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Raising Rules to the Level of Principles
The three rules are 1) better before cheaper—compete on value, 2) revenue before cost—increase volume or price premiums, and 3) there are no others. Follow the rules even when the data point in a different direction. Examples explain why.
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Why It's So hard to Eliminate Tasks
To maximize productivity eliminate low-value tasks. That’s hard. Some people can’t do it for fear they will pick the wrong one tasks, even though knowledge workers spend 41 percent of their time on tasks that provide little satisfaction and could be delegated.
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The Simple Math of Found Productivity
Busyness costs American business $300 billion in absenteeism, disengagement, and the like. Juliet Funt then adds the costs of just ten minutes of mindless activity per hour, and one mindless meeting per week. Reducing email cc’s, meeting length, etc. have a big payoff.
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Change Perspectives to Think Strategically
Strategic thinking is a skill that can be developed by changing three perspectives.
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Challenge Your Assumptions to Avoid Confirmation Bias
Army research showed a tendency to focus on evidence supporting an hypothesis and ignore disconfirming evidence. This “confirmation bias” was counteracted by instructions to seek out disconfirming evidence. We should do the same in the innovation world.
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Problem Solving: Focus on Pains Instead of Gains
People are more interested in solving their pains than in gaining something. For example, people would rather lose their gut than gain six-pack abs. Citibank ATM machines finally took off during a blizzard when banks were closed and stores had no money.
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Admit You Don't Know, Hypothesize, Test, Repeat
Like vegetables, everything gets stale — ideas, strategies, markets, relationships. Unless we reinvent them they will fail. We become more irrelevant every day. The answer we think we know is already obsolete. Admit you don’t know, frame a hypothesis, test it, repeat.
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What vs. How
Apple develops products on the “what” axis, but for every success there are ten thousand failures. For Southwest and Virgin airlines the “how” is more important. Vineet Nayar achieved “impossible” growth by concentrating on the company-customer interaction.
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The Power of 'I Don't Know'
On becoming the new CEO, he was asked, in front of 5,000 employees, “What are you going to do?” He answered, “I don’t know. You know. You tell me.” This transferred ownership to the employees. The job of the CEO is to enable employee performance.
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Partnering with your Competition
Partnering with your competition may sound counter-intuitive and even downright destructive, but Vivek Badrinath shows how this strange relationship can actually help your business be more successful.
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Innovation: Paper Versus Reality
Crazy ideas on paper get shot down, but sometimes are winners. Tamera gives examples, especially Tough Mudder, which was shot down as crazy by Harvard professors. Today, millions compete in Tough Mudder. Give “crazy” ideas a chance to breathe life.
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Poker and the Art of Management
The logic of poker is the logic of business. Husband your resources but put everything behind real opportunities.
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Sense Making In Strategic Planning
To make sense in a strategic plan: 1) get outside points of view, 2) allow space for the conversations to take place, 3) state your beliefs in the plan and the strategy based on those beliefs, then ask, 4) Do we still believe that? What happens if we’re wrong?
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Watch Your Competitors And Challenge Your Strategy
If you can't invite your competitors to share their strategies with you, do the next best thing. Philip Kotler shares the story of how IBM invited Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy - or a reasonable look alike anyway - to discuss how Sun is going to "bury" IBM.
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Profitable Strategies and Plans
Patricia Wheatly Burt explains her six-point strategic plan.
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When and Where Do You Do Your Best Thinking?
Where do you do your best thinking? Chances are, it isn't at work.
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Ask Killer Questions
People go into meetings looking for answers without asking the right questions. Ask better questions to get better answers.
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Overview of the 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators
The ten rules for strategic innovators derive from three basic ideas. The new business must 1) forget the old business, but 2) be connected to the old business, which 3) requires learning how to resolve the differences.
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Achieving Growth in Challenging Times: Focus on the Job of the Customer
If you segment only on products and customers you tend to end with one-size-fits-none products. If you understand the customer’s experiences, however, you can provide everything the customer wants and nothing the customer doesn’t need.
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Combine Operational Knowledge with Strategic Vision
Strategy is about deciding what goals you need to achieve, then bringing together resources and opportunities to create a coherent whole that provides competitive advantage.
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Kill a Stupid Rule
Brainstorm, “What rule should we kill or change and why?” Some rules can’t be killed, but can be changed. Everyone puts a sticky note for a rule on a white board that plots implementation (easy/hard) by impact (low/high). Kill at least one rule on the spot.
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Innovate with Open-Ended Questions
Instead of, “How can we improve our products and services,” ask, “How might we…,” “How should we…,” or “In what ways can we…” Think of questions ahead of time. For example, “If you were a competitor, what two things would you do to put us out of business?”
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Disruption Is the Only Path to Growth
A business model — value proposition, resources, processes, and profit formula — is designed not to change. The only way to lead in both the original market and a disruptive market is to establish an independent business.
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To Innovate, Ask What the Customer is Doing
When you’re trying to innovate, ask what the customer is trying to accomplish.
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Systems for Innovating: Google and Whirlpool
Google allows employees to do anything they wish during 20 percent of their time. Google also has systems for floating ideas up the hierarchy. Whirlpool uses “innovation rooms” to generate new ideas, with systems to translate ideas into action and estimate their value.
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Strategic Thinking: The Difference Between a Leader and a Manager
Leaders see the big picture, how things are connected to the future, and how to get out of the box. Managers concentrate on the here and now.
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Three Approaches to Strategy Development
You can do what your competitors understand, or do what they do, but to establish a competitive advantage do what your competitors don’t understand and can’t do.
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The Role of Managers in Strategy Formation
People at different levels need to think in terms of different time horizons.
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The Six Questions to Organizational Clarity
A leadership team must create organization clarity by answering six critical questions: why do we exist beyond making money, what are our basic values, what business are we in, how will we succeed, what is our priority right now, and who must do what for this to occur.
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Deep Customer Understanding
To understand customer needs, consider all the stakeholders.
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Think Before You Plan
Planning by itself is not strategy; leaders need to spend time thinking to build a successful scheme.
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Becoming More Strategic
To become a better strategist, start asking why things are the way they are.
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Lead Like an Innovator
The ability to lead like an innovator comes from a mindset that focuses on discovering the unknown and a persistence to see through things that have never been done.
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Working Backwards From a Win
To capture a win, plan backwards from your goal.
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Stay Ahead of Disruptive Innovation
To stay ahead of disruptive innovation, know everything about your core and find other people to know everything else.
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Understand Your Competitive Advantage: The Singer Story
Singer trained 60,000 people world wide to sell sewing machines, but didn’t see that their advantage was their sales force, not their machines; they could have sold other household goods. By contrast, IBM transitioned from punched cards to information solutions.
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Strategy 101: Focus on Assumptions
A strategy includes a vision, the environment, assumptions and beliefs, a strategy, and a plan to execute that strategy. Focus on the assumptions and beliefs.
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Competing Smarter: Do What Your Competition Isn't Willing To Do
How do you get your people to innovate? You start by looking at the competition.
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Managers Need to Understand their Customer's Business and Strategy
Align your business model with your customer’s strategy and the business outcomes he is trying to achieve.
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Challenge Your Orthodoxies
Write down your core beliefs about consumers, how you operate, and how you make money. Then flip them. What if they weren’t true? What would we do differently? Marla Capozzi gives examples.
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Funding Internal Innovation through Budget Reallocation
To innovate organically requires P&L dollars, which are the most difficult to get. But if companies think about inputs in addition to outputs, they may find diminishing returns, overinvestment in core products, duplication, and other opportunities for reallocation.
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S.O.A.R
S.O.A.R. is a results-oriented method of strategic thinking and planning that has proven to be highly successful in a variety of industries and organizations.