management
Leading vs. Managing: What Every Leader Should Know
Leading a team is not the same as managing tasks and processes; it requires inspiring and guiding your team to achieve the organization's vision. A leader must let go of control, trust their team, and support them in their development to succeed.
Impatient Innovators: 5 Hurried Innovations That Failed
Being told to “have patience” can be a major buzzkill in pursuing potentially innovative ideas. Nobody wants to hear that they’ll need to wait to see their innovations take hold and achieve success. Businesses have a schedule and a budget. They have investors and stakeholders. The pressure to apply
There’s no such thing as constructive criticism
It is that time of year again when managers deliver annual performance reviews. Over my career, I’ve been shocked at how few managers have the leadership skill to properly deliver constructive criticism. This morning, I came across an interesting column by Tony Schwartz on hbr.org about mistakes we
We have a failure to execute … again!
One of the more common excuses used by management for innovations not making it in the market is a “failure to execute”. Is it really a failure to execute or a failure to give innovations enough execution focus compared to the core business? In the 7 Immutable Laws of Innovation, the Law of Executi
10 Quotes From Bill Hewlett and David Packard That Every Executive Should Read
Below are 10 quotes from Bill Hewlett and David Packard that I use as a periodic kick in the pants. 1. The greatest success goes to the person who is not afraid to fail in front of even the largest audience. 2. Set out to build a company and make a contribution, not an empire […]
Do we lack patience when it comes to innovation?
Patience is not a skill that comes naturally. At least not to me. I’m just as aggressive as the next person when it comes to wanting to see the impact from my ideas. What I have plenty of is impatience. I want to see the results now, not years down the line. The reality […]
The ultimate of constraint based innovation – burn the boats!
Seth Godin recently made a post on his blog about putting yourself into an impossible position and then setting back and watching incredibly things happen. I’m a big believer of constraint based innovation where leaders purposefully restrict some key resource(s) (people, money, time, etc) and then f
Why best practices does not equal best strategy (video)
Best practices for innovation makes no sense. The consulting industry is built up on the idea of taking the “best” from each of their clients and merging them together and then selling them to all the companies within a given industry. So why is this a bad idea? Best practices make everyone the same
CIO’s have to take the strategic lead for their organization
Rich Karlgaard, Publisher of Forbes, and I had a recent discussion on the changing role of the CIO. When I was a CIO at a public company (Teligent), my role was clearly defined by my boss at the time, Alex Mandl. One of Alex’s first guidelines he gave me was to make sure his name […]
11 Simple Rules For Getting Along With Others
One of the challenges for creating a culture of innovation within an organization is the ability to get along with others. Innovation is about constant change which is uncomfortable and stressful. The result is that some individuals/groups will not respond and actually become quite negative (corpora
