Lessons in Management Innovation from Main Street

February 8, 2012 By 4 Comments

In their July, 2011 Harvard Business Review Article, Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage (great article, worth the $ IMO), Martin Reeves and Mike Deimler make a solid case for our need to cultivate critical soft organizational skills to survive and prosper in today’s turbulent business environment.

Reeves and Deimler suggest that leaders and firms shift their focus away from the traditional approach to strategy (creating an enduring and relatively static competitive advantage through price, positioning or differentiation), and instead focus on cultivating four critical capabilities:

  1. The ability to read and act on signals of change,
  2. The ability to experiment rapidly and frequently-not only with products and services but also with business models, processes and strategies.
  3. The ability to manage complex and interconnected systems of multiple stakeholders.
  4. The ability to motivate employees and partners.

On a grand scale, these four read like the playbooks in use at Apple, Google, Amazon and other Masters of the Universe who seemingly morph their businesses and business models at a torrid pace, capturing more of our attention and more of our consumption along the way.

On a more local and relevant for the rest of us scale, these organizational capabilities are nothing more or less than the outcomes of effective leadership coupled with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Most start-ups rely on their skills in all four of those areas, almost by instinct. Their business agility is keen due to resource limitations and because they are driven to experiment with their ideas and approaches until something sticks and they move beyond survival towards success.

Local Lessons In Winning Approaches to Business Strategy:

During the past few years, I’ve marveled at the start-ups and small to mid-sized businesses in my community who didn’t need an army of consultants or MBAs to teach them the very relevant and important lessons that Reeves and Deimler share in their article.

They live in a world where agility is survival. They understand, experiment, learn and iterate. They know to seize upon what works and build it out while the building is good. And they get that they need to continuously be looking for new approaches to innovate based on failures and successes and the inevitable copycats and disruptions.

  • There’s the wildly successful local Coffee Roaster, where the founders tackled the daunting task of starting a coffee business in the era of Starbucks, and have succeeded. They continue to morph their business model and strategy…and they experiment like fiends with new approaches to serving their clientele and shifting their business through licensing and distribution.
  • And then there’s the Hair Salon that was the dream of a group of young professional women that has become the go-to place in the county. From start-up to juggernaut. Now, growth is the problem and appointments are hard to come by. I continue to get all 311 remaining hairs on my head cut at a ridiculous price premium here because the culture rocks, the senior partner is the smartest business person I know to not have a business degree, and I leave there every time feeling great and with three new ideas to write about based on their management, hiring, marketing and customer-service approaches.
  • Someone I admire tremendously runs a growing manufacturing concern focused on an offering into the display side of the retail industry. They make products you wouldn’t think twice about, yet to tour the factory is to be amazed at the thought and investment in innovation. To meet and work with the people is to know that there’s something special in the leadership and the culture.

3 Critical Common Characteristics of these Main Street Successes: 

1. Leadership that gets it. They are led by individuals who view the top and bottom lines as outcomes of doing the right things for and with their employees and customers.

2. Change is embraced. They intuitively get the guidance offered by Reeves and Deimler on building strength and they live it every day. Instead of fearing change, they find ways to leverage and promote it.

3. They are big thinkers looking to harness big ideas in small ways. They are born strategists who think beyond the here and now and take their cues not only from their customers but from observing and anticipating what some of these macro-changes in our world mean for their businesses.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The lessons from the big firms in the news are visible and exciting. However, don’t discount the lessons in management innovation that are being taught on and around Main Street. The sharpest small business owners that I know have long understood the secrets that the rest of us in the corporate world are now discovering.

 

 

Filed Under: Leadership, Strategy Tagged With: , , ,

Leadership Caffeine: Change or Learn to Say, “Would You Like Fries with That?”

January 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

image of a coffee cupNote from Art: Consider this tough love intended to motivate leaders everywhere to rethink and refine their approaches.

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In the prologue to my recently published collection: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development, I write:

For experienced and developing leaders, the emerging environment is likely to offer a Dickensian world filled with Best of Times opportunities and Worst of Times challenges.  Now might be a good time to revise your thinking on your role as a leader and to begin cultivating the skills and experiences required for success during the exciting and perilous journey ahead.

What I Wanted to Say:

I stand behind the words…and in fact, my only regret is that I didn’t say something a little stronger, such as:

Wake up! Change now or become leadership road kill! Either start cultivating the new leadership skills or stand in front of a mirror and practice saying, “Would you like fries with that?” because this may be your money phrase in the not so distant future.

“Hey, Who Moved My…”

Much of the pablum that is passed off for guidance on leading others ignores the reality that the context in which we lead has changed from just a few years ago, and it continues to change faster than any of us can truly understand.

Now before your fingers burn a path to your keyboards to remind me of the timeless nature of and attributes of leading, I get the point in spades. Character always counts, no one ever screwed up by showing respect, your job is to develop people, you better be able to inspire people to act…paint a vision and all that great stuff. It’s good…its timeless and UNLESS it’s blended with the new skills of leading, it may prove to be USELESS.

Context is King. Meet King Context-7 Ways the World of Leading and Managing Has Changed

While it’s a bit disheartening to realize that those of us with some experience and a bit of gray are vestiges of a bygone business era, we truly are. That doesn’t mean we can’t be relevant, but first, we have to understand and accept some of the important contextual changes in our world of business:

1. Our management structures and approaches are products of late 19th century and early 20th century thinking. As Gary Hamel offers, they were designed for another goal…to get people out of the fields and into the factories and to optimize their ability to do the same thing over and over.  They weren’t designed to cope with the need for rapid innovation, constant change and frequent disruption. Gary is right…the practice of management must change to cope with a world where exponential change is the norm.

2. Oversight as a core task of those in power is no longer the point, yet it is still widely practiced. I still find managers uncomfortable with the idea that work might actually take place somewhere and sometime when employees are out of sight. Oh, and yes, imagine that it might take place at some point in time when the “normal” work day has ended. My guidance: “get over it.” Control is no longer the point. 

3. Technology tools aren’t necessary evils, they are tools essential for survival, connectivity, speed and idea sharing. Too many leaders struggle to know which end of a tablet is up (answer: neither)…much less, how to turn the power on and use it. By the way, if you’ve not purchased an e-book, grabbed your news from Flipboard, tweeted about something interesting to a group of industry peers and used Evernote to capture a few great web sites for future reference in the past few hours, please grab your hairnet and watch out, the grease is hot by those fries. You’ve got to participate in the activities of the day to understand their implications for the world of work.

4. Ambiguity is the order of the day. Get over it. By the time things become clear in most markets, the opportunity is missed.   You need to build capabilities in your organization to go from idea to execution to learning to refinement, and to do that, you need great people who are comfortable that you’ve got their backs.

5. The Silos in our organizations are still there and they are still rusting in place. Teams that cross boundaries are now the principal means of getting work done and silo control is a game no longer relevant. Your goal as leader is to help teams form fast, support their efforts to execute and then ensure that they are able to disband and reform on the next opportunity.

 6. Your Cultural Intelligence may just be the most important asset that you aren’t doing anything about. It’s a global world…we’re all working across cultures, and chances are your workplace is (or should be), filled with diversity. Learning to tap the different world-views of your colleagues is a critical mission for leaders today…and it takes deliberate effort to learn and understand how to competently navigate across cultures.

7. The most important tool of management you  probably don’t know enough about is Project Management.  Too many treat it like an administrative process instead of a critical tool to enable value creation, learning and strategy execution. Heck, I struggle to find leaders who even get that project management is so much more than an endless stream of Gantt charts and status meetings. It’s time to dig in on this important new way of getting work done.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Welcome to the leadership blender, where speed and adaptability are essential for survival.  Control is something from a 1960’s era sitcom (Get Smart), where ironically and fittingly, Chaos was the primary adversary. Sorry, Chief, but Chaos won. Adapt, or repeat after me, “Would you like fries with that?”

 

Filed Under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine Tagged With: , , ,

Towards Your Growth as a Management Innovator

August 29, 2011 By 2 Comments

One of the exciting parts of living and working through “these interesting times,” comes from the opportunity to apply the tools of management in new ways and forms to today’s complex problems. 

This “management innovation” as Dr. Gary Hamel describes it, is much about the search for approaches to organizing, planning, leading and controlling that better fit the challenges of the 21st century. The implication is that in many cases, we’re still trying to solve new and emerging problems with 20th century management tools.  Another implication is that we haven’t yet cracked the code on sustaining high-levels of organizational performance for extended periods of time.

In Search of Management Innovation:

While some position this pursuit of management innovation as something on the scale of an Arthurian quest for the Holy Grail, for those of us who aren’t management researchers and who have teams and organizations to run, we need something a bit more tangible to grab hold of and play with in pursuit of survival and sustained success.

Consider these as idea prompters laced with encouragement!

Six Quick Ideas to Stimulate Your Management Innovation Thinking:

1. Innovation in management approaches occurs like almost all other forms of innovation…through enlightened trial and error backed by a lot of curiosity and a willingness to accept failure on the road to success.  Translation…it’s all about environment and leadership attitude. If you aren’t working hard on creating an environment that not only tolerates trial and error, but encourages it, then you are missing the critical first piece. 

2. It’s how you use the tools that counts! Our tools…structure, people, leadership approaches, technology, communications, goal-setting and measurement mechanisms are fairly easy to identify…and genuinely finite…however, there are nearly infinite number of ways to apply the tools.

3. The Right Answer…Well, It Depends. What works right in one situation or environment is likely not the right answer for other situations or environments. Recognize that when entering a new business, setting up new teams or taking on new types of projects and problems, you need to view the situation as unique, not cookie cutter.

4. Structure matters…and strategy must beget structure. If you forget or misapply either one of these, you’re likely to generate more problems than answers.

5. Creativity is a commodity however, the application of creativity to solving problems is priceless. And before you skewer me for the “commodity” crack, consider that ideas are all around us…it’s the courage to take an idea and work it until it either proves useful or useless that takes true courage. Translation: the value isn’t in the brainstorming session, although the process of generating, parsing, prioritizing and acting-on ideas is critical.

6. It’s always the people, stupid! Do everything to get the right ones in place and give them the tools they need to fail on the road to success.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

At the wrap-up of a Kellogg Executive program a few years ago, the Organizational Design Professor encouraged all of the V and C level people in the room to “Never quit trying to innovate with our people and our organizations.” Her meaning was clear then and it’s more critical now than ever. How hard are you working to promote, support and reward management innovation in your workplace?

 

Filed Under: Leadership, Management Innovation Tagged With: ,

Leadership Caffeine: Supporting the Rise of the Informal Leader

March 28, 2011 By 14 Comments

Want to know where to find your best and brightest emerging leaders? Here’s a hint, you’ll have to use your peripheral vision to see them, because they are moving sideways at a high rate of speed.

The Rise of the Informal Leader:

While it’s unlikely that hierarchical leadership will disappear anytime soon from our long-standing organizational models, it is my opinion that we’ve entered an era characterized by the rise of the informal leader.

The ever-shrinking middle layer of management has been replaced by a variety of different individuals fulfilling roles as project and product and team leaders. Their titles say, “manager,” but the real meaning is something like, “tons of responsibility and no authority.”

These Informal Leaders are the ones busy getting work done through and with others by marshaling resources, building coalitions and cutting through the organizational crap that slows many functional leaders to a “protect my turf” crawl.

Informal Leaders are often on a mission to change the world and improve their organizations for the better.  They are organizational and initiative focused zealots with the passion and confidence necessary for success.

Existing leaders will be well served to cultivate an Informal Leader culture and class to cope with the prevailing market forces. The need for speed, flexibility and adaptability have never been greater, and the better your people are at traversing functional boundaries to “get stuff done,” the better your odds of success.

And for those seeking to strengthen and grow your careers, instead of looking up the organizational ladder, it’s time to rethink your view of success and start looking sideways as the best way to make a difference.

7 Ideas for Cultivating Informal Leaders in Your Organization:

1. Give your people room to run beyond your boundaries. Hell, encourage them to run. Don’t create artificial silo or turf barriers for your people. You will succeed if your people are encouraged to create value and build coalitions across the organization.

2. Use your functional power to broker alliances with peers that pave the way for people and teams to tackle the big issues of the day. Actively encourage teams to work to solve problems across boundaries and you will be supporting the development of an Informal Leader culture.  Those with passion and skills will take the opportunity to grab these initiatives.

3. If your culture is already project centric, recognize that great project management has two components: the tools of the trade and the socio-cultural (people) issues. You can be mechanically sound and still fail. Invest in strengthening people skills to improve your chances of success.  Don’t assume that people know how to collaborate.  I see far too many cross-functional initiatives reduced to “debating societies” to be comfortable assuming that people truly get how to collaborate for results.  Provide resources and coaching to teach teams and Informal Leaders how to succeed.

4. Change at the top to promote growth across the organization. Current leaders need to learn what it means to effectively sponsor working teams.  Those at the top of the ladder (yeah, there is still hierarchy) need to consistently model the right behaviors for cross-functional and Informal Leader success.

5. Design developmental assignments to push people into informal leadership roles. Ensure that assignments challenge individuals to quickly form relationships and guide groups towards problem resolution.  Ensure an ample flow of feedback from participants and stakeholders, and provide a reasonable blend of skills development in areas such as: communication, negotiation, critical thinking and facilitation.

6. Engage Informal Leaders in the strategy processes of the firm. Too often, the people driving progress are simply “receivers” of direction. This devalues their understanding of talent, organizational capabilities and their tremendous insights and lessons learned along the way.

7. Create diversity in your upcoming Informal Leader ranks.  Far too many organizations create “project managers” out of just their technical professionals. While cautious to generalize, many of these same organizations end up with a project management culture that is mechanically excellent but truly weak on the soft, people side of the equation.  Draw from and build informal leaders in all areas of the organization.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The issue of building a powerful Informal Leader culture transcends the topic of project management. This is neither a functional nor a vocational issue as much as it is about building an environment that works effectively in this challenging and ever-changing world.

I see successes all of the time, although they tend to emerge due to the tenacity of one or more passionate individuals, rather than through a deliberate development process. The challenge now is to find ways to deliberately develop an Informal Leader class and quit relying on its emergence by accident.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change, Performance, Product Management, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , ,

Management Week in Review for March 4, 2011

March 4, 2011 By 3 Comments

Note from Art: every week, I share three thought-provoking management posts for the week. Fair warning: I take a broad view of management, so my selections will range from leadership to innovation to finance and personal development and beyond.

This week’s selections feature content on reinventing management, the strategic and practical implications of upgrade plans for consumer electronics products and some guidance on improving our decision-making by better utilizing outside advisors. Enjoy!

From Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 blog at the WSJ, “Inventing Management 2.0.” I’m making up for lost time by having missed this mid-February post. Dr. Hamel consistently beats the drums on the need for a revolution in the practice of management, and both his article and the comments here are guaranteed to get the blood of practitioners and students of management pumping a bit faster.

From the post: “Like millions of other would-be leaders around the world, you are being held hostage by Management 1.0—a dense matrix of bureaucratic practices that were invented to minimize variances from plan by maximizing adherence to policy. Despite a lot of high-minded rhetoric to the contrary (often found on laminated cards that begin with “Our Values”), the management model found in your organization most likely over-weights the views of senior executives, undervalues unconventional thinking, discourages full transparency, deters initiative, frustrates experimentation and encourages an entirely unwarranted reverence for precedence.”

From Joshua Gans at the HBR Blogs, “Best Buy’s Buy Back.” Who hasn’t felt the slight (or major) buyer’s remorse as your still new technology gadget is rendered obsolete by the market with a seemingly overnight feature upgrade. Of course, your device still works, and it still offers the same features that excited you when you purchased it in the first place. Enter an interesting discussion and a controversial approach on dealing with this, courtesy of the mega-retailer, Best Buy. And somehow, Apple figures into this mix as well. Good discussion with personal and corporate strategic implications.

From the post: “The strategic question is why Apple doesn’t solve this and work out a hard-headed way to buy hearts. Unlike Best Buy, who has to try their hand at high-priced insurance because they are operating in a highly competitive environment, Apple has some market power, particularly over serial upgraders. Why can’t I subscribe to a plan that allows me to have the latest iPhone? Or, perhaps a cleaner example (free of AT&T and Verizon contracts), to the latest iPad?”

At Fast Company Expert Blogs, Robert Sutton, Ph.D., offers: “Report: We are More Creative When We Help Others, Not Ourselves.“ Bob Sutton (Good Boss, Bad Boss) shares some of the findings from recent studies on decision-making and the power of outside advisors. An interesting reminder that by nature, we tend to over-estimate our own capabilities by a considerable margin, setting the stage for all sorts of follow-on problems.

From the post: “The implication of these diverse studies are quite instructive. If we want to make better decisions, make faster decisions, have a more realistic picture of our strengths and weaknesses, and now, apparently, be more creative, we need to ask others for their opinions and assistance. There is even a kind of weird implication that rather than working on our own problems, we should always be working on others.”

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That’s it for this week’s update. Enjoy your reading and don’t forget to catch up on the latest Leadership Caffeine posts here at Management Excellence.

Art Petty coaches and trains emerging leaders and consults with B2B firms on strategy and marketing. You can reach Art via e-mail to discuss your needs for coaching, speaking or consulting.

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Management Innovation Tagged With: , , , , ,
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