Tag: Business
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The Cost of Complacency
Across industries, the era of incremental change is over. Survival now depends on reinvention at scale. More than half of the companies that anchored the S&P 500 in 2010 no longer appear on the index. Household names like Sears, GE, and Kodak—once symbols of dominance—are now case studies in the cost of complacency. Let that sink…
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Complexity: A Sign of Organizational Laziness
In my high school English class, most assignments came with the requirement “must be at least 10 pages”. Five short years later while pursuing my MBA, the final paper in my Organizational Strategy class had a very different requirement – “must not exceed 3 pages”. Imagine an entire semester’s work distilled to 3 pages. Oh,…
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How to Achieve your Strategic Plan: Part 2 of 2
In my last post I summarized the top 4 reasons why 9 out of 10 Strategic Plans fail. But you don’t get rewarded for predicting rain, you get rewarded for building an ark. So how do you ensure that you achieve your strategic plans? How do you keep everyone moving in the same direction? How do you get…
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How to Achieve your Strategic Plan: Part 1 of 2
In honor of every company that is developing their strategic plans and annual budgets, I wanted to share with you some sobering news: 9 out of 10 of your strategic plans are going to fail. In the first entry of a two-part post, I’ll address the four most common reasons why Strategic Plans fail. In…
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The Search for a Reliable Engine of Innovation: 4 Case Studies
“Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs . . . It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced.” Peter Drucker When Hank Shaw and I started writing The Perpetual Innovation Machine, colleagues would ask us why we chose to call the management methodology we describe in…
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The Future of Field Services
This post was originally published as a guest column in Field Technologies Online. Traditional hardware manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are all struggling with profitable revenue growth. The historic business model that was based on “Make, Sell, Ship + Attached Service” has either collapsed or is showing signs of duress. So, who can OEM’s…
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Outcome Engineering: A New Framework for Success
The thought of consistently achieving business outcomes can be overwhelming. There are so many moving parts to manage: Technology platforms, business processes, and the skills of your employees are just the beginning of the considerations. The outcome engineering framework is a great tool to accelerate your transformation efforts. Management by Fact Successfully transforming your business…
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Why is aligning your organization to deliver outcomes so difficult?
Suppliers need to make a conscious choice to break with the past – aligning your organization to deliver business outcomes won’t happen on its own. You would think that focusing your organization on achieving outcomes would be as fundamental as getting up in the morning. But it’s not. Here’s why. Make, Sell, Ship . .…
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The Case for Pursuing Outcomes
“nearly $8 billion of product revenue “disappeared” for the 19 hardware companies in the third quarter of 2015 alone” Has there ever been a business concept so well understood, but poorly implemented than focusing your organization on achieving outcomes? If you’re an external sales organization, it sounds like “Solution Selling” (or strategic selling, insight selling, customer…
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It’s all about the Outcome
“The ultimate destination should be achievement of business outcomes” Where do you want to go? “One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’…