The talent shortage that we all knew was in the offing has arrived, and with it, the need to quickly accelerate promising candidates in the leadership pipeline. With 10,000 baby boomers retiring each day, we know we need to equip the mid-senior talent we have in our firms as quickly as possible. This has led […]
It’s a constant cycle in sports. After the completion of the championship cycle, there is a draft. Rookie players are chosen, then free agents (experienced players) are bid on and a preliminary roster is set. It’s then that the war games begin. Each team tries to outguess each other’s strategy by looking at who has […]
We have an interesting case study playing out right now: Ford Motor Company has had three recent waves of leadership changes that give evidence to the demands of leading a large mature firm into what has become a classic set of trade offs between optimizing the current business model and creating the next. For those […]
I was in a great session recently with mid-sized business owners, and as we were coming back from a break, one of the owners asked a very thoughtful question: “We have a good handle on operations, but we only do strategy sporadically and on demand. As our business gets more complex, how should I be […]
Colonel John Boyd was an enlistee in the Army Air Corps late in World War II. With the war ending quickly, he went on to be a pilot in the Korean conflict, and was later invited to the most prestigious fighter training school of the time. It was here that he would develop his most […]
I was early in my career serving as a design engineering manager for an industrial electronics firm. We were working on a new product release that called for a major change to a key component in the product. To accomplish this, we needed a globally compatible, high-wattage power supply that was lightweight (which meant we […]
For those of us in the Midwest, summer is a really big deal. And one of the things we look forward to the most? Water skiing. Having been a skier for more than four decades now, I’ve developed my share of experiences. One of these experiences is something that happens nearly every year and […]
I was speaking for a group of senior executives last week and a great question came up: “What is the most destructive thing you see when working with new innovation teams in existing firms?” As my mind flashed through dozens of projects and larger programs, there was one thing that came up over and over […]
Have you ever fallen victim to the MBA Kool Aid? As a young strategist, it led me to believe that with the right preparation, a great pre-read and a superb facilitation job, I could lay the foundation for a solid innovation strategy with one good offsite session. After the session was complete, we’d then spend […]
Why is it that you can have a fantastic offsite session, and then 48 hours later, put the same people in a room and nothing that was proposed survives? Perhaps something similar has happened to you: You’ve just completed a very productive offsite creative session with the senior team and are feeling good. Pages of […]
