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The Methods Most Managers Aren’t Taught – Our Leading Strategic Growth and Change Curriculum – Part 2 Aug 17, 2023

To recap and continue: Competitive advantages have life cycles – born in innovation, scaled up with launching, making a profit by operating and eventually transforming to the next advantage. Unfortunately for leaders in today’s fast-paced contexts, we tend to only teach the...

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The Methods Most Managers Aren't Taught – Our Leading Strategic Growth and Change Curriculum – Part 1 Aug 10, 2023

Competitive advantages have life cycles – born in innovation, scaled up with launching, making a profit by operating and eventually transforming to the next advantage. Unfortunately for leaders in today’s fast-paced contexts, we tend to only teach the “operating” part...

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Big Food, the Diet Industrial Complex and now, miracle drugs? Aug 03, 2023
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 Struggling with your weight? It’s because you are outmatched

As the Washington Post’s Tamar Haspel observes, “When three-quarters of humans can’t navigate the system successfully, the problem is the system, not the humans.” She notes that the food...

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ROI from Digital Transformation Aug 01, 2023

When it comes to funding investment in cost-center functions like IT, efforts can often go underfunded because the ROI doesn’t meet the normal cost-justification hurdles. That’s because we are used to evaluating Productivity Zone investments on the basis of direct impact on the...

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Pick mine, pick theirs, but pick a tool and stick with it! Jul 27, 2023

The utilization of management tools, ideas and frameworks has a strange cyclicality to it. The boss reads another book and suddenly we’re all required to calculate Net Promoter Scores! It’s worth taking a critical eye to the tools that we use to increase performance.  

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Management Tools: Cycling through the concepts Jul 20, 2023

Everybody wants to be the author of a popular management tool. But at the end of the day, it’s useful to realize that many have a lot in common – what makes the difference, as with any tool – is the skill of the person using it and the consistency with which you stick with it.

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Thinking Wrong: How to Trick our Brains into Being More Innovative Jul 13, 2023

Once we’ve learned how to do something, we become “unconsciously competent” at it. In order to break with the predictable path and move forward, what my good friend and colleague, Greg Galle, suggests is that we need to “think wrong.” That means opening our minds to...

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Good People Want to Make a Difference Every Day. Does Your Company Let Them? Jul 11, 2023

Too many executives fail at leading successful change initiatives, even as successful initiatives are a prerequisite for winning in today’s dynamic marketplace. That failure is no small part of the reason why employees detach emotionally or resign.

Addressing how some 70% of change...

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Frustrated with a culture that isn’t innovative? You’re probably missing a key management practice. Jul 06, 2023

Leading strategic growth and change doesn’t need to be a mystery! If only we taught people the skills necessary for three key leadership roles, it could be a lot more systematic and corporate transformation efforts might yield a lot more success.  

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NPV doesn’t work for risky, high-potential projects. Here’s a better approach. Jul 03, 2023

This article was co-authored with Claus Hirzmann of Strategic Finance 

“Never test the depth of the river with both feet.” Ironically, this is the very behavior that plagues many of the innovations that ended up in Rita’s “flops file.” From ...

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Are you squandering your intelligent failures? Jun 19, 2023

Just back from an amazing week spent with thinkers, do-ers and executives considering culture at Novartis. Amy Edmondson, my dear friend, was there and both of us remain stunned that people are still confused about failure, after we have spent literally decades writing about...

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Who knew there was so much in common between the rare success in mega-projects and innovation? Jun 07, 2023

Photo: The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Gehry

 

Bent Flyvbjerg studies spectacular mega-project flameouts.  I study (often) spectacular innovation mis-steps.  Who knew the process that produces both has so much in common?  Who knew that the path...

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