available rather than
those who are necessary, resource allocation that doesn't value
investment in innovation, and metrics that reward traditional practices
over innovative approaches. There are, of course, many forces affecting
innovation or the lack of it. But examining current architecture seems
to me to be a good place to start.

What are you seeing? Examples? Challenges? Emotional outbursts?

Quoted from Tom Peters Blog

Tribe Management

Brand management is so 1999.

Brand management was top down, internally focused, political and money
based. It involved an MBA managing the brand, the ads, the shelf space,
etc. The MBA argued with product development and manufacturing to get
decent stuff, and with the CFO to get more cash to spend on ads.

Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world.

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most
organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the
privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to
people who want to get them.

It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to
connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to
build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because
it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a
story to tell and something to talk about.

And of course, since this is so important, product development and
manufacturing and the CFO /work/ for the tribal manager. Everything the
organization does is to feed and grow and satisfy the tribe.

Instead of looking for customers for your products, you seek out
products (and services) for the tribe. Jerry Garcia understood this. Do you?

Who does this work for? Try record companies and bloggers, real estate
agents and recruiters, book publishers and insurance companies. It works
for Andrew Weil and for Rickie Lee Jones and for Rupert at the WSJ...
But it also works for a small web development firm or a venture capitalist.

People form tribes with or without us. The challenge is to work for the
tribe and make it something even better.

Quoted from Seth Godin
<Tags> Seth Godin, connect, tribe, challenge

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Workaholic

A workaholic lives on fear. It's fear that drives him to show up all the
time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of
worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and
curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn't show up because she's afraid of getting in
trouble, she shows up because it's a hobby that pays. The passionate
worker is busy blogging on vacation... because posting that thought and
seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on
the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design
after dinner because, hey, it's a lot more fun than watching TV.

It was hard to imagine someone being passionate about mining coal or
scrubbing dishes. But the new face of work, at least for some people,
opens up the possibility that work is the thing (much of the time) that
you'd most like to do. Designing jobs like that is obviously smart.
Finding one is brilliant.

By Set Godin

<Tags> workaholics, Seth Godin, passion, curiosity, fun, fear, drive

Vestiges

Unless you just started, your organization is different than it used to
be. It has evolved.

The marketing you do, the decisions you make, the hurdles you have to go
through probably have vestiges of the old model. Sometimes, like the
little feet on the back of a whale, it's easy to ignore the vestiges.
Other times, it's entirely possibly that they prevent you from achieving
your goals.

Example: years ago, Prodigy, the original big online service, reflected
its origins from Sears, CBS and IBM when they unveiled chat and
discussion boards. Every single message posted was read by a censor
before it went online. At one point, they had literally hundreds of full
time editors sitting in an office tower outside of NY, painstakingly
reading every single post.

Example: the production values of an HD TV show are lost in the YouTube
environment, yet plenty of studios and advertisers are having trouble
giving up the staffing and hierarchy that served them so well in the
other medium. So the vestiges remain, slowing down the entire process
(and making it a lot more expensive.) 25 people to film a three minute
clip is just silly, but it makes sense if you look back at how they got
there.

Example: local banks with limited hours were the norm just a few years
ago. The move to online hasn't changed the way they all see the world...
it's a skeleton staff at night, because that's the way it always was.

If you're working hard to work around a vestige, maybe it makes sense to
work just as hard to get rid of it all together.

By Seth Godin

<Tags> : Seth Godin, vestiges, origin, optimization

The problem with perfect

When was the last time you excitedly told someone about FedEx?

They're perfect. The only time we notice them is when they screw up.

And that fancy restaurant with the four star reviews? They've got the
fine linen and the coordinated presentation of dishes... it costs
hundreds of dollars to eat there, but it's okay, because they're perfect.

Which is a problem, because dinner consists of not much except noticing
how imperfect they are. The second course came five minutes later than
it should of (ten, even!). The salad was really good, but not as perfect
as it was last time. And the valet parking... you had to wait in the
cold for at least ninety seconds before your car came. What a let down.

A let down?

The place is a gift, a positive bit of karma in a world filled with
compromise. And all you can do is notice that it's not perfect.

As the quality of things go up, and competition increases, it's so easy
to sell people on perfect. But perfect rarely leads to great word of
mouth, merely because expectations are so hard to meet.

I think it's more helpful to focus on texture, on interpersonal
interaction, on /interesting. /Interesting is attainable, and
interesting is remarkable. Interesting is fresh every day and
interesting leads to word of mouth.

I think our FedEx delivery person is interesting. I like her. I talk to
her. And yes, it changes my decision about who to ship with. I also
think that Spicy Mina is an interesting restaurant. So far from perfect,
it's ridiculous. But I talk about it.

By Seth Godin

<Tags> perfect, Seth Godin, fed ex, complain, promise, interesting

Indonesian traditional medicine

Dramatically re-orient healthcare from after-the-fact "fixes" to before-the-fact attention to prevention-Wellness.
(And "kindly suggest" that the "acute-care industry" give some passing thought to Quality.)

Tom Peters

Tags:Indonesian traditional medicine, jamu,tom peters

Freedom to create and serve

Effective enterprise always, but today (the creative age) more than ever, is a product of maximizing human freedom to create and serve.

Organizations exist to serve. Period.

Leaders exist to serve. Period.

Respond to customers' desires with products and services and experiences (think Cirque du Soleil) that are "gaspworthy," and a lot of
"other issues" will mostly take care of themselves.

-Tom Peters-

Tags:Tom Peters, Service,

The essence of business

"To me business isn't about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It's about being true to yourself,


your ideas

and

focusing on the essentials."

—Richard Branson

Greatness

"Groups become great only when everyone in them, leaders and members alike, is free to do his or her absolute best."

"The best thing a leader can do for a Great Group is allow its members to discover their own greatness."

-Organizing Genius-
Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman

Problems : Deal with it.. or, run!

There are three ways to deal with a problem, I think.

* Lean into it.
* Lean away from it.
* Run away.

You lean /into/ a problem, especially a long-term or difficult one, by
sitting with it, reveling in it, embracing it and breathing it in. The
problem becomes part of you, at least until you solve it. You try one
approach and then another, and when nothing works, you stick with it and
work around it as you build your organization and your life.

Some people choose to lean /away/ from the problems that nag them at
home or at work. They avoid them, minimize them or criticize the cause.
Put as little into it as possible and maybe it will go away.

And sometimes, a problem is so nasty or overwhelming that you just run away.

I'm a big fan of the first approach. And sometimes, quitting isn't such
a bad idea. The second approach, alas, is the one that many of us end up
with by default, and the one that's least likely to pay off.

If that helps with this year's resolutions, it was worth thinking about...

Seth Godin

Stasis vs. Dynamism

Do we crave predictability, or relish surprise? These two poles, stasis and dynamism, increasingly define our political, intellectual, and cultural landscape."
—Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies

"Wealth in this new regime flows directly from innovation, not optimization. That is, wealth is not gained by perfecting the known, but by imperfectly seizing the unknown."
—Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy," Wired, September 1997

"The secret of fast progress is inefficiency, fast and furious and numerous failures."
—Kevin Kelly

www.tompeters.com