It’s one of the most interesting moments in our working sessions with Ops and Creative leaders. By looking at their history, we tee up the concept that the creation of new value is the result of combining fresh thinking from both inside and outside the firm. We then show the group how to harvest rich […]
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 […]
I had a very spirited discussion with the top technical leader in a firm recently during a diagnostic phone call. We were talking about the innovation function of the firm (it is always interesting to explore why firms set up a separate innovation function) and the character of the projects they were taking on there. […]
I was leading a workshop last month, and we reached the point where we were working on the participants’ projects. We were working in the STRIDE framework and sharing how to build a high-integrity project that makes the risk-taking transparent to both the team and management. This is always a big moment in the workshop, […]
Question: What do AM Stereo, IOT and 3D printing all have in common? Answer: All three were on everyone’s powerful trends list…and all three have had a hard time finding their moment. It happens more frequently than you might expect: leaders in mature businesses with some balance sheet resources get a sense of where a […]
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 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 […]
One of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned about getting new to-market growth projects done over my 30+ year career, is one that started out sounding good but ended up being dead wrong. When I was a young P&L manager tasked with leading new-to-market product and service teams, I was pulled aside by a sage […]
One of the privileges of working with dozens of enterprises on their business growth around the world is seeing the intrinsic skills of what I have come to call their key “Growth Leaders.” By Growth Leader, I mean someone who regardless of the external factors of the business, is fantastic at finding the underlying emergent […]
