Roger Martin on Why You Can’t Analyze Your Way to Growth

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Roger Martin for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line.

The biggest enemy of top-line growth is analysis and its best friend is appreciation.

Sure, in a small minority of companies and industries, like the smartphone business these days, there is explosive growth, and if an analysis is done of past trends, it shows lots of opportunity for top-line growth.

But in the majority of businesses, if the available data are crunched, it shows a slowly growing industry — one growing with GDP or population. That generally convinces the company in question that there aren’t really opportunities for top-line growth, and that in turn becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The fundamental reason is that analysis of data is all about the past. Data analysis crunches the past and extrapolates it into the future. And the past does not include opportunities that exist but have not yet happened. So, analysis conspicuously excludes ways to serve customers that have not been tried or imagined or ways to turn non-customers into customers.

Thus the more we rely on data analysis, the more it will tell a dour story on top-line growth — and not give particularly useful insights. The data analysis of P&G’s home care business — hard surface cleaners, dish and dishwater detergents — would have indicated that there weren’t many opportunities for top-line growth circa 2000. These categories were growing at something between population growth and GDP growth, clearly candidates for harvesting or maybe sale.

If instead, the core tool is not analysis but rather appreciation —deep appreciation of the consumer’s life — what makes it hard or easy; what makes her (in this category) happy or sad — there is the opportunity to imagine possibilities that do not exist.

For instance, suppose your consumers have to clean floors. It’s easy enough to appreciate that mopping a floor is a fairly miserable task. Think about what it involves: getting out and filling a bucket, dragging the bucket around and repeatedly jamming the mop in and out of it, and then dumping out and cleaning the bucket. If you appreciate your floor-cleaning customers, you’ll be looking to help them avoid having to go through this experience every time they have to clean a floor — because not every floor will need such a heavy-duty approach. It was out of this appreciation-triggered insight that the electrostatic Swiffer anti-mop was born and produced massive top-line growth, approaching $1 billion in sales in a decade.

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Organizationally and behaviorally, analysis and appreciation are two very different things. Analysis is distant, done in office towers far from the consumer. It requires lots of quantitative proficiency but very little experience in the business in question. It depends on data-mining: finding data sources to crunch, often from data suppliers to the industry. Appreciation is intimate, done in close proximity to the consumer. It requires qualitative proficiency and deeper experience in the business. It requires the manufacture of unique data, rather than the use of data that already exists.

In my experience, most organizations have more of the former capabilities and behaviors than of the latter and hence most struggle with top-line growth. The biggest issue isn’t the absence of top-line growth opportunities but rather the lack of belief that they exist. And that is driven by the dominance of analysis over appreciation.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Roger Martin (www.rogerlmartin.com) is the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in Canada. He is the author, most recently, of Fixing the Game. For more information, including events with Roger, click here.

How and Why Market Anomalies and Incongruities Can Reveal 10 Clues to Business Opportunity

Illustration by Stefanie Augustine

Here is an excerpt from another outstanding article that appears in strategy+business magazine, published by Booz & Company. In it, Donald Sull shares his insights concerning how and why market anomalies and incongruities may point the way to the next breakthrough strategy, thence to a wealth of business opportunities. To check out a wealth of free online resources and obtain more information about this magazine, please click here.

Here are the first four “clues.” To read the complete article, please click here.

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During their heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, transatlantic cruise lines such as the Hamburg America Line and the White Star Line transported tens of millions of passengers between Europe and the United States. By the 1960s, however, their business was being threatened by the rise of a disruptive new enterprise, namely, nonstop transatlantic flights. As it happened, the cruise ship lines had one potential strategy with which to save their business: vacation cruises. Starting in the 1930s, some of these lines had sailed to the Caribbean during the winter, thus using their boats when rough seas made the Atlantic impassable. And in 1964, when a new port was opened in Miami, Fla., the pleasure cruise business began to boom.

But the great cruise lines missed this breakthrough opportunity. They saw their profitability fall while dozens of startups, including Royal Caribbean and Carnival, retrofitted existing ships to offer pleasure cruises and built an entirely new travel and leisure category that continues to grow today.

Managers and entrepreneurs walk past lucrative opportunities all the time, and later kick themselves when someone else exploits the strategy they overlooked. Why does this happen? It’s often because of the natural human tendency known to psychologists as confirmation bias: People tend to notice data that confirms their existing attitudes and beliefs, and ignore or discredit information that challenges them.

Although it is difficult to overcome confirmation bias, it is not impossible. Managers can increase their skill at spotting hidden opportunities by learning to pay attention to the subtle clues all around them. These are often contradictions, incongruities, and anomalies that don’t jibe with most of the prevailing assumptions about what should happen. Here is my own “top 10” field guide to clues for hidden breakthrough opportunities, observed in a wide variety of industries, countries, and markets. If you find yourself noticing one or more of them, a major opportunity for growth could be lurking behind it.

1.    This product should already exist (but it doesn’t). As the accessories editor for Mademoiselle magazine in the early 1990s, Kate Brosnahan spotted a gap in the handbag market between functional bags that lacked style and extremely expensive but impractical designer bags from Hermès or Gucci. Brosnahan quit her job, and with her partner Andy Spade, founded Kate Spade LLC, which produced fabric handbags combining functionality and fashion. These attracted the attention of celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts. Many well-known product innovations — including the airplane, the mobile phone, and the tablet computer — began similarly, as products that people felt should already exist.

2.    This customer experience doesn’t have to be time-consuming, arduous, expensive, or annoying (but it is). Consumer irritation is a reliable indicator of a potential opportunity, because people will typically pay to make it go away. Reed Hastings, for example, founded Netflix Inc. after receiving a US$40 late fee for a rented videocassette of Apollo 13 that he had misplaced. Charles Schwab created the largest low-cost brokerage house because he was fed up with paying the commissions of conventional stockbrokers. Scott Cook got the idea for Quicken after watching his wife grow frustrated tracking their finances by hand.

3.    This resource could be worth something (but it is still priced low). Sometimes an asset is underpriced because only a few people recognize its potential. When a low-cost airline such as easyJet or Ryanair announces its intention to fly to a new airport, real estate investors often leap to buy vacation property nearby. They rightfully expect a jump in real estate values. Similarly, the founders of Infosys Technologies Ltd., India’s pioneering provider of outsourced information technology services, were among the first to recognize that Indian engineers, working for very low salaries, could provide great value to multinational clients. The company earned high profits on the spread between what they charged clients and what they paid local engineers.

4.    This discovery must be good for something (but it’s not clear what that is). Researchers sometimes recognize that they have stumbled on a promising resource or technology without knowing the best uses for it right away. The resulting search for a problem to solve can lead to great profitability. One example was the founding of the ArthroCare Corporation, a $355 million producer of medical devices based on a process called coblation, which uses radio frequency energy to dissolve damaged tissue with minimal effect on surrounding parts of the body. Medical scientist Hira Thapliyal, who codiscovered this process, founded a company to offer it for cardiac surgery, but that market turned out to be too small and competitive to support a new venture. Undeterred, he looked for other potential uses, and found one in orthopedics, where there are more than 2 million arthroscopic surgeries per year.

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Incongruities like these can offer a critical clue about where your assumptions no longer match reality. From there, you are more likely to uncover the kinds of opportunities that you might otherwise have missed — and that your competitors still don’t recognize. Start by asking yourself, What are the most unexpected things happening in our business right now? Which competitors are doing better than expected? Which customers are behaving in ways we hadn’t anticipated? Take yourself through the list of top 10 clues. Leaders who consistently notice and explore anomalies increase the odds of spotting emerging opportunities before their rivals.
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To read the complete article, please click here.

Donald Sull is a professor of strategic and international management at the London Business School, where he is also the faculty director for executive education. His books include Why Good Companies Go Bad, Revival of the Fittest, and most recently, The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World.

3 Questions to Ask Before Adopting That Best Practice

 

Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

Best practices are alluring. If other companies have already determined the best way to do something, why not just do what they did? But before you run off to collect best practices from the leader in your industry, ask these three questions:

• What are the downsides? Implementing a practice that worked elsewhere isn’t necessarily a slam dunk. Think through the potential disadvantages and figure out how to mitigate them.

• Is success truly attributable to the benchmark practice? There are many reasons a company succeeds. It is unlikely that emulating one practice of an industry leader will give your company the same success.

• Are the conditions similar at your organization? For best practices to be transferrable, businesses need to have key similarities: strategy, business model, and workforce.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from Harvard Business Review on Making Smart Decisions.

To check out the book and join the discussion, please click here.

 

Michael E. Raynor: An interview by Bob Morris

Michael Raynor

Michael E. Raynor, Director, Deloitte Consulting LLP, provides consulting services to senior executives in the world’s leading corporations across a wide range of industries. In his client projects and research, Michael explores the challenges of corporate strategy, innovation and growth. However, as he once observed, ”Case studies of past results are a weak foundation for predicting future outcomes. And the increasingly popular ‘fail fast to learn soon’ approach to innovation can work, but is also unnecessarily wasteful.”

 His first book, The Innovator’s Solution, coauthored with Professor Clayton M. Christensen, has been on The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times bestseller lists, and won several “best book of the year” awards in 2003. His second book, The Strategy Paradox, was released by Currency/Doubleday in February 2007. In 2007, strategy+business magazine named it one of its top five picks in strategy, and BusinessWeek named The Strategy Paradox one of 2007′s 10 Best Business Books.

His third book, The Innovator’s Manifesto published by Crown Business (2011), is now available and has already garnered much attention from the media. 

In addition, Michael has published extensively in managerial and academic journals and has taught in the MBA and Executive Education programs at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and at the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. Michael has a doctorate from the Harvard Business School, a master’s degree in business administration from the Ivey School of Business, and an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Harvard University. He lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Here is an excerpt. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Before discussing any of your books, a few general questions. First, throughout your life thus far, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? Please explain.

Raynor: Like many other people, I had a number of teachers early and life and, luckily, throughout my educational career who took and interest in my work and encouraged me to follow what was most interesting to me.  I can go all the way back to Grade 7 and Grenville Bray in small-town Ontario, through to John Aimers in high school, Alan  Sidelle as an undergraduate, Don LeCraw as a graduate student, and Tom Eisenmann as a Doctoral candidate.  Each step along the way these people have broadened my horizons and taught me important lessons about the world and about myself.  I’m grateful for your question, as this is the first time all those folks have been mentioned in one place.

Morris: Greatest impact on your professional development?

Raynor: I think without question my collaboration with Clayton Christensen has been a defining element of my career.  The opportunity to understand deeply and assist in the development of a critically important set of ideas on innovation has been a real privilege.

Morris: Was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) years ago that you set you on the career course that you continue to follow?

Raynor: I guess I’d have to say the realization that my longtime plan to go to law school was simply a default setting.  Moving into business after my undergraduate degree was an unexpected turn, but it was, for someone with my experience, the “road less traveled”, and as Robert Frost put it, “…that has made all the difference.”

Morris: To what extent has your formal education proven invaluable to what you have accomplished thus far?

Raynor: It would be difficult to overstate the importance of my formal training.  In my research and writing I try to apply the scientific method as rigorously as I can; my model has long been Stephen J. Gould, the late Harvard professor and paleontologist.  His mantra was “no compromises”, and I’ve done my best to adhere to that, while still trying to be accessible and practical.  That’s an especially tough circle to square, but it is a goal that fires my imagination.  And it is one that would be, literally, unimaginable without the extent and nature of the schooling I’ve received.

Morris: In recent years, there has been severe criticism of M.B.A. programs, even those offered by the most prestigious business schools. In your opinion, what is the single area in which there is the greatest need for immediate improvement? Any suggestions?

Raynor: For me, it’s the ability to think critically and clearly about the nature of the arguments being made and the evidence adduced in business schools and, more importantly, in the popular management books – of which there are many!  The key is not necessarily logical thinking:  very few serious thinkers make elemental errors of logic when connecting a premise to a conclusion.  Rather, deeper questions such as the rules of evidence, the meaning of probabilistic claims, and need to accept the incompleteness of our data the insufficiency of the advice we can offer – yet still act – often go unexamined.  Something as relatively straight-forward as distinguishing between “explanation” and “prediction” is almost always overlooked, yet it is fundamental to the nature of research and prescriptions for action.  If students understood more deeply these issues I think the marketplace for ideas would quickly become much more efficient, and the signal-to-noise ratio would improve dramatically.

Morris: To what extent (if any) are the challenges that your clients face now significantly different from those of (let’s say) 3-5 years ago?

Raynor: I don’t think the basic issues ever really change.  For me, the four fundamental issues are (1) Innovation (2) Growth (3) Performance and (4) Uncertainty.  Those categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive or collectively exhaustive, but they have for me been a very helpful organizing framework.  How one addresses these questions might change in important ways depending on such contingencies as whether the global economy is in recession or not, but true theories for each of these will have within them the ingredients required to deal with transitory exigencies.  Keeping one’s eye on the evergreen questions is part of not getting misled or even duped by fads and fancies.

Morris: In your opinion, what will be the single greatest challenge that CEOs will face during (let’s say) the next 3-5 years? Any advice?

Raynor: My best estimate is that it will be one of the four identified above – and getting the leadership agenda “right” will mean having the right level of emphasis on each.  I’m willing to bet innovation and growth will be first and second priorities, but I’m not prepared to say which is which.

Morris: Please explain the relevance of Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of “creative destruction” to the modern business world.

Raynor: Economist Joseph Schumpeter’s signal contribution to economics was to put innovation at the core of economic development.  He saw beyond the field’s obsession with marginal cost analysis and price-based competition, understanding that this fixation was merely a function of the ability to model such features of the landscape cleanly, with little regard for their ultimately secondary, and perhaps even trivial, role in shaping competition among firms. In Schumpeter’s words:

“[I]n capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not [price] competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization…– competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.” [i]

Schumpeter memorably labeled the outcome of this type of competition “creative destruction,” a term that has become for many synonymous with innovation.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Michael Raynor cordially invites you to check out the resources at this website: www.michaelraynor.com

Notes: 

[i] Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1942).  Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.  This quotation from pp.84-86 of the Harper Colophon edition of 1975.

Recent Study Uncovers Skills and Education Necessary in Modern Workforce

Here is an excerpt from an article featured online by Talent Management magazine (New York, September 26, 2011). To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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U.S. unemployment hovers at 9 percent, and while 14 million Americans remain unemployed, the U.S. Department of Labor reported there are currently 3 million available jobs. Against this backdrop, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and University of Phoenix announced a new report, “Life in the 21st Century Workforce: A National Perspective,” that paints a picture of the employment landscape and the key dynamics both workers and employers need to consider as they seek to promote excellence in the workplace.

Fifty-three percent of employers say their companies face a significant challenge in recruiting non-managerial employees with the skills, training and education their company needs. The results summarized in the study indicate agreement across both employers and employees that education — including continuing education and advanced degrees — is critical to ensuring workers have the skills necessary to advance in their professions. They also agree that interpersonal skills, collaboration, critical thinking and problem-solving are important to providing the most benefit to employers and the workforce alike.

“There is considerable discussion focused on the skills employees need to succeed in the workplace,” said Margaret Spellings, senior adviser to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and former U.S. secretary of education. “However, it’s imperative we understand the issue from the inside-out in order to improve the way we prepare our future workforce. The results of ‘Life in the 21st Century Workforce: A National Perspective’ can help inform employers, employees and job seekers seeking to stand out in the increasingly competitive job market.”

In today’s workplace, the labor force considers work experience (50 percent) to be the most important factor when companies are making hiring decisions, outdistancing people management and communication skills (27 percent). However, when it comes to being promoted, workers are far more likely to consider people management and communication skills (46 percent) as more important than work experience (38 percent).

Among the other key findings of the study:

Study Uncovers Skills and Education Necessary in Modern Workforce Heading Back to School

Eight in 10 employers (80 percent) believe education is critical to ensuring workers have the competencies necessary to advance, and 72 percent of the labor pool agrees.

U.S. workers believe going back to school will have a direct impact on their career. The most common reasons for going back to school are to advance their career (89 percent), increase their salary (89 percent) or gain training for a specific job (88 percent).

Moreover, employers believe increasing the number of workers who complete post-secondary education programs and receive a degree or credential will contribute to the success of their company.

Walking the Talk

Forty-six percent of workforce respondents say their company pays all (17 percent) or some portion (29 percent) of tuition. Meanwhile, 50 percent of employers say they have a tuition assistance program.

In addition, 57 percent of employers interviewed offer flexible schedules to accommodate post-secondary education and training.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

About the Surveys

The workforce survey findings presented here are part of a multi-audience, multi-location research project sponsored by the University of Phoenix. Telephone interviews were conducted among a random national sampling of 500 workforce members 18-54 years of age during April 6-18. The sampling error for the sample is +/- 4.4 percentage points. Survey interviewing and analysis were completed by APCO Insight, an international opinion research and consulting firm.

The Brand Gap: A book review by Bob Morris

The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business
Strategy and Design
Marty Neumeier
New Riders, Second Edition (2005)

How to Become a “Brand Gap Guru”

This is an expanded edition of a book first published in 2003. In it, Neumeier develops in greater depth several basic ideas about how to bridge a gap between business strategy and design. My own experience suggests that on occasion, there may be a conflict or misalignment rather than a “gap.” Or the business strategy is inappropriate. Or the design concepts are wrong-headed. Or the execution fails. Whatever, Neumeier correctly notes that “A lot of people talk about it. Yet very few people understand it. Even fewer know how to manage it. Still, everyone wants it. What is it? Branding. of course — arguably the most powerful business tool since the spreadsheet.” What Neumeier offers is a “30,000-foot view of brand: what it is (and isn’t), why it works (and doesn’t), and most importantly, how to bridge the gap between logic and magic to build a sustainable competitive advantage.” Of course, that assumes that both logic and magic are present and combined…or at least within close proximity of each other.

As others have already indicated, Neumeier provides a primer (“the least amount of information necessary”) rather than a textbook. His coverage is not definitive, nor intended to be. He has a crisp writing style, complemented by “the shorthand of the conference room” (i.e. illustrations, diagrams, and summaries). Some describe his book an “easy read” but I do not. When reading short and snappy books such as this one, I have learned that certain insights resemble depth charges or time capsules: they have a delayed but eventually significant impact. For example, Neumeier explains why “Three Little Questions” can bring a high-level marketing meeting to a screeching halt:

1. Who are you?

2. What do you do?

3. Why does it matter?

Note: Re #3, I prefer “Why should I care?” from the customer’s point-of-view.

I also want to express my admiration of the book’s design features. They create an appropriate visual context within which Neumeier examines each of five “Disciplines”: differentiation, collaboration, innovation, validation, and cultivation. Expect no head-snapping revelations. For many of those who read this book, its greatest value will be derived from reiteration of certain core concepts that Neumeier reviews with uncommon clarity and concision. Check out the “Take-Home Lessons” (pages 149-157) that include

“A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It’s not what you say it is. It’s what THEY say it is.”

“Differentiation has evolved from a focus on `what it is,’ to `what it does,’ to ‘how you’ll feel,’ to `who you are.’ While features, benefits, and price are still important to people, experiences and personal identity are even more important.”

“How do you know when an idea is innovative? When it scares the hell out of you.”

Readers having relatively less experience with the branding process will especially appreciate the provision of an expanded (220-word) “Brand Glossary.” Neumeier also includes a “Recommended Reading” section in which he briefly comments on each source. When reading business books, I much prefer annotated bibliographies such as Neumeier’s to mere lists. For whatever reasons, many provide neither.

The Best Professional Advice I Ever Received

Here is an article written by Jeff Haden for BNET, The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

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Experts often like to pretend they developed the wisdom they impart all on their own, as if they were hatched from a business incubator complete with incredible knowledge and insight.

Of course that’s not true, especially for me. Whatever I do know — and it’s not a lot — I learned from someone else.

Here is some of the advice I was given that made the biggest difference to me professionally:

“Express your individuality on your own time.” In my first job after college I sometimes let my personality overshadow my responsibilities and duties, and it definitely hurt my performance and limited my opportunities. We’re all servants (in a good way) and our customers, peers, bosses, and direct reports all have needs. Meeting those needs — on their terms — is more important than somehow “staying true” to ourselves. Integrity is vital, but most of the time “individuality” should go. Even artists conform.

“Face value has no value.” It’s easy to view the actions of others through the lens of how that behavior impacts us, especially if their actions impact us in a negative way. But employees don’t try to do a bad job. Customers aren’t intentionally difficult. Bosses aren’t simply out to get us. There is always more to the story; fail to look deeper and you miss an opportunity to make a bad situation better — for everyone.

“They’re just as scared of you.” I wrestled in high school and traveled to summer tournaments where the other wrestlers seemed larger than life. I assigned them a near-mythical status because they came from different states and wore t-shirts from high-profile camps and wrestling clubs. I never imagined they saw me the same way; my Granby School of Wrestling t-shirt was just as intimidating. The same is true in business: Underneath the Armani and Wharton School and name-dropping is a guy or gal just as nervous and insecure as you are. Symbols of success are often a mask. The playing field is always more level than it seems.

“When you fire someone and need to say more than, ‘We have to let you go,’ you haven’t done your job.” Except in unusual circumstances, firing an employee is the last step in a process. if along the way you’ve identified sub-par performance, provided additional training or resources, set targets and timelines for performance improvement, and followed up when progress is lacking, then there are no surprises, no additional conversations necessary, no arguments to have… the employee knows. And you’ve done your job as well as you can. But even so…

“If you can sleep the night after you fire someone, something’s wrong with you.” Even if you’ve done everything right, firing an employee feels horrible. (I know they “fired themselves,” but still.) You’ve impacted their career, their life, their family… you should feel awful. If you don’t, it’s time to step out of a management role.

“Always sell harder than you think you should.” I’m fairly shy and often insecure, so “selling” is hard for me. I felt more comfortable waiting for bosses to discover my talents and offer promotions, and I feel more comfortable waiting for potential customers to somehow discover me. That’s a problem, because success in any field or profession is built on salesmanship — the ability (and willingness) to determine needs, overcome objections, provide solutions, and be charismatic and convincing. Be enthusiastic, especially about yourself. People will respond positively.

“Seriously… just shut up.” I used to talk a lot. I thought I was insightful and clever and witty and, well, just a doggone hoot. Occasionally I was, most of the time I wasn’t. I talked a lot because I had a big ego, but truly confident people don’t feel the need to talk at all. I hate when it happens, but I still occasionally realize I’m talking not because the other person is interested in what I have to say but because I’m interested in what I have to say. Never speak just to please yourself; you end up pleasing no one.

“Pick something to believe in and stick with it.” When I first started racing motorcycles the then-World Champion told me he always walked an unfamiliar track before riding any laps, a ritual that allowed him to see surfaces, bumps, and potential racing lines he might otherwise miss. Good enough for him, good enough for me, so I started doing the same thing. Did it work? I certainly thought so… so it did. Pick something tangible and do it every time, whether preparation, follow-up, processes… you’ll feel more confident and your performance will be better. Think of it like wearing lucky socks, except in this case your “superstition” actually makes a difference.

I’ve got more (screw-ups tend to be magnets for advice, so I’ve received a lot) but I’ll stop there. What about you — what can you add?

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Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about management as he worked his way up the printing business from forklift driver to manager of a 250-employee book plant. Everything else he knows, he has picked up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest CEOs he knows in business. He has written more than 30 non-fiction books, including four Business and Investing titles that reached #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list. He’d tell you which ones, but then he’d have to kill you. However, he cordially invites you to  visit his website at www.blackbirdinc.com.

The McKinsey Quarterly: Top Ten Articles for Third Quarter, 2011

 

 

 

Once again and to its great credit,  The McKinsey Quarterly, published by McKinsey and Company, has created online access the Top Ten articles for third quarter (2011) as selected by its readers.

In case you missed them, you can now check them out and join the conversation.

Here are brief descriptions of the first five. To read one or more, please click here.

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1. MARKETING: “We’re all marketers now”

Engaging customers today requires commitment from the entire company—and a redefined marketing organization.

 

 

 

2. STRATEGY: “Remapping your strategic mind-set”

Shake up your thinking by looking at the world from the perspective of a particular country, industry, or company. “Rooted” maps can help you unearth hidden opportunities and threats.

 

 

 

 

3. ECONOMIC STUDIES: “What China’s five-year plan means for business”

McKinsey analyzed the potential impact on 33 industries. Two dimensions stood out: the plan’s effect on profit pools and on the competitive landscape. Explore an accompanying interactive exhibit for a detailed look at the analysis.

4. MARKETING: “Freeing up the sales force for selling”

Most sales reps spend less than half of their time actually selling. Here’s how companies can reshape sales operations to allow them to focus on their real job.

5. BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY: “Measuring the value of search”

New McKinsey research estimates the impact of Internet search in the global economy, pinpointing the sources of value and the beneficiaries.

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To read one or more, please click here.

To check out all the online resources and sign up for free Member Edition email alerts, please click here.

This + That + Also This – Success Requires Not 1 Thing, But Many Things

 

It is a very competitive world out there.  Your job may be in jeopardy, because someone else wants your job, and is preparing right now to do your job better than you can do it.  Especially if it a good job.  (Those are increasingly scarce, it seems).

So, you have to always keep getting better yourself, at every facet of your job.

All jobs have those skills required to do the job, and then there are the skills required to do any and all jobs.  You know – the hard skills PLUS the soft skills.

So, take a look at yourself.  (You many need a coach to help you – you can’t always objectively look at yourself).  Are you competent in all the actual requirements of your job?  Good! – Now, get even better, because the bar is being raised year after year  – month after month.

And, are you pleasant to work with; easy to work with; responsive, attentive, “nice” (except when you need to be tough)?  Is your first response to say “thank you,” and, “you have done this well?”  Have you learned to praise first, and correct later — and criticize with care?

In other words, success requires not one think but many things – This + That + Also This, and then, there is always, the “and now, this.” 

The road to mastery, to genuine irreplaceable value to an organization, to success, keeps getting longer – the construction workers seem to just keep adding new miles to the route.

Zag: A book review by Bob Morris

Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands
Marty Neumeier
Peachpit Press (2006)

How to “zag” when everyone else “zigs”

In a previous book, The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier explains how companies can bridge the gap between business strategy and customer experience, noting that brand-building isn’t a series of isolated activities; rather, it is a complete system in which five disciplines – differentiation, collaboration, innovation, validation, and cultivation – “combine to produce a sustainable competitive advantage. ” His intent in Zag “is to zoom in on differentiation to reveal the system within the system.”

Initially, he observes that the human mind deals with clutter the best way it can: by blocking it out. As a result, “the newest barriers to competition are the mental walls that customers erect to keep out clutter. For the first time in history, the most powerful barriers to competition are not controlled by companies, but by customers. Those little boxes they build in their minds determine the boundaries of brands.” (Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck also have much of value to say about these boundaries and barriers in The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business.) In his latest book, Neumeier explains how to overcome these barriers with radical innovation – “the engine for a high performance brand” – that requires mastery of four disciplines:

1. Finding your zag
2. Designing your zag
3. Building your zag
4. Renewing your zag

Everything begins with identifying the zag. That is, offering something that combines the qualities of both good and different. “When focus is paired with differentiation, supported by a trend, and surrounded by compelling communications, you have the basic ingredients of a zag.”

OK, but how to do that? Neumeier provides a design process that consists of 17 checkpoints, each formulated as a question. He explains how to answer each of them correctly (i.e. an answer most appropriate to the given organization) by proceeding through a sequence of 17 checkpoints, each of which evokes a question to be answered correctly (i.e. appropriate to the given organization), with the first two previously posed as a trilogy in The Brand Gap: “Who are you?” and “What do you do?” Responding to them may prove far more difficult than it may first seem and a correct (i.e. appropriate) answer to each is essential to achieving radical innovation. The third question posed previously, “Why should I care?” creates an even greater challenge. Fortunately, a correct (i.e. appropriate) answer to that question will be revealed by carefully proceeding through the remaining 15 checkpoints.

It is truly remarkable how much substance and how many thought-provoking questions Neumeier provides within a narrative of less than 200 pages. With both rigor and eloquence, he explains how radical innovation can break through ever-increasing clutter in a competitive marketplace, whatever and wherever it may be. Special note should also be made of the book’s production values. All of his core concepts, checklists, key points, observations, and recommendations are presented within a visually appealing context. The last time I checked, there are about 34,000 business books on the general subject of brands. Neumeier has written two of the most valuable among them. Bravo!