Rethinking Leadership: Article and Podcast at Pragmatic Marketing
My recent article, Rethinking Leadership in an Era of Change, and the supporting podcast can be found at Pragmatic Marketing.
Expertise and the Purple Squirrel—Guest Post by Steve Johnson
Steve Johnson of Under10 Consulting, shares his thoughts on the mythical "Purple Squirrel" of job recruiting fame. Steve offers some valuable thoughts for all of us on "keeping it real" when specifying candidate requirements. Enjoy!
A Great Product Manager
Someone asked me about the importance of product management in my prior tech businesses. My answer was blunt. Great product managers see beyond customer requirements to the often unspoken needs, and they move organizational mountains to fill those needs.
Leadership Caffeine™: Supporting the Rise of the Informal Leader
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. Here are 7 ideas for cultivating Informal Leaders in your organization.
Marketers: 4 Ideas to Avoid Falling Victim to The Felt Need
The article, “The Felt Need” by Dan and Chip Heath in the November, 2010 issue of Fast Company is worth the price of the annual subscription for it’s reminder value alone. The Heaths tackle a topic that just about all of us involved in selling, marketing or strategy have succumbed to at some point in our careers: the felt need versus the burning need. Here are four ideas to avoid being victimized by "The Felt Need."
Management Excellence Audio Interview: The CEO Perspective on Product Management
Notes from Art: I recently mentioned that I would be kicking off the Management Excellence Audio Interview Series, and I’m thrilled to be doing it today with Mike Mulcahy, a technology industry executive that has served as a CEO, a Founder of his own start-up and a Business Unit Leader inside one of the world’s [...]
Jump-Start Strategy By Jumping Straight to the Middle of the Process
Get your team talking about the right topics and get them focused on assessing and comparing based on the criteria that are the most important to your success. Skip the summer strategy offsite and start the dialogue on determining what’s truly important, and you’ll find yourself and your organization moving and working the right things faster than you might imagine.
The Right Stuff: Sprinting Towards the Future
It’s easy to focus on the bad news. Everyone’s talking about it. We’re bombarded with news flashes and human disaster stories as the layoffs mount and the foreclosures climb. And make no doubt about it, these are tough times, but let’s start giving some coverage to the firms, leaders and entrepreneurs that have turned off the news channels and are too busy building or rebuilding to worry about the dire forecasts. For a good dose of “can do” spirit, get out of your office and go talk with some smart people working to strengthen, build or start businesses. I’m doing just that, and here's why I continue to be optimistic:
The Challenge and Opportunity of the Product Manager
Product Managers face significant organizational challenges in their quest to expand their roles and increase their value-creating contributions to their firms. Through a recent and on-going series of interviews with senior executives as well as product managers across a variety of technology and manufacturing organizations, it is becoming clear that more and more organizations recognize the potential for product management to create tremendous value. It is also clear that enlightened executives increasingly recognize that the professionals that wok in product management roles are a ready-made source of high potential contributors and emerging leaders. Senior executives are looking for their emerging senior contributors in product management to bring more advanced skills to the party, in the areas of: Leadership, Strategic Thinking, Executive Presence and Process Optimization.
“If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
The notion of not asking customers what they want and responding directly to their needs may seem like heresy to those individuals and organizations consumed with improving customer satisfaction and creating customer loyalty. In fact, you should always listen and importantly, observe. The real art in this process is understanding what customers really need, what problems they really would like to solve and what approaches and experiences that you can create that can surprise and delight them.
