Tag Archives: Strategy

Q&A: Group Partners on How Visualization Provides Strategic Ways To Solve Business Challenges

in Innovation, Interviews, Strategy

Why We Think Visually from John Caswell on Vimeo.

To be great at strategy and innovation, you must be able to work through an interconnected system. And, as the pace of change exceeds our ability to grasp what is happening around us, a better approach is needed for developing strategy and innovation. A visual approach to systems thinking.

To help deal with that challenge, Group Partners, has developed a unique approach to visualize and better solve problems with strategy and innovation. Here is a quick interview with visual thinking gurus, John Caswell and Hazel Tiffany of Group Partners.…

Why is competitive advantage temporary?

in Innovation, Question-To-Innovate, Questions, Strategy

competitive advantage is temporary

An often asked question. Yet, there are those who think that competitive advantages are everlasting.

Competitive advantage, it seems to me, has become an instrument of finance. As in, how can our company accumulate hoards of cash to become sustainable?

The defining metric for said advantage is profits. That is a mindset, I believe, of playing not to lose.

Accumulating a war chest of money doesn’t mean you will outlast the next wave of change, you have things upside down, for an investment in innovation is an investment in your future.…

Innovating when the old rules don’t fit the new environment

in Innovation

anticipating change

A few weeks ago, I wrote about future-proofing yourself by asking questions that anticipate great challenges. Why am I bringing this up again? Because, like you, I still get to engage companies that are disconnected from “what is” and “what could be”. There is a huge gap between how they perceive their environment, and how these changes might make their products and/or services obsolete.

They, like others, say: if all is going well inside our four walls, why break it. Right?

Wrong.

This is tunnel vision at its finest. Breaking from what your know well is a daunting task that most organizations acknowledge after disaster has struck. Overcoming this tunnel vision is a leadership and management challenge.

But, leaders must understand that what worked for you in the past, won’t work again. Sure, there are principles/guidelines we all follow that are just common sense for any point in time. But, there other rules that become irrelevant with time, either because of external change, or because some company is pushing the boundaries and changed the game.

What do we do in situations like these (which is happening this precise moment)?…

HBR’s 10 Must Reads: The Essentials

in Innovation, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy

HBR essentials

Last week I shared with you HBR’s 10 must reads on innovation. Today I’ll share HBR’s 10 Essential must reads.

Again, just click on the link and voila!…

Tunnel vision: The enemy of strategic thinking

in Innovation, Leadership, Psychology, Strategy

tunnel vision

Two weekends ago, I went to Disneyland with my brother. We had a good time and got a on a lot rides. Including some I’ve never gotten on before. Astro Blasters is one such ride. If you’ve never experienced it, think of it as a shooting gallery on wheels.

Basically, you ride a two person pod that has two laser guns attached to it along with a screen that shows you how many points you have. Your task is to hit targets with the letter “Z” on them. Different targets are worth different points. And, as you’ve probably guessed, you have to accumulate as many points as you can.

What is interesting about this ride, beyond the shooting, is that the Disney staff loading you onto the pods don’t tell you about specific goals (points) you should reach for. Nor did I see any Leader boards anywhere. I did see people taking pictures of the screen where their total points is displayed. Most likely they were going to share this with their friends and brag about it.

It is a fun and exhilarating ride. Very different that just sitting there and looking at your surroundings. But…ask me what I remember about what I saw inside. Not much.

I do remember where I saw those “Z” targets I had to shoot at. I don’t remember much of what was around that. Interesting right?…

Future-proofing: Asking questions that anticipate great challenges

in Innovation, Leadership

This is a short post, but I really want to bring attention to this issue because uncertainty is the norm, and we all have to deal with it. How do we do that?

There is no right answer.

But, to start, we have to be conscious about it. Then, we have to make an effort to look at what isn’t there and formulate what could be. To do this, we can start by asking better questions. This is the same dilemma Clay Christensen was in when he was studying disruption. Because he knew that a primary task of leadership is asking questions that anticipate great challenges, to be able to help business leaders better deal with uncertainty and its many challenges, he had to start asking better questions himself.

So, here’s how he figured out how to start asking better questions (last paragraph):…