Every good CEO starts by working in the business; correcting problems, improving operations, building teams. Getting to know “the business”. Some years are great, others are tough. Occasionally you hit a breakthrough and the company booms for a period, expanding dramatically. Eventually, that growth spurt dissipates and it’s time to look for what’s next. What’s next? That’s a question that can only be answered when you’re working on the business. The challenge for most leaders is knowing when and how to dial their time appropriately between working in the business and on it. In 1993, ... read more

Weaknesses, by traditional definition, are attributes of your company that are inferior to your competitors. A common response to identifying weaknesses is to try to fix what’s wrong or improve it. Only one problem. Just because something you’re doing as a company might appear to be ”inferior” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a weakness or an “area for improvement”. We prefer to define a weakness as something that your customers really value that your competitors are doing a better job of satisfying AND is diminishing your potential returns. When looked at from the external (customers and ... read more

Old school thinking describes a strength as something you’re good at while a weakness is an “area for improvement”. Whether you’re talking about an employee or your company, these traditional precepts for strengths and weakness actually do more to distract you from seeing the opportunities than they help to clarify them. Strengths are not only things you’re good at! Just being good at it is not enough reason to do more of it, or that you can maximize your growth by concentrating on it. From a strategic point of view the best definition of a ... read more

Setting the course for your company’s future is a matter of logic and creativity. Both are needed to ground the business in fiscal, operational and marketplace realities while at the same time zooming out in many directions to explore strategic opportunities that differentiate the company in meaningful and profitable ways. When working together, it’s important to get past the inertia that can set in surprisingly quickly by getting the creative juices flowing immediately. To create the conditions for quantum leap thinking however, you have to spike that juice. Begin by shifting attention away from the ... read more

Einstein was right. About a lot of things. Mostly about what it takes to think differently in order to solve problems. He is, after all, the author of the title for today’s blog. It’s almost romantic to imagine that by putting a group of people together in a room, you can solve anything. Unfortunately life doesn’t quite work that way. Kind of like expecting a thousand monkeys, given enough time with typewriters (remember those?), to eventually bang out the works of Shakespeare. Nice metaphor but not going to happen. It’s not about putting people together ... read more

Don’t you just love strategy that looks great on paper? So crisply articulated and persuasive. With a little graphics it can be quite seductive. You sincerely believe it will work. Your team, well most of them, believe it will work. Some employees might even be swayed by the presentations, internal communications and lunch room posters. What about your customers? Do they like it? Will they support it? How sure are you? There’s a lesson to be learned everywhere you look. That is, if you’re always looking for lessons. For example, I was reading a story ... read more

Have you seen the movie Inception, and are you 100% sure you know what was reality and what was a dream? I am. I’m 100% sure the movie was a dream and that this is reality. And by “this is reality” I mean, the concept of planting a seed that blooms into a game-changing idea is absolutely doable. I’ve done it. Not quite like Cobb, the character from the movie. No drugs or technology involved, other than a little caffeine and some whiteboards. The process of idea generation, and in fact, strategy development, starts with ... read more

Is it that time of year for your company? Time to pull together your numbers, check what you did last year that you can refurbish, then sketch out some rough plans? Welcome to budget planning mode. The problem is that budget planning requires strategic planning, and strategy shouldn’t be condensed into an annual event. It’s not simply about gathering together the troops, spending a few days or weeks figuring out your plan, then taking the rest of the year to implement. As soon as your strategy is agreed upon, it’s just slightly out of date. ... read more

When is a question more influential than an answer? Almost always. Effective leadership isn’t about telling people what to do, it’s about getting people to want to do it. The great thing about questions is that they pull people into the process. Questions get people thinking, and isn’t that what you really want from your employees? Okay, not everyone feels the same way. There’s the old school leader who has been known to declare, “I don’t pay you to think. I pay you to do your job.” That’s a problem for two reasons. One, there ... read more