I recall it clearly: the pressure to get that first “deal”…as well as the relentless pressure to fill “the funnel” even though we were in a very early stage incubator within a large firm where our revenue wouldn’t have paid for the yard care. That memory came flooding back last week at a professional society […]
If you are on the board, a member of the C-Suite or a P&L accountable leader in a larger firm, there is a common blind spot when launching innovation initiatives. I was reminded of this during a phone call with a colleague whom I did several large-scale breakout programs with while in an op’s role […]
True story from my ops background: When I was running through emails one morning, I found one that stopped me in my tracks. The VP of a recently acquired product line had sent an incendiary note to the CFO and copied dozens of people internally, using coarse language to declare the integration systems team completely […]
I can’t tell you the number of times I’m asked to facilitate a session to accelerate a project and this happens: all the introductions are complete, and while it’s very clear that all the “backstage” players are present (R&D, Development, Corporate Development), the essential front of house team members who connect that value to the […]
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 […]
I was giving a talk recently and the topic of cycle time reduction came up. It’s a historical fact that after Six Sigma, Motorola took on a very aggressive corporate program to reduce product development cycle time. We used a methodology that set a targeted reduction over a six-year time interval. To set the bar […]
I was having a recent conversation with a mid-market firm’s President when this came out: “When we need out-of-the-box thinking, we need to get our CIO out of the room.” I needed to push back on this leader…not because his comment didn’t have some merit when it came to how the team was working together, […]
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 […]
My CFO client was lamenting the pace of progress on their innovation programs during a recent 1:1 session. I had an inkling that I knew what might be going on, so I asked her to show me the portfolio of project work they were funding for the current year. And there it was. Some background: […]
Three phone calls: A colleague who is an internal catalyst who has given his all to get new things going – only to see them shut down due to problems in the core business. A reader who leads a breakout sales team and fights the internal inertia more than his competition. A senior team member […]
