I’m currently helping a number of very talented R&D leaders in a variety of contexts. What they have in common, is that across the board, they are dealing with significant growth and change at all levels including technical, organizational and process. Specifically, this change has led to challenges including how to scale, how to […]
It’s a phrase I heard just last week, “we may have the same badge, but we are not on the same team.” When you hear something like that, it’s highly likely you have just discovered that unseen boundary in the firm called a “silo.” And in the fast-moving agile era, silos are way too costly. […]
“All of a sudden, I was on the defensive and we had just gotten started…” “They jumped on my first chart, and it went downhill from there…” Internal reviews are a way of life in larger, complex firms. Once a plan is locked in and authorized, the third leg of the stool is tracking its […]
One-shot. The small R&D team had been working for months, laying the groundwork for what they hoped would be a dramatic new product. It seemed like it had it all: market runway, clients who were accessible by the existing team, and good utilization of the firm’s existing capabilities. Unfortunately, many firms have a process that […]
Every airport is fundamentally the same. At its simplest, it’s a way to connect passengers to airplanes – and then put them back into the world once they’ve landed. Like Chutes and Ladders for adults, the airplane is simply a reality accelerator. You go in the airport door and come out somewhere new (averaging 400 […]
It seemingly comes from nowhere and is one of the most frequent symptoms that lead to firms reaching out for help. The call usually goes something like this: “We have a leader who has served extraordinarily well in [insert previous significant role]. We recently gave them responsibility in this new area, and it’s not going […]
We were 24 months into a very difficult business unit turnaround and a lot of the hardest decisions were behind us. We had “right-sized” the group so that it was supportable by the existing business run rate. We had reviewed the customer base and focused on the subset where we could provide the most value. […]
For many of you reading, it can be a very common pattern. In reflecting on your program to encourage Growth Leadership in your firm, it sure seems like you’ve made the investment. You’ve provided training, workshops and outside speaker events. Yet when you look at the results and that fresh new work you’ve been expecting, […]
Not a month goes by that I don’t have a conversation around one of these observations: “We simply can’t add expertise fast enough” “We don’t have the capital budget to bring that component to market at scale” “The return on investment for our core products is flat, and I think the root is in our […]
I was observing a team meeting with a group earlier this year and it happened right before my eyes. The team had just finished a robust discussion and had done great work to diagnose the cross-functional issue. The team leader had looked around the room and everyone was nodding in agreement about the context and […]
