With the New Year approaching, it’s time to rethink your organization’s culture and not just its goals. Here are best practices for leveraging your culture to create business success. Winnow your list of values Across the street from my house sits a welcoming red-tile-roofed Catholic grade school campus with bright white adobe walls. The children wear navy blue uniforms, and the well-kept Catholic Church at its center has the charm only decades can bestow. School leaders recently placed banners naming the school’s values on the wire-fenced wall enclosing the playground: Sharing Stewardship Respect Service Gratitude Empathy Cooperation Celebration Building peace The school has too many values! What is the essence of the culture the school is trying to create? I understand the fine-tuning the administrators sought to articulate – empathy is different than gratitude – but what is at the school’s core? What…
Five practices to sail successfully in the unrelenting waves of disruption
The pace and magnitude of disruptive forces crashing against the seawalls of our businesses and personal lives only grow stronger. The power of 1975’s fastest super computer is now captured in a $400 Apple iPhone. A $100 genome will be feasible in the next decade. These and other examples are cited in a 2013 McKinsey&Company report, “Disruptive Technologies: Advances that will transform life, business and the global economy.” Here’s the global consultancy’s list of the most disruptive technologies (out of 100 considered): Mobile Internet Automation of knowledge work The Internet of Things Cloud technology Advanced robotics Autonomous and near-autonomous vehicles Next-generation genomics Energy storage 3D printing Advanced materials Advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery Renewable energy Why did these technologies make the cut? They are advancing rapidly and have broad reach – touching many industries and leading to new products, equipment and…
Smarter marketing requires more than personalized messages
I feel overwhelmed by the volume of digital messages coming at me from all corners of my life. And I am not alone. My 2013 prediction is that value is about to rapidly migrate once again in technology markets. Over the holidays I met a young woman in her 30s — a former boutique owner who now works at a leading retailer — who told me that she stopped using Facebook when she realized the postings kept growing in number and falling in sincerity. Also, she’s “unsubscribed” from retailers she buys from, finding that their recommendations based on past purchases more often insult rather than reflect her taste. She is tuning out to digital messaging much as I ignore the ads in newspapers to make my newspaper reading more efficient. Perhaps my message overload problem was not age-related, I thought leaving our conversation….
Pennywise pound-foolish thinking
Imagine facing the following situation as the leader of your enterprise. Owing to years of underfunding and neglect, a physical asset that’s a basic driver of your competitiveness and productivity is deteriorating. By not repairing it, you’ve already experienced significant liability costs due to preventable deaths and critical injuries. Experienced engineers have publicly stated the situation will only worsen absent significant investment. In addition, not repairing the asset will further erode your company’s efficiency and deteriorate its competitive position in an increasingly global market. Furthermore, although cash flow is negative at present and your organization has far more debt than you want, you can borrow at close to zero percent interest rates and creditors deem your company as credit worthy. Additionally, the price of repair has never been lower owing to record excess capacity in the repair industry. If you do not repair…
A stronger government business model
Were it not for my status as a United Airlines Premiere Flyer that allowed me to bypass a seemingly endless security line, I would have missed my 6:18 AM flight from San Diego to Atlanta. Airport security lines with one hour and longer waits are apparently very typical at peak travel times in San Diego as they are in many other large airports. These lines are government waste. Any manufacturing leader, indeed anyone trained in thinking about processes, could improve the efficiency of the US airline security system. A thoughtful reinvention could easily maintain safety while lowering federal employee cost as well as the traveler’s indirect costs – lost productivity from feeling sleepy all day from having to get in line at 4:45 AM for a 6:18 AM flight, not to mention the waiting time itself. Step one en route to a better…