Transform your business by completely rethinking how it works. Analyzing your business model, revenue, and costs can lead you to innovative solutions.
When you go to generate new ideas to run things better, you need to think critically about the way your business runs. I like to look at three things: a business model blowup, a revenue blowup, and a cost blowup.
On the business model blowup, fundamentally rethink how you go to market. And rethink what your market actually is. You’re going to challenge the entire business model for the way you deliver products and services. On the revenue blowup side, how do you dramatically expand the products, your pricing, the geography, and the reach of your business? And on the cost blowup, how do you fundamentally eliminate drag from the business to become more efficient?
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Creativity is a skill that can be built like any other. Understanding your passion and challenging the voices in your head that say “no” are a great way to start.
Maybe it’s disingenuous to say that each of us has the potential to be a creative genius. Gifts of personality are dispensed in varied measures at birth. Humans are tangled balls of social conditioning, reactions to environment, and serendipity. Life isn’t fair. Luck plays a part. We’ve all heard someone say, “I was in the right place at the right time” or “I never get lucky.”
As far as creativity is concerned, most people believe you’ve either got it or you don’t. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard someone say wistfully, “I’m not creative.” When I hear a statement like that, I think to myself, “No one has ever shown you where to begin.”
Because the fact is, creativity, like any skill, can be cultivated. It takes a healthy combination of self-knowledge and stamina.
Athletes have an advantage: prescribed methods of building stamina, because physical prowess is revered by our culture. Hire a personal trainer and you’ll start with a series of exercises done repetitively – gradually adding reps as the body gains strength. Exercise is specific, varied, and involves what’s called cross training. One day a session of running to work cardio. Next time? Yoga to maximize flexibility. A steady, balanced program of activity keeps the human machine functioning at its optimal level.
So what about the rest of us? How can we engage creatively with what we care about – whether it’s a job or an avocation? And just as important – how can we identify what works against building creative stamina in every aspect of our lives?
I teach artists how to build stamina through what I call “creativity strength training” but the fact is, the lessons apply to everyone.
Here are three aspects of thinking more creatively each of us can embrace.
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In 1938, MIT student Claude Shannon solved one of the most complex problems of circuit design. Working on an early analog computer, he realized that an idea from an undergraduate philosophy course could solve the problem. Applying Boolean Algebra he laid the foundation of all electronic digital computers. As he put it: “It just happened that no one else was familiar with both fields at the same time”.
You may think that this was one of those lucky coincidences that change the world but almost never happen. You are wrong. In his book Seeing What Others Don’t, Gary Klein studied 120 of the most important inventions and discoveries in history: 82% of them emerged when people from different disciplines started to talk to each other and exchanged ideas.
Follow some simple rules and you may see what others don’t as well.
Start talking to strangers
At the beginning of the 20th century Vienna was a hotbed for new ideas. At the centre of this explosion of thoughts was the Wiener Kreis (Vienna circle), an interdisciplinary group of philosophers and scientists that met fortnightly.
While brilliant minds like Karl Popper, Ludwig von Wittgenstein, or Albert Einstein might have flourished as individuals, the gatherings are not to be underestimated. Eccentricities, disagreements, and rivalries marked these salons, but the insights had a profound impact on computing, astrophysics, cosmology, theory of science and philosophy. Even the godfather of management, Peter Drucker, benefitted from such “Abendgesellschaften” (evening gatherings) in his parent’s home in Vienna.
One obvious conclusion is to set up regular dinners with eccentrics. But a new set of online tools also facilitates the “meeting with strangers”. Harvard Professor Karim Lakhani studied hundreds crowdsourcing contests where companies post unsolvable problems and invite people to submit solutions. “The provision of a winning solution was positively related to increasing distance between the solver’s field of technical expertise and the focal field of the problem,” he explains. When tricky problems cannot be solved by the specialists, people with other backgrounds looking through other lenses and using other heuristics may find the solution. Talk to those people more often and you will start to seeing things differently.
Don’t trust the experts
Managing disruptions is difficult. A recent BCG-study found that 35% of the surveyed companies view digital technologies as disruptive to their business models and only 1/3 of all companies steer successfully through disruption.
One of the hardest things is to see what is coming. Incumbents get it wrong most of the time.
Specialists are the main culprits. Philipp E. Tetlock studied the accuracy of over 80,000 forecasts of political and economic experts. When they were convinced that something was fully or almost impossible, that future event occurred 15 percent of the time. When they were absolutely sure about a future event, it didn’t occur in more than a quarter of cases. When given a set of three future scenarios, experts were less accurate than someone randomly picking from these scenarios.
Experts often look at a problem through the lens of a single grand idea and “squeeze complex problems into the preferred cause-effect templates”. Instead of listening to specialized experts, tap into the collective wisdom of crowds.
In his book The Wisdom of Crowds James Surowiecki demonstrates that crowds beat experts if there is sufficient cognitive diversity, status and rank play no role, decentralized knowledge can be accessed, and if knowledge is aggregated efficiently.
There are many ways to achieve this. Surround yourself with people from different backgrounds, , talk to front-line employees and use tools like social networks, wikis, or strategy jams to give everyone a voice. The UK bank Barclays, for instance, invited 30,000 employees via a two-day online strategy jam, to bring them into a strategy conversation, along with senior leaders. The outcome was one of the UK’s most popular fintech products.
Try walking a mile in your enemy’s shoes
As we have limited information processing capabilities, managers rely on simplified mental models to make sense of the world. These frameworks or explanations of how a business works influence how we process information and how we decide. Mental models can become rigid. So rigid that they inhibit change!
Take Polaroid’s downfall for example. In 1992 it was very well positioned to become a big player in digital photography. Patents, brand, even a prototype, everything was lined up. The only problem was the old business model. Polaroid’s managers loved the Razor and Blade model. When they saw the digital camera, they didn’t see its potential. There was no film. How can you make money without film? They could not overcome their mental model. 40 other brands were available, when Polaroid finally introduced a digital camera in 1996.
In military, war games are used to make decision-makers more vigilant, to broaden their range of alternatives, to spot early signals of change and recalibrate their mental frameworks accordingly, allowing for greater adaptation and nimbleness. Engage your managers in a similar exercise. Let them imagine a fictional competitor who develops a business model that totally disrupts your industry. What would such a business model be? Where are your vulnerabilities? This gives you totally new perspectives.
Seeing disruption as a threat rather than an opportunity has another benefit. Fear is a powerful motivator. Exercises like these have borne fruit for dozens of companies, such as BASF, Linde, and Lufthansa. These firms are now better prepared for disruption or have adopted entirely new business models.
Use analogies
Oliver Gassmann from Sankt Gallen University has studied more than 300 business model innovations. One of his most intriguing findings: 90% of them were mere new combinations of existing patterns, copied from other industries. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just open up. Use analogies and ask yourself for example: What would Apple do in my industry?
Responding to disruption is not easy, but an open mindset increases the odds of success.
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The caller ID stated “Mike.” The phone was on the fourth ring. I held it in front of me, watching the screen, mouth dry, sitting at my desk, thinking, “Here it goes again. He’s going to speak Chinese and I won’t understand.”
Creative Food, the vegetable-processing company I had started in China the year before, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Every project I initiated had failed. All the foreign experts I had hired had left. My operations were in such bad shape that my own customers, who included big fast-food chains like KFC and Pizza Hut asked my new recruits why they had come aboard a ship that was sure to sink. On that day, once I finally answered the phone, I had to ask Mike to repeat himself several times. Read more
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Do you struggle to get things done because you overthink your work? Try these three tips to overcome “analysis paralysis.”
Many times I’ve heard it said that perfect is the enemy of done. A big barrier to executing initiatives is analysis paralysis. The team gets bogged down on proving their case is 100% accurate and risk-free before they act. That slows down execution and leads to missed opportunities. By understanding the risks you face and making appropriate trade-offs between timeliness and accuracy effects, you can speed up execution and break through analysis paralysis. Read more
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If you are a leader and you don’t have surge gear, then guess what? You might not be a leader for long. If you lack the wherewithal to move your business from its normal mode of operation to one that is turbocharged, then you’ve no way of responding effectively to either sudden problems that could send you into a tailspin or unexpected opportunities that could send you rocketing. Read more
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“I want to change the world” is a common declaration among passionate professionals. Early in my career, this desire also drove me. But as enticing as this statement is, it actually assumes that success—and failure—is contingent upon changing others. Although trying to change others may seem like a “power move,” when we, as managers, focus on other people rather than ourselves, we relinquish our power to create real change. Extreme responsibility, on the other hand, shifts power back to management—where it belongs. Read more
This is a unique moment in history. Each and every one of us has a part in what happens next.
For far too long, our systems have been designed to leave too many people behind. Now the pandemic is giving us a do-over moment. Read more
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Managing at the right level is the most important element in effective management in the Age of Diverse Markets. This is a huge change. In the prior mass markets era, companies had homogeneous markets, so they needed to plan and coordinate only at the executive level, with the rest of the company’s managers focusing on their respective functional specialties. Today’s markets are rapidly becoming highly fragmented, reflecting diverse customer needs. This requires a much more decentralized set of management structures and processes, which strongly affects managers at all levels of a company’s organization. Read more
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Do you struggle to get your ideas approved? Follow the structured thought process to create better presentations.
When you have a recommendation you’re trying to get approved within your organization, there are going to be a lot of stakeholders you have to get your idea in front of. You’ll have to put it in front of your manager, maybe their boss, a director, and some vice presidents. Some of your ideas may even go all the way up to the C-suite. There’s something I like to call Figliuolo’s Law, which states:
“An individual’s annual compensation is inversely proportional to the number of slides they can look at before they have a stroke.”
I’ve worked with a CEO who said, “If it has a staple, I won’t read it.” I worked closely with another CEO and we went in to present. The other team went to present first. He picked up their presentation, he felt it for heft, and it was about 25 pages long. He threw it across the room and said, Read more
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/20210331-Presentation.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=112801920Mike Figliuolohttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngMike Figliuolo2021-03-31 06:30:522021-03-31 04:27:47What Makes a Presentation Unsuccessful?
It’s easy for your team to get sidetracked if your strategy has a lot of moving parts. Learn how to prioritize your most meaningful work.
A consistent and regularly-scheduled prioritization process helps eliminate distractions and focus your efforts on the most meaningful projects. Some processes are formal while others are simply frequent conversations about priorities. Choose a process that’s appropriate for the size of your organization.
I’ve worked for two very different organizations. One was large and one was a small business unit. In the large one we had a very formal prioritization process. All departments were involved, and you had to have a very rigorous business case to get your idea on the list. In the small business unit it was an informal process. We achieved prioritization by allocating budget to different budget owners.
We then gave them discretion to choose their own priorities. In the large organization it was very rigorous, but sometimes we lacked agility. It kept us focused, but at the cost of innovating every once in a while. In the small organization it enabled a lot of distractions to happen. People pursued some pet projects. Pet projects and distractions should not be worked on if they haven’t been prioritized. They had a huge impact.
In the small business unit I was in we got a lot of small things done, but a lot of times they were disjointed, they lacked impact, and some of them weren’t even on strategy. Build a prioritization process that is appropriate for the size and complexity of your organization, and make sure that process is in charge of allocating resources accordingly.
Embedding prioritization
Prioritization processes work great for larger projects that require resource allocation. They don’t necessarily change behaviors related to more day-to-day activities. Embedding a prioritization mindset in your team will help everyone focus on the most meaningful work. When you talk about projects, refer back to the prioritization criteria so people know how you make decisions and that you expect them to do the same.
I had a great boss at one point who would meet with me every week to ask me what I was working on. If he saw I was working on something that was off-strategy, he’d ask for justification. He’d say, “Mike, how does this tie to the strategy?” He forced me to think through how the work I was doing tied to the overall strategy. If the work didn’t, he asked what I thought we should do about the project. Usually, I decided to kill it. I then modeled that behavior for my team. Prioritization became a way of life for us.
Ask people on your team what they’re working on. Have them explain how that work ties to the overall strategy. Ask them to make choices based on the strategy versus just telling them, “No, stop that project.” When they come up with the rationale on their own, they’re much more likely to stop doing non-strategic work and focus on the things that matter the most.
Stopping off-track work
When you come across work that isn’t high priority or is a distraction, it’s important to stop it quickly. Before stopping that work though, understand why people are working on it and why they thought it should be a focus. There may be a good reason they’re pursuing that project. It could be related to safety, regulations, or company policy. If there’s not a strong reason for the work and it’s clear that it’s a distraction, stop it immediately. Explain your rationale and refocus efforts on high-priority items that require additional resources.
I worked with one CEO who was very excited about making an acquisition. He had a lot of activity going on. He had people looking at the market and evaluating the target company. He was spinning up a lot of work. We went through a strategic planning session, and he realized this work was off strategy. It was a distraction. He immediately stopped all work on it. That sent a strong message to the organization that it’s okay to stop work in progress once you realize it’s off strategy.
When you stop off-track work, be sure to replace it with something more meaningful. You don’t want that individual feeling discouraged or unimportant because you stopped their project. Let them know, “Hey it’s about the project, it’s not about you. And by the way, now that you’re free, I want you to go work on this really high-priority strategic project.” Stopping off-track work is a key to achieving focus for your organization.
Want to learn more about strategic focus? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to improve your strategic focus. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/20210324-Meeting-Sticky-Notes.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=112801920Mike Figliuolohttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngMike Figliuolo2021-03-24 06:30:552021-03-24 01:01:14How to Prioritize Your Team’s Work and Improve Focus
Make sure your team has a clear understanding of how their goals relate to your organization’s broader vision and mission.
For a goal to be relevant, it has to tie to the broader purpose and goals of the entire organization. Your strategy is going to help drive that. The strategy consists of a desired future state and definition of how you’re going to get there. You should break that strategy down into smaller, interim goals on that path. Every goal that gets set in the organization should be linked to that broader element of your strategy.
How to Tie Your Goals to the Broader Mission
How do you do that? Take a look at your vision and your mission. Look at where you’re going as an organization. Break that down into major themes over the course of the strategic planning period. For each theme, break that down into actions you’ll have to take to achieve that theme. For each action, break that down into sub-actions until you can set an individual goal for each of those actions.
Case Study: Lawn and Garden Company
I worked for a lawn and garden company at one point and I was in the strategic planning group. We said we’re no longer going to just be a lawn and garden company. We’re going to move into outdoor living. It was a much broader expansion strategy.
For each part of the organization, we set goals that were tied to that outdoor living strategy. Our consumer package goods business had goals for new product line expansion and getting into new categories. Our services business had goals for offering new services. Even in the strategy group, we had goals for achieving that outdoor living strategy.
We had goals for how many acquisitions we would do and what categories we were going to enter. For each acquisition, we had goals related to targets we were going to make offers to. We had a time for when we were going to make the offer. We had deadlines for making a deal. We had deadlines and goals around integration, execution of the plan, and expansion of those businesses once they were acquired.
Every single one of those goals tied to a broader strategic theme, and those themes tied to the broader strategy of getting into outdoor living. We all knew how we were contributing to the broader strategy. Therefore, our goals made sense and they were meaningful and relevant to the mission of the organization.
When you set your goals, make sure that you can go from strategy to themes to actions to goals, and then explain to the members of your team how those goals roll up to the broader strategy. It will give their work meaning and help them understand how they fit in.
Want to learn more about goal setting? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set better goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/20210316-Chain-Links.jpg?fit=1920%2C1285&ssl=112851920Mike Figliuolohttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngMike Figliuolo2021-03-17 06:30:042021-03-16 20:40:59How to Link Your Goals to Your Strategy