It's The Process

most companies that i see either have a business strategy built by consensus or don't have a strategy and want to build one, again by consensus without going through a comprehensive strategy building process.

the often avoided process takes time (often 3 to 4 months) and energy (3 to 4 of your best young professionals and an experienced leader).

the issue is that the product you are seeking is the process itself, not the resulting strategy document.

the process is the goal and is more than worth the effort.

Change

Change = discomfort, stress, fear, and anxiety

No Change = unemployment, bankruptcy, discomfort, stress, fear, and anxiety

It's your choice.

Dinosaurs and Other Fossils

businesses are too comfortable today.  the internet has changed society and people; they are more informed and more demanding, they want information, transparency, and a cause to believe in.  they want to deal only with companies that can fulfill their needs quickly and conveniently

if your company is fat and happy today with a relative monopoly in your area of the business world, you had better take the blinders off because the earthquake is coming.  if you still have a monopoly in your market segment -- it's just an artifact of history and will soon go away.  the New York Times was pushed out of the Fortune 500 by Netflix; others will soon fall

this is not the age of patch, repair and evolve -- especially when we are speaking of our information technology systems -- the foundations of our businesses.  this is the age of separate, incubate, innovate and experiment; building new core I/T infrastructures from scratch around customers, needs, and information as a product.  we are in an information driven revolution and that information can become as valuable as any other product or service that you provide

many people believe that the information driven companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are aliens who live in another world and are of no threat to "my" industry.  but the truth is that these companies are information black holes and they will go where the information is; banking, transportation, medicine, etc.  the threat is there whether you see it or not

the customers are there (4.7 billion cell phone users in the world), the competition is moving powered by an information engine -- are you going to survive

what is your vision and strategy.  can every one of your professional employees see, live and feel that vision and strategy every day.  is experimentation the norm and do you provide a world where no experiment is a failure as long as we learn from it

today customers want convenience, price, transparency, personal tailoring, and a mission to believe in; are you there or at least moving rapidly to "there" -- if not, good night sweet Charlotte.

Thoughts on Great Company Management

the word "sell" is a bad word -- have you ever met a salesman that you trusted

work to become a trusted partner/counselor of your customer’s management, then all good things, including sales, will follow.

target and serve the top 2 to 3 companies in an industry

make your work transformative and high impact

compensate staff based upon performance, not for hours or sales

set a true north around customer impact -- obsess over delivering measurable impact

ask "so what value did we add this month?"

always forward think about what value you can add to a customer's business

with a history of value, you are unlikely to be displaced

cross pollinate team thinking

have something thoughtful to say in every customer meeting -- never go to a meeting without an agenda or unprepared

if you don't make the customer uncomfortable sometimes, you are not pushing the thinking enough

technology is not the vision or the answer, business/technology seamless integration is

make an investment in understanding the challenges your customer is facing and is likely to face in the future

tell your customer something that makes them think differently about her/his business

understand your company's values and share them with the customer

be honest with the customer even to the point of dissent; it’s your duty as a partner

seek out opportunities to help your customers outside of your defined duties -- what about her important upcoming meeting, how can you help her excel

Change Is The Norm

we live in a world not of calmness and stability, but one of chaos and change.  change is not the exception today, it is the norm.

change is precipitated every day by people and events in the news and in our circles of friends.  take the news around Edward Snowden for example.  who would have thought that a CIA analyst could impact the structure of the internet and the business opportunities available to the technology companies of the world -- but he has.

as a result of his releases, the internet is actually being modified or segmented into country controlled units. Britain and Germany among others are building their own internal to country loops that will feed the larger internet when necessary and keep all other locally sourced and destined traffic within the country.  that way then can control the encryption and the snooping by the U.S., China, Russia and others.  in the future you will have to picture the internet in your mind as a series of interconnected rings, much like the symbol of the olympics.

even individual companies are taking these steps by strengthening their intra-company networks, providing electronic and physical isolation from the internet and removing their intellectual capital and r&d machines from networks all together. these types of changes will precipitate down to companies of all sizes and disciplines over the next decade.

the opportunity for technology companies is to excel in secure network building and encryption techniques, as well as leading edge information security.  change your company to capture the opportunities not where the market is today, but where it is going to be tomorrow.

Inflection Points

the trip through life is rough, bruising and offering its fair share of pain as well as joy.  the truth is that we all get scarred by the trials and tribulations of life.  but those of us who are inwardly focused and totally sure that our own opinions are the only correct ones and for sure the only ones that matter receive the most scars, mostly self inflicted.

we all build our individual belief structure as we go through life and that is a good thing because it teaches us not to touch the hot stove tops and to avoid many easily self-inflicted wounds.  however our belief system can also be damaging when it becomes too rigid and is reinforced on a daily basis by our own network of like believers whom we chose to surround ourselves with.  we end up in an ever-tighter spiral of our own beliefs, open to little else, especially critical thinking, which might violate our beliefs.

speaking of beliefs, i believe in inflection points. in life we find a trajectory that pleases us such as the process of climbing a corporate ladder or the process of starting and building our own company.  normally once found we stay on that trajectory for a significant period of time, focused on the goals that appear on the horizon.  this can be good as long as we aren't too tunnel visioned.  no trajectory is perfect and as we all know, anything in our world that is too rigid is eventually broken.

inflection points are events that occur in our lives which cause us to change trajectory, slightly or significantly, based upon the interactions of that event.  inflection points usually involve people, a person that you meet during each significant event (inflection point) of your life.  for example below is an inflection point map of my life to date.

each of these events (shown by the circles) changed the trajectory of my life (for better or worse).  why, because inside each of those events was a person who introduced me to new and different ways of thinking about work, life, relationships, and humanity in general.  the trick was not having these events occur or meeting the people, but being open to new and different thinking and using that thinking to reevaluate my trajectory and belief system.

you can learn from everyone around you, no matter what their rank or circumstances in life. remember a stranger is just a person whose story you do not yet know.  you just have to be mentally open and willing to listen.

want to succeed in business as well as life, just be open to continually obtain new input for your critical thinking, input that comes from these inflection points.

who are you

the most difficult question that a candidate for a potential job with me and my work is;

"who are you?"

invariably the candidate will answer with an excerpt from her resume.  i am a national merit scholar; i am a Harvard MBA; i am a chief financial officer, i am a business consultant for productivity.

these are or may be statements of fact and they may be what you presently do for a living, but they are far from the answer to the question which was asked.

the question is meant to get at who you are are as a person; what do you value, what are your beliefs, what makes you happy and fulfilled, what makes you run away, what are your current interests.

few of us take the time and apply the intellect necessary to truly know who we are.  yet figuring that out is critical to your long-term success.

during my career i saw myself as smart, committed and sociable, team player.  however, what i didn't know is that my partners saw me as smart, committed professional (possibly only to myself) and a loner.

when they asked me to attend a workshop at the Aspen Institute on self-identity, i believed that it was unnecessary but agreed to attend.

during the first week of the event, we were subjected to 5 tests to measure our sociability and team spirit.  a top score for the tests would have been 5,5,5,5,5, while possible scores ranged from 0 to 5 in each test -- the way that i saw it was all 5s would mean that i new and understood myself and that my partners were incorrect, for i was a real team player.  my score was 0,0,0 1,0.

this meant that not only was i truly a loner and far from a team player, but also that i had long failed to understand myself.  the me that i saw in the mirror each morning was far from the me that everyone else was experiencing.  my dream of self understanding was in actuality located on a distant, far off mountain top -- way out of my current reach.

that very knowledge gap, internal view of me to external view of me, can be a real killer of a career.  self understanding is not only an important driver of a fulfilling life, but also an important driver of career success.

take the time to step outside of yourself and see as others see.  you can do this through tests, training and a class or through persistent meditation and self reflection.  take your choice, but do it.