Learn the latest from the world’s leading experts across disciplines and industries on our blog with articles and resources that give your team the strategic edge. Get practical insights, tools, & templates to accelerate business success. Our global network of Thought Leaders write for Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and other academic, professional, and business press. They all have one big thing in common: they’re shaping the future of business best practices.
Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “What’s measured improves.” So true. You get what you measure when it comes to business performance. The problem is that most teams don’t have clear key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of their strategies and projects. Sure, they may have goals, but without clear KPIs, they don’t have a way to know quantitatively that they’re…
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The consulting industry was already being disrupted before the coronavirus. Now the disruption is accelerating. If you work with consultants or have your own consultancy, take note: Things are changing, fast. Right around the corner are threats or opportunities, depending on how you respond. I’ve already written about how the management-consulting industry is being disrupted by various trends like emerging technologies, the commodification…
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One of the longest standing questions in the field of innovation lies in the debate surrounding whether or not “creativity” is an innate trait or whether it’s something that can be learned. The answer has big implications. If you think creativity can be learned, you can then train people to be move innovative. If you…
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The OGSM model (Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures) can help teams get on the same page and moving in the right direction. For the past 25 years, I’ve worked with hundreds of groups across dozens of big companies and startups. One thing’s consistent: everyone works in teams, and the ultimate success of any organization relies on the overall…
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Sometimes big visions can be powerful motivators to drive people, but clear objectives and metrics deliver results. I’ve worked with some of the world’s most innovative startups and big companies for over 25 years. In that time, I’ve seen leaders and teams become enamored with the idea of building their own “disruptive” future visions. This…
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You Just Found Yourself Leading a Remote Team. What Next? Business is moving virtual fast. Here are best practices for how to lead a productive remote or distributed team. When I ran the strategy consulting group at HP almost 20 years ago, my team worked remotely. We were on the forefront of virtual work,…
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One of the longest standing questions in the field of innovation lies in the debate surrounding whether or not “creativity” is an innate trait or whether it’s something that can be learned. The answer has big implications. If you think creativity can be learned, you can then train people to be move innovative. If you…
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No-code and low-code software may create a massive opportunity. A massive transformation faces the software industry, similar to the disruption we’ve seen hit other industries like health care and manufacturing. We’ve already seen how Google Docs took the world by storm through free cloud-based software, forcing Microsoft to change its Office 365 business model. Cloud-based software is now the norm. Now, we’re…
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Disruption is everywhere. Here are 10 trends that will create opportunities – and threats – in 2020. Twenty years ago, when I started advising startups and Fortune 500 companies on their innovation strategies, a “2020 vision” served as a key staple in most business planning efforts. The future is finally here. Emerging technologies catalyze disruption. But 2020 promises to be…
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Want to improve your customers’ experience? Try these connected strategies. What’s the secret to a winning business model and long-term competitive advantage? It’s not just about technology, products and services. Your customer experience may just be the ultimate competitive advantage. Strategy and innovation experts Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch just published a new book called Connected Strategy: Building Continuous…
DetailsStrategic plans become outdated the moment they’re created. Instead, create a one-page strategy map. Having run the internal strategy consulting group at HP, and then consulting to both startups and big companies like Disney, Visa, Colgate, Medtronic and others, I’ve created hundreds of strategic plans. Business strategy used to be a clear and methodical process. No more. Today’s discontinuous technologies and…
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Trust is the currency of business success. Here’s how to build it into your corporate culture. Leading organizational change to create a corporate culture that delivers continuous innovation is one of today’s most strategic business imperatives. But how do you do that? We’ve seen what happens to companies when customers lose trust in their brands – just think Target (data breach),…
DetailsBeing truthful and being trustworthy aren’t the same, which poses a problem for both society and the practice of leadership itself In today’s world, it’s hard to know who to listen to and what to believe. Who’s the best Presidential candidate? Is Brexit good or bad? Which college is best for my child? Usually there’s…
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Replicate Amazon’s secret formula for winning big in the digital age Having run strategy and leadership development programs across the Fortune 1000 for over the past 25 years, I’ve seen lots of business models. As I highlighted in a prior article on The Future of Seamless Shopping, nothing currently parallels Amazon when it comes to innovation. Amazon’s management system is designed…
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Real change requires more than just doing something new. It also involves stopping what doesn’t work and continuing what’s already working well. When I work with leaders and organizations looking to create change and innovate, I always tell them the same thing: strategy is as much about what you don’t do, as it is about what you decide to do. It’s natural to look for…
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Mentoring transforms big ideas into high-impact innovations. Having worked with dozens of the Fortune 1000 companies, coached startups, and founded three companies, I can say there’s a universal truth when it comes to innovation: big ideas are just ideas until they deliver real value to the world. That’s why just about every venture capitalist, entrepreneur, corporate innovator and university…
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The best strategy & innovation books deliver new insights, examples and tools for reinventing business. I’ve recently written about the disruptive change and innovation upending markets like product packaging, travel and hospitality, management consulting, construction, healthcare, and manufacturing. No matter the trends, technologies or transformations, every industry faces similar challenges: What business models must we create for the future? How do we differentiate…
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Our communities are getting really smart. Here’s what to expect. I’m sitting here in a large convention center in Los Angeles about to deliver the closing keynote at the Southern California Public Power Authority annual conference. It’s basically a gathering of the top municipal utilities in Southern California that serve more than 5 million people and deliver…
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The latest research says “co-creation” is an untapped opportunity for innovation. Here’s how to do it. When I ran the internal strategy consulting group at HP, we constantly asked ourselves, “how can we get our $40 billion global behemoth operating more like a startup?” That’s because like most big companies, we struggled with risk-taking and moving fast. Startups…
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Getting the most out of meetings is easy if you know how to effectively design them. One of the biggest black holes in workplace productivity is the poorly designed, poorly run meeting. No wonder 71 percent of senior managers view their companies’ meetings as unproductive and inefficient. When meetings aren’t effective, the natural instinct is to schedule…
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