With much uncertainty — Brexit, Trump, China — buyers in some markets are keeping their hands in their pockets. Yet in business, we are still expected to meet our profit targets. As an executive, your reality is that you still need to grow sales and market share. Growth means take decisive action and fast.
How can we do this?
Read MoreIf many of your customers are “sitting on their hands”— citing Brexit and Trump and Iran and US-China trade war—then your sales are flat, or declining; you must downsize your costs or upsize your productivity. Upsizing your people’s productivity is easy to say, hard to do. It’s always been tough to do, but now many of your people face constant change and face constant stress. For example, imagine working in one of the big four banks urgently completing many recommendations of The Royal Commission.
Read MoreWhat if your salespeople tell you your customers don’t see any difference between you and your competitors? Well in our experience, this might be true but it’s unlikely. How can we say that?
Read MoreIn the last blog, we looked at the Impossible Problem Innovation Model® and started to deconstruct the concept of an impossible problem.
Let’s continue that focus because too quickly, people bypass the concept of clarity around a problem or opportunity. If you want to innovate and solve an impossible problem or leverage a fantastic opportunity you need to put in the work upfront to make that happen.
Read MoreImagine, you are the General Manager in a pharmaceutical company. Into your office comes a Division Manager. “You know you asked for ways to improve our relationship with United Hospitals”, she reminds you about the last management meeting. “I’ve got it. We need to innovate for them!” She says with a grin. What’s your reaction?
Read MoreGlobal industries and local communities struggle with the pace of change. Typically, the pace of change is reducing resources like time, money and people. Reducing resources creates difficult problems that appear to be impossible to solve, what we call impossible problems. In local and global marketplaces, impossible problems occur for organisations and for individuals. For all these impossible problems, we need brave individuals to take action to solve the problems and then implement the solutions.
Read MoreWhat does it mean to have courage when you need to deal with tough competitive market conditions and digital disruption affecting your market share?
Read MoreIf I had a dollar for every time a senior manager complained about departments fighting, I would be a Millionaire. It’s rare for departments not to fight. Is all conflict bad?
Read MoreImagine in your last meeting your sales manager says, “What do you want to do, increase sales or lower costs?” Well, when you put it like that , you must choose? But do you need to choose? Not always! In general, when asked, do you want me to do X or Y we automatically make a choice. Why?
Read MoreExecutives regularly complain their departments are not working together well. In some large organisations, executives spend most of the time refereeing disputes between departments. Why does this happen?
Read MoreIf your financial year finishes in December, ensure you spend your budget. In most organisations, if you don’t spend it, then you lose it. You lose it, but you still must deliver 2019 results. And 2019 starts in less than 40 days.
Read MoreWhen faced with challenges that call for new thinking, how can you come up with fresh ideas, providing breakthrough thinking and innovative solutions?
Read MoreMany executives wish they could get their organisations to make decisions faster and get things done faster. Wishing they could get people to work together and make critical decisions to get projects completed. In many organisations, it is hard to get teams to move faster, but there are ways to get teams to decide faster and act faster.
We have a one day process called Solve Your Impossible Problem (SYIP), so I was fascinated to read this book. What’s different and when should we use the Sprint process?
Read MoreMany managers are not good at solving problems. What do we mean? Well, many managers don't dig deep enough. In their haste to prove they can solve problems, they react to the first possible cause of a problem.
Read MoreA small group of organisations are serious about increasing their performance using innovation. A larger group pay lip service to increasing their performance using innovation. Those that pay lip service are unaware of how their policies and practices can discourage innovation. What can discourage innovation? We explore some wisdom from the book, Seeing what others don't: The remarkable ways we gain insights by Gary Klein. Who?
Read MoreManagers constantly want to get better results, better results for themselves and better results for their organisation. One way to improve performance is to get improved performance from individuals. For managers to improve their own performance and their organisation’s performance, they need to know a secret.
Read MoreIn Engineering and Psychology, there is a principle of Least Work. That's least physical work and least mental work. Our experience tells us if something is mentally hard, many people will tend to do nothing or keep doing the same.
So what?
Read MoreMany companies don't struggle with solving problems, but they do struggle with what is the problem. Across 17 countries, Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg surveyed 106 C-suite executives from 91 private and public sector companies. 85% of executives said their companies were bad at diagnosing problems and 87% agreed this incurred significant costs. Most managers tend to leap straight into searching for solutions, without checking they deeply understand the problem.
Read MoreThe B2B world is changing, and the skills and capabilities of staff need to change to match this. Is your company prepared? Have you started to build your capabilities for an unsure and volatile future? Creativity, critical thinking and tech capability are becoming essential skills for leaders.
Read MoreImagine you have a meeting with seven senior managers. The task of the meeting is to choose four customers to manage differently for the next 24 months. How long will it take to decide which four customers? Are you talking hours, or maybe days?
Read More
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