Tuesday, April 24, 2012

If it says innovation it probably isn't

Ads that contain the words innovative or innovation are not likely to be either.

Real innovations don't need or want this language — they are a distraction.



Just show us what it is and what it will do for us. Remember when iPods or iPhones or iPads were new? Just show us the magic and let that sell it.

If it has been set up as a separate "entity" then the management believes it is an innovation otherwise it is probably hype.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Some Drucker thoughts on corporate misconduct

The case against Lehman Brothers and Wal-Mart probe could cost some executives their jobs.

From Chapter 14 — "The Mystique of the Business Leader" in Managing for the Future

… snip, snip … 
Business executives are inevitably leaders in their organizations, seen as such, perceived as such, judged as such. 
"The higher up the monkey goes, the more of his behind he shows," runs an English schoolboy jingle. What executives do, what they believe and value, what they reward and whom, are watched, seen, and minutely interpreted throughout the whole organization. And nothing is noticed more quickly—and considered more significant—than a discrepancy between what executives preach and what they expect their associates to practice.
Recently I discussed with an elder statesman of Japan's industry the violation of the ban on strategic shipments of American products by a subsidiary of Tokyo's Toshiba. I commented on the fact that the top executives of Toshiba had held themselves "accountable" and resigned over this matter even though the violator is barely controlled by Toshiba (which holds only 50.1 percent of its stock), is autonomous, and had disregarded published company policy. 
"We wouldn't say 'accountable,' " my friend said. "We'd say: 'It's their fault.' If a manager in a company does something wrong to improve the market standing or the profits of the company, you can be sure that he only does what his top management wants him to do and signals him to do." 
The Japanese recognize that there are really only two demands of leadership. One is to accept that rank does not confer privileges; it entails responsibilities. The other is to acknowledge that leaders in an organization need to impose on themselves that congruence between deeds and words, between behavior and professed beliefs and values, that we call "personal integrity."

Sunday, April 22, 2012

1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed

Note to Class of 2012: More than half of young college graduates now jobless or underemployed

Long, long, long before their senior year students need to be doing some early career work.

The more they really know about how the world works and consequences of bad decisions the better prepared they will be. This is a part of learning.

There is an old saying: To know and not do is to not yet know.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Possibility


Edward de Bono says:

Educational establishments totally underestimate the importance of "possibility." 
Two thousand years ago, China was far ahead of the West in science and technology. They had rockets and gunpowder. Had China continued at the same rate of progress, then today China would easily have been the dominant power in the world. 
What happened? What brought progress to a halt? 
The Chinese scholars started to believe you could move from "fact to fact." So they never developed the messy business of possibility (hypothesis, etc.). As a result, progress came to a dead end. 
Exactly the same sort of thing is happening in the world today. Because of the excellence of computers, people are starting to believe that all you need to do is to collect data and analyze it. This will give you your decisions, your policies and your strategies. It is an extremely dangerous situation, which will bring progress to a halt. There is a huge need for creativity to interpret data in different ways; to combine data to design value delivery; to know where to look for data; to form hypotheses and speculations, etc., etc. 
I have held academic positions at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard. I have to say that at each of these wonderful institutions the amount of time spent on the fundamental importance of possibility was zero
Our culture and habits of thinking insist that we always move towards certainty. We need to pay equal attention to possibility.

Creativity Workout: 62 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Leadership


There is so much leadership blah, blah, blah (snake oil) and then there is Peter Drucker.
Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. 
Nothing better prepares the ground for such leadership than a spirit of management that confirms in the day-to-day practices of the organization strict principles of conduct and responsibility, high standards of performance, and respect for individuals and their work. 
Peter Drucker with Joseph A. Maciariello, Management, Revised Edition
More of Drucker's thoughts on leadership

Why Great Leaders Are in Short Supply

Spencer Stuart's Tom Neff, the dean of CEO Executive Search, puts it baldly: "We are experiencing a demand for new types of skills and sacrifices in C-level executives that many are not prepared to bring to the table."

tlnkwleadership

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Drucker, marketing, branding


In Tiny Product Change, Huge Sales Impact: The Billion Dollar Branding Lesson from Morton Salt the author states: "Peter Drucker has famously said that the only job of a business is to create customers.  He hasn’t said exactly how to do it.  That’s where branding comes in."
Drucker did offer advice on how to create a customer. Chapter 9 "The Purpose and Objectives of a Business" in Drucker's Management, Revised Edition  offers a different thought process. It is fairly lengthy and there is a major, major, major danger in quoting him out of the larger context.
The word "brand" is not the focus of Drucker's thinking. He would probably point out the long list of dead brands.
"… snip, snip … The profit motive and its offspring maximization of profits are just as irrelevant to the function of a business, the purpose of a business, and the job of managing a business … snip, snip … It is a major cause for the misunderstanding of the nature of profit in our society and for hostility profit, which are among the most dangerous diseases of a society or (of) organizations. It is largely responsible for the worst mistakes of public policy—in this country well as in Western Europe—which are squarely based on the failure to understand, the nature, function, and purpose of business enterprise.
… snip, snip … Above all, consumerism should dispel the confusion which largely explains why there has been so little real marketing.
When managers speak of marketing, they usually mean the organized performance of all selling functions.
This is still selling.
It still starts out with "our products."
It still looks for "our market."
True marketing starts out … snip, snip … with the customer, his demographics, his realities, his needs, his values.
It does not ask, "What do we want to sell?"
It asks, "What does the customer want to buy?"
It does not say, "This is what our product or service does."
It says, "These are the satisfactions the customer looks for, values and needs … snip, snip …
Indeed, selling and marketing are antithetical rather than synonymous or even complementary.
Marketing alone does not make a business enterprise … snip, snip …
The second function of a business is, therefore, innovation—the provision of different economic satisfactions … snip, snip …"
Even the quotes above are a misrepresentation of Drucker's mental landscape. Also see chapter 8 The Theory of the Business.

Also see The Definitive Drucker and Marketing in Crisis

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Finding your own treadmill


LTIS is a bread crumb trail for people who don't want to be on somebody else's treadmill.

The world is moving away from pre-industrial conditions and the movement is not linear. A tweet is not a linear extrapolation of a telegraph. A smart phone is not a linear extrapolation of a black rotary phone of the 1950s. Industry composition and structures are not static. Apple is not a linear extrapolation of two guys working out of a garage.

It is important to build your life on your strengths and values.

The opposite of building your life on your strengths and values is to build on your weaknesses and the things that aren't important to you.

Forbes: Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Are Useless

See Forbes article Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Are Useless

My response:


This article raises a number of issues: group work vs. individual work; unique strengths; problem solving; brainstorming; generating new ideas; creative thought; and innovation.

Edward de Bono's work on the patterning system of the human brain is relevant to the mental landscapes we bring to work. He also has a thing or two to say about brainstorming vs. creative thought. The Six Thinking Hats in the context of thinking in general: Teach Yourself to Think.

Peter Drucker on individual strength. Drucker constantly stressed starving problems and feeding opportunities. In his work on innovation he favored the the seven windows of innovative opportunity and suggested avoiding "the bright idea."

It might be interesting to note the contrasting mental landscapes and timescapes between de Bono and Drucker.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Is there a payoff from top-team diversity?

In a McKinsey Quarterly article they explored "Is there a payoff from top-team diversity?" 


When a diverse group interacts they can either kill each other, leave the group, or try to understand the available mental landscapes. The willingness to enter someone else's universe can help break down the prisons created by the past. See mental patterns.

An alternative to GTD

Just working from the flow of events or off of the top of one's head (brainstorming) is the road to yesterday. Here's a different approach based on Peter Drucker's work.

Google keyword searches

For some strange reason Google is not paying attention to the search keywords on my site. So I'm trying this:  tlnkwtime  :::  tlnkwradar  :::  tlnkwquick :::  tlnkwdrucker  :::  tlnkwceo  :::  tlnkwbobembry ::: tlnkwtsm