The view was amazing. The conference room was on the top floor overlooking the corporate campus – you could see for miles. It was here that I, along with two subject matter experts, were set to meet with the global P&L owner of the largest and most mature business in their multi-billion dollar portfolio. As […]
Mary and I walked out of our General Manager’s office and went to have coffee. We had just left one of those meetings when you know that your work life will never be quite the same. We had been given a huge challenge, and the stakes were very high. We were to complete and […]
The books have already been printed, the HBR article is in queue and the launch programs have been carefully orchestrated. Soon you’ll hear the authors on the most popular podcasts and see blurbs in both Inc. and Forbes Magazine. Then we’ll all be off and running. This river of new business tools and techniques takes […]
Many of you are enjoying a few slower, more laid back days in the office as the year wraps up. Like many of you, I too welcome these days and look forward to taking some time to regroup, process and develop a vision for the upcoming calendar year. It’s in this spirit that I’d like […]
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 […]
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 […]
