Category Archives: Greatness

Strategy doesn’t inspire people. Conviction does.

in entrepreneurship, Greatness, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy

simon sinek on leadership

Before strategy, have an opinion.

Everyone wants a strategy, but not many have an opinion. I’ve talked about this before, purpose matters. And although I don’t like repeating the same message over and over again, I’ve got a feeling this is never going to end.

A real opinion, to me, is a stretch thought about what everyone thinks is important. For example, Steve Jobs believed design was just as important as technology. Hence, Apple builds products from an artistic point of view. And, it just so happens that they created products that became “must-haves”.…

A lesson from Apple on reputation

in Greatness, Innovation, Strategy

Apple is once again telling the world that it’s a User Experience company that just so happens to make consumer electronic products. Apple is reportedly working on a way to sync iPods with iTunes wirelessly. It’s just another step in Apple’s steady march toward making wires and cords a thing of the past.

A few days ago I was making room behind my desk for the laptop, external HDD and speaker wires. As I was rearranging I started pondering how long it would take until we live in a world without wires and who would take us there.

My first thought was Apple.

What I find interesting, is that if any other ‘consumer electronics company’ would set out to eliminate wires, it probably would not be a big deal. You kind of get the idea that if Microsoft would be the first to remove wires from our lives, that they would screw it up in some way. Therefore eliminating our excitement for the ‘new experience’.

Because we know Steve Jobs to be a perfectionist, we know and trust that Apple will deliver the goods. The new experience.

And we actually want Apple to be the one to do it. Not Microsoft. Not HP. Not Dell.

Apple.

Why?

Because their reputation precedes them in the area of creating great consumer products that are as much about the experience we have as what we use them for. It is this reputation that sets them apart. It is now hardwired onto our brains that Apple creates the best consumer electronics products period.

Heck, some of us are starting to wish they should start making cars just for fun.

User experience is all about removing obstacles. Eliminating extra steps that don’t add any value. Apple is a user experience champion. They own it.

They’ve become the ‘most’ at delighting and exciting us with their products. This is key.

Like Fast Company founder, Bill Taylor, says:

You can’t be “pretty good” at everything anymore. You have to be the most of something: the most affordable, the most accessible, the most elegant, the most colorful, the most transparent. Companies used to be comfortable in the middle of the road — that’s where all the customers were. Today, the middle of the road is the road to ruin. What are you the most of?

With that said, we would all do well and learn from Apple and begin thinking about what we want to be known for. Because if we get to such a place, this is where Greatness is forged.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Dare to be great

in Creativity, Greatness, Innovation

I really liked this talk by Keith Yamashita on . There a couple of things that resonated with me, first the need to resist the natural forces of society’s need for the status quo. Second, to maintain a childlike attitude full of curiosity and imagination. Third, the idea that innovation is about making people’s lives better and not about a companies bottom line.

His talk could’ve just as easily been called ‘Dare to be different’. Watch it Winking smile

Why culture matters

in Behavior, entrepreneurship, Greatness, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy

Last week I was dinning at an Italian restaurant with my family. Our waiter was very courteous, by pure observation I could tell he stood out from the rest of the waiters in that restaurant. Two days later I dined at a ‘similar’ Italian restaurant with a few friends, and to my surprise got served by the same waiter that served me days earlier at the other restaurant.

What gives?…

One question to ask yourself everyday to trump the status quo

in Greatness, Innovation, Strategy

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. – William Faulkner

You know the future looks very different than it does today, your business needs to evolve to meet the challenges of tomorrow. What brought you success yesterday might not work tomorrow, you need to keep pushing boundaries, testing new tools, trying new things, experimenting with new approaches to not let complacency set in.

You need to keep one foot in the present and the other one moving towards the future, for this you need to ask yourself one question everyday:

How can we do better tomorrow than we did today?

P.S. John Jantsch has .

INNOVATION: Change your internal chip

in Creativity, Greatness, Innovation, Thinking

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” – Einstein

Yesterday I was with a client proposing some new initiatives and as always there’s a bottleneck to new ideas. Someone’s ego prevents them from seeing other alternatives to how things can be done, they’re so set in their traditional views that anything new is irrelevant. In thinking about this fact with some of the people there I said: Like computer chips that evolve and get better all the time, so must we.

Voila!

Do you remember how in the movie Terminator 2 Sarah and John Connor so it can can learn and stop following preset rules? Well that’s exactly what we have to do with ourselves, and people who are impervious to ‘there’s always a better way’ speak.…