This is the time of year when many groups have locked in their plans for next year and are getting ready for the welcome holiday break. Many of those plans are based on great ideas that have been harvested through the year from client and partner trips, conferences, books and speakers. Instead of contributing to […]
I was on the phone recently with a colleague who leads a significant development organization in a Fortune 100 firm. She was lamenting the need for more people to take the lead on helping to craft more insightful and on-target services. It’s something I hear from many of my client firms, and when we go […]
I’ve had the chance to do a lot of work with HR leaders and their firms recently in strategic implementation. One of the most frequently asked questions is this: what is our role in helping to drive new growth in the firm? Implied in the question is the idea that they are passengers on […]
I struck up a conversation at a conference last month with a C-level staff leader in a publicly-traded firm that has come under some real pressure for being conservative in its approach to growth. We were able to carve out a few quiet minutes so that she could pick my brain on decision-making processes I […]
The speeches were done, we enjoyed cake and coffee and finished passing out the checks. The hardware was on the table (a CEO award). But more importantly, we had sliced almost half of the time it took us to do custom product development, which was pushing up customer satisfaction and would lock us into designs […]
Getting organic growth projects done in medium and large firms is hard work. It’s even harder when you’re doing it in addition to your “day job.” These projects are often accomplished by setting up an internal incubator. This space is typically well removed from the main “cube farm,” which allows the product team member/ innovator […]
It came out of nowhere: it was a request that one of our customer service people might have easily dismissed, yet for some reason it was put on my desk. The device being requested was significantly more stringent than the ones we had been building at the time, and while we received many of these […]
I walked into the the conference room, and even with warm handshakes, you could feel the tension. This group had been working for months to pull their work together and launch a new product that was based in some great work that their advanced R&D team had completed. I had been asked to come […]
I was working with a firm in a session the other day and we had one of those moments of clarity. They had done some great work in previous meetings and had set the stage for growth decision making by taking stock of relevant hard and soft assets of the firm, carefully integrating objective outside […]
I recall it clearly: I was working with a small manufacturing team that was looking to break out of their current niche. We had begun doing work on the business model canvas and Growth Zone principles. We were looking for opportunities in Quadrant One (which is the core), but seeing their strengths and weaknesses effectively […]
