Why do organizations fail? There are many reasons, mostly because they become irrelevant by failing to evolve and adapt to a changing world. The reasons this happens are many, but one thing is certain: organizations where everyone agrees with each other, where no friction exists, and where no one challenges the status-quo is certain to miss the future and eventually fail.
I’m very instinctive, have avoided many problems when I’ve followed my gut; and gotten into unnecessary ones when I’ve ignored it. Sound familiar? All of us make intuitive-based decisions, and most of the time our intuition is wrong. Why? In short because life is messy, there’s no way around it, and previous success makes us overconfident in our abilities.
At both of my ventures, Better and Netek, we operate by many key principles, one of them is avoiding stupidity; which is to avoid bad decisions. So instead of asking ourselves,”how do we make good decisions?; we ask: how do we avoid making bad ones?
If you’ve been following me for a long time you know I have a very Hungry Mind. On top of magazines, articles and reports, I read at least 1 book per month; and have gone up to 4 in years past. This year I read 15 books in all, lighter than before but interesting nonetheless.
Last year I advised a restaurant owner on customer experience strategy for his restaurant. He had previously done benchmarking against other restaurants, but felt and knew he was missing something more deeper, something that would stick with people. Being a giver by nature, he wanted that same attitude to be part of the day to day operation; he felt that was missing. …
Are digital tools really making us more productive? It’s a constant inquiry and an ongoing debate whether the digital revolution is making us more productive. I’ve written before that the digital revolution is transitioning us to the Age of Efficiency, one where technology does most of the decision making for us. It’s great, but it also has it’s cons and more importantly the expectation that it will make us smarter just by it being there.
The promise of the digital revolution is better innovation, higher productivity, lower costs and faster growth. The jury is still out on whether or not digital tools make us more productive, and the implications for society. …
We live in world in flux, various trends are crashing into each other to create heaps of data that most businesses are only just starting to discover. Forward thinking businesses that are innovation driven have established a capability for capturing and interpreting the data, turning insight into game-changing ideas.
But most businesses are still lagging, big time.…
